[solenoid0937]

You say "amazing that it took months to figure this out" as if the answer to the question is obvious.

But it's not. Some FAANGs are doing amazing things with unlimited tokens. Other companies have no clue what to do with tokens, they've just told their engineers to max them.

It really depends on how you're using the tokens. If you're just using them for Codex and Claude Code - yeah, tokenmaxxing is incredibly dumb.

[SecretDreams]

Show me some fang that have made nice outwards facing products through a fully embraced AI workflow?

AI is an accelerator that engineers should know and have access to, but it's not something that should have mandated usage and quotas around. It's also absolutely dangerous for young engineers and the like - it fundamentally denies you of the "learning" aspect. I'm now seeing in interviews young graduates being given AI tasks to complete and they come back with a correct solution and no concept of how it is working.

You learn and reinforce learning by DOING and reading in depth. High level summaries don't teach anything and are the kinds of things only VPs care about. So, unless the intention in the future is for everyone to be a VP using AI to do the work, we need some middle ground here and some real thought around implementation of these tools or there's going to be a generational canyon gap of knowledge between being able to "say" and being able to "do".

[saghm]

In other words, people who are productive get more done when you scale up what they're already doing, and people who aren't productive will not magically become productive when you scale up what they're already doing. That's incredibly obvious, because we've seen how this plays out repeatedly in so many different ways (lines of code, commits, tickets closed, etc.), and it has nothing to do with tokens or even programming, but just how trying to manage people works.

[steveBK123]

> Some FAANGs are doing amazing things with unlimited tokens. Others have no clue what to do with tokens.

Unlimited tokens is different from “use AI a lot or we will fire you, and we are counting token consumption as usage”. Obviously the latter is stupid and yet it was done in many places.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I'm not convinced it actually was done in many places, although I understand why in a bad job market people don't trust that it isn't happening in secret. Every time I've heard of a token leaderboard or such it's come with a denial that the company is using it as an employee performance metric.

[steveBK123]

> it's come with a denial that the company is using it as an employee performance metric.

Surely the anonymous employee feedback polls are totally anonymous too. BigCorp loves you, is family, and would never harm you.

[fsloth]

> Some FAANGs are doing amazing things with unlimited tokens.

Would love to know what things!

[arkadiytehgraet]

OP (solenoid0937) is an unfounded AI-hype peddler and an Anthropic shill (check their comment history), do not expect them to provide an actual example of their wild claims.

[dgellow]

I checked their history and they seem alright ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[arkadiytehgraet]

Here, just a few examples over the last 9 days, in no particular order of exaggeration magnitude:

Unsubstantiated claims of 3x-10x productivity at allegedly a FAANG: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48174666

More claims of the same, still unsubstantiated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173995

Even more claims of the same, still nothing of substance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173975

Outlandish claim of using 300$ in tokens in 1 hour at allegedly a FAANG: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158438

Ostensibly great things with unlimited tokens at allegedly a FAANG: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48269185

Complaints about HN "not getting" AI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245673

An attempt to validate vibe-coding in production: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243651

Whitewashing Claude degradation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48211638

More Claude degradation whitewashing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245784

Whitewashing Anthropic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48199951

Promises of coming AI revolution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48188104

All of this serves to hype up the LLM technology with absolutely outlandish claims, while also propping up Anthropic online.

[solenoid0937]

This is so cool, I have my own fan on HN that cherry picks my comment history to call me a shill!

[arkadiytehgraet]

You could have easily disproved my claim by linking your comments with a more balanced or nuanced opinions on the matter, except you cannot, because there is only even more outlandish and wild stuff you say about AI and LLMs.

[kbelder]

He may not be a shill, he may just be terribly and enthusiastically wrong. Lots of HN posters are.

[morpheuskafka]

> But it's not. Some FAANGs are doing amazing things with unlimited tokens

Giving someone unlimited access to a resources is not the same as directing or incentivizing them to use it for the sake of using it which is what the parent comment criticized.

As for the other FAANGs, Meta and Google have (not good but still) frontier models of their own, so they are very different from a company paying API costs per token.

[dgellow]

Where can I see those amazing things done by FAANGs?

[solenoid0937]

Join one!

[dgellow]

Anything more concrete?

[arkadiytehgraet]

You got baited by an LLM-hype peddler and Anthropic shill, do not expect anything of substance. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48272695