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The implication that tokenmaxxing was an intentional and thoughtfully considered approach rather than blind hype-following by an overpaid manager class who are
by baconmania 3mo ago
The implication that tokenmaxxing was an intentional and thoughtfully considered approach rather than blind hype-following by an overpaid manager class who are too far removed from value to understand the downsides of LLMs is hysterical beyond belief.
- BobbyJo 3mo agoYeah, the rationalization after the fact is kind if absurd. IME, the reasoning underlying tokenmaxxing at the corporate level was "we need to leverage AI as much as possible as fast as possible because we're scared our competitors will find some leverage before us". Definitely not some measured, long term, rational out of the gate.
- tough 3mo agoWorse, tokenmaxxing has been pushed by the labs hoping to charge those tokens by the pound on their API prices eventually, even if temporarily hiding such costs behind "highly subsidized plans" or frequent bug-induced "reset buttons"
- Anon1096 3mo agoI would wager most if not all of the tokenmaxxing was done on enterprise API priced plans, not subscription plans. You can't actually token"max" if you are limited in the amount of tokens you can use per 5 hours.
- overfeed 3mo agoEnterprise plans weren't usage-based until recently. Lots of enterprises were bait-and-switched by AI companies from flat per-seat fees, and now have to go on a token diet to rein-in budgets - which is the blog post's premise about tokenmaxxing being dead.
- SR2Z 3mo agoI really don't understand this take. If you're a carpentry shop that just bought power tools for the first time and you're worried that your employees are sticking with hand tools because that's what they know, then you look for sawdust. The goal isn't to have people work at converting wood into sawdust, the point is that if you wanna see if the tools are working you wanna see proof they're actually being used. I'm sure there were some people cargo-culting this stuff, but suggesting that the people who run FAANG don't understand the dangers of bad metrics is... interesting.
- cyphar 3mo agoWhy would a carpentry shop buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of power tools without consulting with their employees to see what they actually need to get their job done more effectively? The logic of buying the tools then forcing the employees to use them "or else" is completely backwards in any sane world. (Of course, we've all had bosses that went to some marketing seminar and come back having been tricked^Wsold into buying some wizz-bang widget that we need to now integrate because of a sunk-cost fallacy, but I thought everyone was on the same page that this is not how normal procurement was supposed to work.) > the point is that if you wanna see if the tools are working you wanna see proof they're actually being used. That is way too charitable, people were being fired based on these metrics and people were absolutely talking about token burn as being a metric for productivity (do I really need to link the Jensen Huang quote?). That isn't an indication of this hysteria being based on "just trying to see if the tools work". If you want to see if the tools work, why don't you just ask your employees? Like any normal employer would?
- paulddraper 3mo agoBecause those power tools had just been invented and no one had experience with them. Though in theory power tools are faster than hand tools.
- JoshTriplett 3mo agoSo do a workshop on power tools, measure their efficacy and the quality of the result, do some demonstration videos on power tools, get people to compare, seek feedback on their usage. Don't count electricity and sawdust, or you'll find people getting very good at expensively turning blocks of wood into sawdust.
- no-name-here 3mo agoIs the idea that most stubborn employees would adopt AI if their company made videos showing internal metrics that AI is better? > Don’t count electricity and sawdust I agree that it seems wasteful, but is there some better way to accomplish it at the scale of hundreds, or hundreds of thousands, etc? I'm personally doubtful that stubborn employees would switch even if a video provided internal metrics, videos, etc.
- jmye 3mo agoEh, it’s less hysterical than the ever-pervasive belief among junior devs that they are the smartest people in the room and that all managers everywhere are dumb. Though I understand that gets social validation from other people with no actual experience.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- overfeed 3mo agoThe retconning is absurd. Companies CxOs's exhibit herd-line behaviors all the time: hiring scrum masters, mandatory return to office, and now tokenmaxxing. FOMO is a sufficient explanation of the behavior, any trend gaining momentum that they fear will give their competition an edge, they will reflexively force adoption with no further reasoning needed. There is no cost to boarding hype trains that go nowhere.
- not_a_bot_4sho 3mo ago> overpaid manager class Ugh. Tell me you're early in career without telling me. Sophomoric take.
- baconmania 3mo agoSorry to disappoint bud, I'm a manager of managers. Being able to look critically at your own tribe is one of the first skills you learn if you want to survive as someone telling other people how to do their jobs.