There was an amusing post about judging developers based on token usage where some user on HN here was pushing this idea “ICs don’t like it but this is the best way to evaluate” (something like that).

They have a whole management team and can’t seem to find a way to judge or god forbid encourage developers…

I'm going to offer a contrarian view here:

First is that despite a lot of waste, some innovation will arise from an enterprising employee finding some interesting use case. A lot of the tokenmaxxing is just waste, but out of that waste may arise a small number of genuinely powerful use cases.

Second is that many workers will be entrenched in their ways. If your executive goal is to achieve the above (find innovative ways of using AI), then you need to move everyone to use it. Most will just waste tokens, but someone may find a novel and useful way of using it that benefits the organization. It is difficult to achieve these without forcing people to act since their default is to follow the well-worn grooves.

So mandates like these are a top-down forcing function like a slime mold feeling out different paths to find resources.

Some devs in my org have fully embraced AI; some would not even use AI if not for leadership mandates and linking usage to performance reviews (I know, I think this is stupid, too). I can see why mandates could be useful since some folks definitely won't be inclined to use AI.

Is keeping your company private the easiest way to get around this?

> Everyone’s strategy looks exactly the same.

If one is a CxO who's looking out for one's job security, herd-like behavior is the safest option, due to the (near universal) structure of "performance"-based executive remuneration.

Lacking not just courage, but also character. Wasting company money on buzzwords and dubious outcomes is lack of character.