I'm probably between $50-$200/day depending on the day; we also have effectively unlimited budget, though a lot of that is because Azure gives startups $150,000 in credits for 2 years, which we've wired up to a LiteLLM gateway & OpenCode. Without that I think our appetite would be more around $400/month/employee.

A lot of my high costs is because I just throw Sol at everything. If I were more selective and brought in Luna or v4 Flash every once in a while, I think I'd be more like ~$400/month. That's why I'm not aligned with the notion that "tokens are subsidized so that's why people are using so much": its not that I'll have to adjust to using less, its just that I'd need to think before I prompt a bit and be more judicious. I could easily see my raw token counts doubling or tripling in the coming months. I don't think that will change as subsidization subsides; though maybe lab revenue will; intelligence per dollar is getting cheaper every week. Its solely a function of adaptation to process, which takes time.

The productivity gains per token are the single most asymmetrical thing I've ever seen in engineering. The engineers on our team are pretty effective with tokens; easily that 2x-4x output as you're seeing, spending $20-$200/day. Some of our security folks have also started contributing more-and-more code, and they're on the other side: they'll spend hundreds a day running in circles, eventually producing these +/-30k loc pull requests that take ages to get merged and are littered with issues. They weren't writing much code before, so arguably they're more productive by some multiplier greater than 1, but I think the drag on the rest of the team, and potential issues with what they produce, has overall created a net-negative situation. Inversely, some other company functions have produced a few one-off websites for things like sales processes, and those have been a huge win. The asymmetry is wild. There's almost a valley of incoming skill where if you know nothing about code, you'll leverage it well; if you know just a little bit, it makes you super dangerous; if you know a lot, you're the biggest winner. Really difficult situation to navigate.