I never took tokenmaxxing to be about improving productivity directly; mundane feature work that comes out of it is just a side effect. I always saw it as a race between these big tech companies to get a generational advantage by being the one to discover the way of the future, with respect to harnessing AI to actually and truly automate software development.

EDIT: whoa, I used "way of the future" as a reference to Howard Hughes in "The Aviator", not this Way of the Future religious organization thing I just stumbled on; no intended reference there.

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tracerbulletx an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah this is right. Its about taking the throttle off of experimentation hoping some team suddenly starts shipping a years worth of features in a week and responding to strategic customer demands in near real time. Then copying what works out across the org. (and probably downsizing)

	▲	groby_b 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		What those organizations miss is that they drown their teams in organizational red tape. The way to the future isn't tokenmaxxing - it's cutting back on process noise.

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izzydata an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My impression of companies pushing AI so heavily is that they are basically being forced to do it by it merely existing. Imagine if AI really is as powerful as it is suggested to be and you didn't jump on the bandwagon. Then you would be behind. So by it existing and other companies using it, you have to as well because even if it turns out to be a failure at least everyone else will have failed too and you are on an even playing field.

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jrmg an hour ago | parent [-]

You could kind of use that line of thinking to justify spending on anything.

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bluGill 28 minutes ago | parent [-]

There is a fad every few years that uses similar thinking to justify spending. Sometimes they work out sometimes they don't. But they never work out as good as the most optimistic predictions.

	▲	nitwit005 6 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I commented on wasteful AI spending, and my father immediately started talking about how he "went through that a couple of times" as a manager at an oil company. The unusual thing is perhaps how global and cross industry it seems.
	▲	LogicFailsMe 22 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Usually, someone extracts genuine value at the expense of everything else IMO. And the enshittification continues apace.

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infecto 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agree and I have wondered behind close doors if this is not the mental model. You need to spend money to see what is working this was simply a way to see that.

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jaredklewis an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is insightful. It does sort of feel like the search for the Northwest passage.

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nobodyandproud an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My hot take: The way of the future is local LLMs.

The AI equivalent of the PC revolution isn’t quite here yet, but it’s the only way forward.

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lazide 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Eh, I also saw it as a rather blatant attempt to undermine the bargaining power of the Software Engineer (which had grown to insane proportions over the years) - both in working conditions and raw cash money.

In many cases it really didn’t/doesn’t matter if the AI automation actually works, just that people think it could - and hence leave money on the table.

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lenerdenator an hour ago | parent [-]

> insane

Not sure if you mean this in a good or bad way.

	▲	lazide 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Good/bad entirely depends on if you are management/shareholders, or the engineer in question. It was pretty nuts either way though eh? End of an era