> In March, I wrote about a new trend: Tech companies are starting to treat AI tokens (the main way to measure usage) as a fourth component of employee compensation, alongside salary, bonuses, and stock awards.

There's a lot to unpack about this statement.

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cmdli 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Until employees can use those AI tokens for personal projects, it's not compensation. Rather, it's just a cost of doing business, like laptops, office space, or testing servers.

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

> There's a lot to unpack about this statement.

Including the fact that it's probably not true.

If something is compensation, it can often be negotiated and traded off against other compensation components. How many people have successfully negotiated AI tokens away in favour of salary/bonus/stock? I'm going to guess "approximately zero".

	▲	notJim 14 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Is that really true? At least at large companies, the components are not usually fungible in my experience. At startups or smaller companies I'm sure it's a lot more flexible.
	▲	r0m4n0 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yea they used the wrong word and it felt like rage bait. AI tokens you use for your job given by your employer is not compensation. Hell money isn't even compensation in many cases, it all depends on the context. The author needs use AI to help them rework that sentence or open a dictionary

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

I think the author used the wrong word.

I haven't seen anyone treating AI tokens as employee compensation. If anyone can show me an article where employees were paying taxes on their token use at work, please share it.

Companies have been treating AI tokens as part of the cost of having employees, like the cost of their office or travel expenses.

	▲	Terr_ an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> I think the author used the wrong word. True, though that phrase understates the author's problem a bit, as it is surrounded with more wrong-words, indicating it's a wrong-idea rather than a slip of the tongue. As you note, it's closer to office/travel expenses. Employee computers, licenses for software on those computers, licenses for SaaS stuff, paying for bandwidth, etc.

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notJim 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I can see where there might be a truth to it. My company offers a fairly generous monthly token budget. If I were evaluating an offer from another company, but they offered a lower monthly budget, it would definitely influence my decision, all else being equal. It's not compensation, but it does affect my day-to-day experience at work.

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compiler-guy an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's certainly a cost of having an employee, along with salary and benefits. But employee costs also include things like laptops, electricity, internet, management, support staff, and possibly office space. Tokens are much more like the latter than the former.

Many companies used to brag about about how nice the laptop or office was as a way of convincing people to work there. Often in the same breath as compensation.

But compensation is only one component of cost.

So I think this guy is confused about what it costs to have an employee and what the employee gets out of it. Possibly intentionally.

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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