From the Hacker News thread
Dan Luu talks a bit about this here: twitter.com/danluu/status/1115707741102…
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View @danluu on XFrom the Hacker News thread
Tokenmaxxing was just a way to force employees to start leveraging AI in a meaningful way. For companies that have measured performance based on token spend, they can now dial it back. Employees have learned to leverage AI for things they wouldn’t have prior. Now they know what’s possible and what’s not. No one is stupid enough to always measure performance based on token spend and have unlimited budget. It was always a temporary thing to transition the employees to a new world. Management felt like employees weren't leveraging AI fast enough. That's why in 2025, there were many mainstream articles about how CEOs were forcing their employees to use AI or get fired. Tokenmaxxing was just the other extreme. Companies will arrive at an equilibrium. There's no need to overthink this. Edit: One reply cited this X post as an example of why management needed to do this. Trying to change a company with hundreds/thousands/tens of thousands of employees is hard. You have to send one simple message at a time. x.com/danluu/status/1487228574608211969…
From the Hacker News thread
I went from a life insurance company in the Midwest to a pretty desirable tech company in the last few years. This tweet [0] from patio11 (linked from the posted tweet) basically sums up my path: > If you’re early career, try to get into a high-status engineering employer or consider a status arbitrage like e.g. a stint at one of the many startups which are known to recruiters but can’t match Google offers and so feel perpetually understaffed. I went to a YC-funded startup. It wasn't a well-known startup by any means, and there were fewer than 30 employees when I left. I don't think anyone there was ex-FAANG, and they didn't pay at anywhere near FAANG levels. But startup employees are in the talent pool for big tech companies in a way that insurance company employees generally are not. Anyway, when I had been at the startup for a year, I cold applied for my current position on my current employer's website, and here I am. Zero chance I would have gotten a callback if I'd applied directly from the insurance company, even though I would still have been able to do my current job effectively if I'd never gone to the startup. [0] twitter.com/patio11/status/137985297986…