{"id":844139,"date":"2026-03-23T04:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T04:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/844139\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T04:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T04:02:14","slug":"tech-employees-are-reportedly-being-evaluated-by-how-fast-they-burn-through-llm-tokens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/844139\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech Employees Are Reportedly Being Evaluated by How Fast They Burn Through LLM Tokens"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to a column<\/a> by the New York Times\u2019 Kevin Roose, employees at companies including Meta and OpenAI compete on \u201cinternal leaderboards that show how many tokens[\u2026]each worker consumes.\u201d At Meta in particular (and also Shopify), Roose says volume of A.I. used has become a metric that goes into people\u2019s evaluations, with managers \u201crewarding workers who make heavy use of A.I. tools and chastening those who don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Analogies are tricky here. One is tempted to say it\u2019s like making painters compete to use the most paint, but even if the paint is just being splattered as quickly as possible, it\u2019s at least going to be visible when the project is done. It\u2019s a bit more like telling soldiers to gauge their battlefield success by the number of bullets fired, but suppressive fire that doesn\u2019t hit anything has its place in war strategy. The best analogy I can come up with is this: it\u2019s like NBA mascots being evaluated by how many t-shirts they fire out of their t-shirt cannons, but the t-shirts are made by Herm\u00e8s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The resulting numbers, in terms of both tokens and money, are absolutely staggering. One OpenAI engineer, according to Roose, burned through 210 billion tokens, which Roose equates to 33 Wikipedias. A Swedish software engineer claims to Roose that his company spends more than his salary on his Claude Code tokens alone.<\/p>\n

This \u201ctokenmaxxing\u201d trend clearly stems in part from the use of \u201cclaws<\/a>,\u201d agentic AI platforms like OpenClaw, which are this year\u2019s biggest supposed innovation in AI. OpenClaw\u2019s virality was part of the big shift away from OpenAI\u2019s GPT models and toward Claude this year by AI fanatics, and OpenAI subsequently hired OpenClaw\u2019s creator<\/a>, seemingly in a bid to maintain its position as the industry leader.<\/p>\n

But even when used without an external claw platform Claude Code is becoming more and more like OpenClaw lately, with a feature rolling out last week that allows greater and greater on-the-go vibe coding, by letting users communicate with Claude Code more easily on their phones.<\/p>\n

\n

We just released Claude Code channels, which allows you to control your Claude Code session through select MCPs, starting with Telegram and Discord. <\/p>\n

Use this to message Claude Code directly from your phone. pic.twitter.com\/sl3BP2BEzS<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Thariq (@trq212) March 19, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The promo even features a little 4-bit sprite of a lobster, or possibly a crab\u2014a red crustacean at any rate\u2014the new symbol for LLM token profligacy.<\/p>\n

But tokenmaxxing speaks to a wider issue in which these companies tout the sheer number of tokens processed as a marker of success. OpenAI president Greg Brockman bragged about a week ago that the coding-oriented GPT-5.4 processes 5 trillion tokens per day\u2014which, in fairness, makes sense as a way to please investors, because tokens cost money.<\/p>\n

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gpt-5.4 has ramped faster than any other model we’ve launched in the API: within a week of launch, 5T tokens per day, handling more volume than our entire API one year ago, and reaching an annualized run rate of $1B in net-new revenue.<\/p>\n

it’s a good model, try it out!<\/p>\n

\u2014 Greg Brockman (@gdb) March 16, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But 5 trillion is a huge number, you have to admit. Did you know that Ronald McDonald\u2019s Big Red Shoe car in the Macy\u2019s Thanksgiving Day Parade would fit a men\u2019s size 266 foot<\/a>\u00a0if it were to have an actual foot in it? Aren\u2019t big numbers cool?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n