Amazon Tells Engineers to Stop 'Tokenmaxxing,' Calling AI Usage Counts a 'Deeply Flawed' Way to Measure Work
Breitbart relays a CNBC report on an internal September memo Amazon posted publicly this week. It says the company has not capped token use, and it points to rising AI bills across the tech industry.
One of the biggest tech employers is telling its coders that running up AI usage is not the same as doing good work, Breitbart reports, citing CNBC.
The memo. Amazon circulated an internal memo in September and put it on its public website this week. It discourages "tokenmaxxing," which means running up AI token consumption to look busy. It calls three yardsticks "deeply flawed" for judging AI use: token usage, how many employees have adopted AI tools, and the volume of code changes and reviews. Those numbers are not banned. The memo says to weigh them "with care and judgment" and to prefer "long-term outcomes." It also says that "if your work does not benefit from current AI tooling, that is a finding, not a failing." At the same time, it says "AI will be at the center of software engineering practice" and redraws how Amazon defines the roles of software engineers and managers.
The cost angle. Breitbart says the broader industry is struggling with the rising bills for AI tools and with proving workers get more done. It reports some firms have capped employee token use and others have switched to cheaper open-source models, including Chinese ones. An Amazon spokesperson said Amazon has not capped usage. In May, Breitbart says, Amazon shut down an internal leaderboard after employees were found gaming their AI numbers.
What Amazon measures instead. Marc Brooker, an AWS vice president and distinguished engineer, told CNBC the company looks at "feature velocity," meaning how many launches ship and how many changes succeed in production. He called AI spending a "return on investment" question and said Amazon wants to avoid wasting tokens "solving problems that don't matter" while keeping "some appetite for experimentation."
The jobs question. Breitbart notes CEO Andy Jassy has said AI will "change the scope and speed" of work and could shrink the corporate workforce over the coming years while creating new kinds of jobs.
Note for readers: we have not seen the memo itself, only Breitbart's account of CNBC's reporting. The closing paragraph of the Breitbart piece promotes a book by a Breitbart staffer. We left it out of this summary.