The Dumbest New Trend in Coding Productivity Setting Money on Fire
Internet of Bugs 11:58
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"Tokenmaxxing" is the latest corporate trend taking over the tech world, but is it actually measuring developer productivity—or is it just burning a monumental hole in company finances?
In this episode of Internet of Bugs, Carl breaks down the origins of tokenmaxxing, from Jensen Huang’s podcast comments to prestigious VC letters pushing AI-driven developer metrics. We explore the terrible history of trying to measure programmer productivity (like counting lines of code), how Goodhart's law ruins these systems, and why massive tech companies might actually be incentivizing this slop just to train their own internal AI models.
Furthermore, we look at the financial reality of the AI bubble, upcoming tech IPOs, and why shipping dead code or hiding bugs behind feature flags can cause catastrophic real-world losses (like the 2012 Knight Capital Group meltdown).
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00:00 What is "Tokenmaxxing"?
00:55 Where the Trend Started (Nvidia & VCs)
02:03 The Nightmare of Corporate Token Leaderboards
02:24 How Do We Actually Measure Good Code?
03:52 Lines of Code, Story Points, and Failed Metrics
05:01 Goodhart's Law & Gaming the System
05:39 Why Big Tech Wants You Burning Tokens
06:49 The Superstitions of Software Engineering (LeetCode & Agile)
07:55 The Danger of Dead Code & The $440M Bug
09:17 The Real Solution
10:47 The AI Bubble's "Groundhog Day" IPO Forecast
#Tokenmaxxing #SoftwareEngineering #AIBubble #DeveloperProductivity #TechTrends #Programming #TechIndustry #InternetOfBugs
// Sources
// Origins
https://the-decoder.com/nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-says-hed-be-deeply-alarmed-if-a-500k-developer-spent-less-than-250k-on-ai-tokens/https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/2025/12/nvidia-ai-financing-deals/685197/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/technology/tokenmaxxing-ai-agents.html
https://a16z.com/there-are-only-two-paths-left-for-software/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/a16z-unleashes-20-billion-ai-141615040.html
https://www.notboring.co/p/a16z-the-power-brokers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreessen_Horowitz
// What companies are doing
https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtificialInteligence/comments/1sfjjj8/metas_internal_leaderboard_ranks_employees_by_ai/
https://fortune.com/2026/04/09/meta-killed-employee-ai-token-dashboard/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvglyklz49jo
https://www.firstround.com/ai/shopify
https://gaiinsights.com/blog/the-ceo-of-shopify-has-a-great-memo-to-employees-about-ai
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/shopify-admin/productivity-tools/shopify-magic
https://www.forrester.com/blogs/what-you-can-learn-from-shopifys-ceos-memo-on-workforce-ai/
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-tracks-ai-use-engineers-internal-friction-2026-4
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/improve-employee-productivity-using-generative-ai-with-amazon-bedrock/
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/streamline-employee-training-with-an-intelligent-chatbot-powered-by-amazon-q-business/
// Programming History Mentioned
https://maseconomics.com/goodharts-law-economics-why-targeting-a-measure-destroys-its-value/
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/362929.362947
https://junit.org/
https://www.henricodolfing.ch/en/case-study-4-the-440-million-software-error-at-knight-capital/
https://blog.statsig.com/how-to-lose-half-a-billion-dollars-with-bad-feature-flags-ccebb26adeec
// AI limitations
https://epoch.ai/blog/will-we-run-out-of-data-limits-of-llm-scaling-based-on-human-generated-data
// Tokenmaxxing backlash
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/ai-cost-crisis-hits-tech-giants-as-employee-tokenmaxxing-backfires-agentic-ai-eats-up-to-1000x-more-tokens-than-standard-ai-sparks-corporate-pullback-at-microsoft-meta-and-amazon
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48268871
https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-andrew-macdonald-ai-token-spending-harder-justify-2026-5
// Financial irregularities (just the most recent tip of the massive iceberg)
https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropics-profitability-swindle/
https://www.thestreet.com/latest-news/new-nasdaq-rules-open-door-for-spacex-other-tech-giants-to-join-passive-index-funds-immediately-after-ipo
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/spacex-ipo-filing-reveals-anthropic-set-to-pay-musks-firm-125bn-a-month-to-rent-xai-data-center-space/
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/anthropic-will-pay-xai-1-25-billion-per-month-for-compute/
In this episode of Internet of Bugs, Carl breaks down the origins of tokenmaxxing, from Jensen Huang’s podcast comments to prestigious VC letters pushing AI-driven developer metrics. We explore the terrible history of trying to measure programmer productivity (like counting lines of code), how Goodhart's law ruins these systems, and why massive tech companies might actually be incentivizing this slop just to train their own internal AI models.
Furthermore, we look at the financial reality of the AI bubble, upcoming tech IPOs, and why shipping dead code or hiding bugs behind feature flags can cause catastrophic real-world losses (like the 2012 Knight Capital Group meltdown).
💡 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL ON PATREON:
Join our Friday Patreon Q&A Zoom calls to talk about upcoming videos, tech trends, and industry superstitions sooner!
👉 https://www.patreon.com/InternetOfBugs
00:00 What is "Tokenmaxxing"?
00:55 Where the Trend Started (Nvidia & VCs)
02:03 The Nightmare of Corporate Token Leaderboards
02:24 How Do We Actually Measure Good Code?
03:52 Lines of Code, Story Points, and Failed Metrics
05:01 Goodhart's Law & Gaming the System
05:39 Why Big Tech Wants You Burning Tokens
06:49 The Superstitions of Software Engineering (LeetCode & Agile)
07:55 The Danger of Dead Code & The $440M Bug
09:17 The Real Solution
10:47 The AI Bubble's "Groundhog Day" IPO Forecast
#Tokenmaxxing #SoftwareEngineering #AIBubble #DeveloperProductivity #TechTrends #Programming #TechIndustry #InternetOfBugs
// Sources
// Origins
https://the-decoder.com/nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-says-hed-be-deeply-alarmed-if-a-500k-developer-spent-less-than-250k-on-ai-tokens/https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/2025/12/nvidia-ai-financing-deals/685197/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/technology/tokenmaxxing-ai-agents.html
https://a16z.com/there-are-only-two-paths-left-for-software/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/a16z-unleashes-20-billion-ai-141615040.html
https://www.notboring.co/p/a16z-the-power-brokers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreessen_Horowitz
// What companies are doing
https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtificialInteligence/comments/1sfjjj8/metas_internal_leaderboard_ranks_employees_by_ai/
https://fortune.com/2026/04/09/meta-killed-employee-ai-token-dashboard/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvglyklz49jo
https://www.firstround.com/ai/shopify
https://gaiinsights.com/blog/the-ceo-of-shopify-has-a-great-memo-to-employees-about-ai
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/shopify-admin/productivity-tools/shopify-magic
https://www.forrester.com/blogs/what-you-can-learn-from-shopifys-ceos-memo-on-workforce-ai/
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-tracks-ai-use-engineers-internal-friction-2026-4
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/improve-employee-productivity-using-generative-ai-with-amazon-bedrock/
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/streamline-employee-training-with-an-intelligent-chatbot-powered-by-amazon-q-business/
// Programming History Mentioned
https://maseconomics.com/goodharts-law-economics-why-targeting-a-measure-destroys-its-value/
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/362929.362947
https://junit.org/
https://www.henricodolfing.ch/en/case-study-4-the-440-million-software-error-at-knight-capital/
https://blog.statsig.com/how-to-lose-half-a-billion-dollars-with-bad-feature-flags-ccebb26adeec
// AI limitations
https://epoch.ai/blog/will-we-run-out-of-data-limits-of-llm-scaling-based-on-human-generated-data
// Tokenmaxxing backlash
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/ai-cost-crisis-hits-tech-giants-as-employee-tokenmaxxing-backfires-agentic-ai-eats-up-to-1000x-more-tokens-than-standard-ai-sparks-corporate-pullback-at-microsoft-meta-and-amazon
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48268871
https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-andrew-macdonald-ai-token-spending-harder-justify-2026-5
// Financial irregularities (just the most recent tip of the massive iceberg)
https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropics-profitability-swindle/
https://www.thestreet.com/latest-news/new-nasdaq-rules-open-door-for-spacex-other-tech-giants-to-join-passive-index-funds-immediately-after-ipo
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/spacex-ipo-filing-reveals-anthropic-set-to-pay-musks-firm-125bn-a-month-to-rent-xai-data-center-space/
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/anthropic-will-pay-xai-1-25-billion-per-month-for-compute/
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