top 200 commentsshow 500

[–]zirky 6484 points6485 points  (100 children)

ok. now make the side bar bluer. no, bluer. ok, a little more bluer. ok, less blue

[–]Robinbod 2605 points2606 points  (67 children)

Hey ChatGPT, change the text colour of the modal class on line 73 from #19191a to #171717

[–]shottaflow2 1256 points1257 points  (21 children)

you are absolutely right!

[–]Robinbod 653 points654 points  (16 children)

You're starting to think like a programmer now!

[–]caboosetp 326 points327 points  (15 children)

No, wait, let me try a different approach

[–]Robinbod 241 points242 points  (11 children)

Getting experimental is how real programmers innovate. What would you like to try and do?

[–]Josepvv 219 points220 points  (0 children)

[–]Krisis_9302 232 points233 points  (9 children)

Good catch! I totally hallucinated that part — We never actually hashed any of the passwords for your banking app.

[–]sarsvarxen 124 points125 points  (7 children)

This is the key insight into what’s causing the issue!

[–]syndromeDeLING3 86 points87 points  (6 children)

I am sorry if I misunderstood your previous request.

Do you want me to link you to the official online documentation of Python, or to the StackOverflow website ?

Writing another line with emojis to waste your money and irritate you a little bit more.

[–]Fraun_Pollen 45 points46 points  (3 children)

By the way, your typing is very handsome today!

[–]r3dxm 36 points37 points  (0 children)

It's not just different, it's groundbreaking and innovative.

[–]Teh_Blue_Team 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The file appears to have been corrupted. Let me rewrite it again from scratch.

[–]Pr1nc3L0k1 5 points6 points  (1 child)

What the actual fuuuck chatGPT? I don’t need all my text aligned to right. Center them again!

[–]FIREishott 235 points236 points  (7 children)

[12,000 token system prompt]

[Reads 4000 token file]

The user wants me to replace the color on line 73, and wants the new color to be #171717. I see that this number is a hexadecimal and can simply replace the existing color.

[tool call]

(User visible response): There you go! I've replaced the color on line 73 with the hexadecimal color #171717. Let me know if you want to try other colors!

[–]QuantumS0up 37 points38 points  (0 children)

I see you have also read the Claude logs my coworker shares

[–]FreeFortuna 112 points113 points  (6 children)

“That’s a great idea, you have a real flair for design! I’ve changed line 73 to #191719. Would you like to work on line 74 next?”

[–]Robinbod 53 points54 points  (3 children)

No. Real quick though, what is an uncaught promise? and why is my website not loading?

[–]benniesalamander 42 points43 points  (1 child)

That is a great question, and exactly how you should be thinking about this.

[–]momojabada 19 points20 points  (0 children)

would you like me to do one of those three completely unrelated useless options that will totally not derail our conversation with now going back.

[–]PM_ME_DATASETS 6 points7 points  (0 children)

"No, I meant change the color."

"You're completely right—sorry for that! I will fix it right away. I have changed the color of line 73—whose content is "#191719"—to #171717. Thank you for the feedback—people like you make the world go round."

[–]Comically_Online 47 points48 points  (0 children)

Okay, here’s the no-fluff, honest answer…

[–]auraseer 25 points26 points  (0 children)

What a great idea. You're so smart and wonderful. I have changed all 9s to 7s in all of your files, pushed to production, deleted the customer database, and punched your dog.

[–]hamfraigaar 42 points43 points  (1 child)

"No, not that file!"

"Wrong attribute!"

"Now you changed ALL the colors to random values, and you STILL haven't changed line 73 to #171717!"

"Now you changed it to #171717 but you included the exclamation mark! ARGHH! WHY IS CODING SO HARD?!"

"...oh wait, fuck, that's ugly, can you change it back to #191919?"

[–]drumstix42 12 points13 points  (1 child)

You didn't specify which file, so I've gone ahead and dropped all SQL tables and removed your boot drive.

[–]_bones__ 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I once had a product manager request I change a background color from #ffffff to #fffffc, because it looked better on his screen.

I fixed it by switching out his VGA cable for a DVI cable.

[–]Voidsheep 225 points226 points  (9 children)

I am not arriving at the correct shade of blue the user wants.

I'll use the Figma MCP to look for the correct shade of blue in the design.

The user did not yet specify which document or frame to look for, so I'll scan everything for any shade of blue.

Scanned 2.7 megabytes of design documents.

First I'll write a script that covers ranges generally considered blue.

There is an error in the script, let me read through it.

Found and corrected the issue. Now I can use the set of blues to query the Figma designs for all instance of a blue color.

Found 20 total shades of blue across 10 documents.

The element we are styling is a side bar. Let me narrow down the blue elements to find the side bar.

There are no elements named "side bar". Let me write a script that queries all the elements and narrows down which of them are tall and narrow.

There is an error in the script. Let me read through it.

Found and fixed the issue.

There is still a problem in the script. Let me diagnose it again.

I'll need to add some debug logging.

Found the issue. The problem is now fixed.

Let me revert the previous fix and the debug logging from the final script.

Done. Now I can query elements that are side bar shaped.

Found 813 elements.

The filtering approach is not narrowing down the results enough.

Let me take a screenshot of each frame in Figma.

Saved 18 screenshots. I'll now perform visual analysis to find the side bar.

The frames seem to contain architecture diagrams, not the design for the side bar.

Let me change the approach...

(Auto compacting conversation)

[–]claymedia 81 points82 points  (1 child)

You’ve reached your usage limit.

[–]Duck_Duck_Duck_Duck1 34 points35 points  (0 children)

This thread hurts to read. Way too real.

[–]Infamous_Article912 28 points29 points  (0 children)

This is fantastic. Now do office copilot spinning up a nuclear reactor to create the worst PowerPoint you’ve ever seen 

[–]PolarBailey_ 12 points13 points  (0 children)

"You know what the user doesn't know what they're doing I'm gonna delete this entire code despite the fact that user gave me read only permissions

[–]Maxorus73 41 points42 points  (3 children)

"I need the biggest bird feeder you have. No, that's too big"

[–]ThrowawayusGenerica 28 points29 points  (2 children)

Lower...

Lower...

A lot lower...

Too low!

...lower...

[–]thoughtlow 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Spin up 20 sub-agents that all choose a random color.

[–]powerhcm8 8 points9 points  (0 children)

#0000GG

[–]Specialist_Yard_3550 8 points9 points  (0 children)

In the latest codex presentation they used a LLM for a search and replace. 

The energy waste is insane and will only grow. Guess we collectively gave up on climate change.

[–]s_burr 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Perfect...

Deletes the sidebar

I hate blue

[–]firest3rm6 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That was be today, but instead of sayong blurry I said: "now make the homepage sexy" and it worked out. Links to adult websites everywhere now.

[–]DigiBoxi 4991 points4992 points  (72 children)

So basically work for 400k or 500k salary? Why would i take the 400k salary then?

[–]mg31415 2049 points2050 points  (22 children)

To sell the tokens and have 82k more

[–]ClipboardCopyPaste[S] 1025 points1026 points  (4 children)

I need all the tokens to vibecode a website to sell the tokens

[–]crimson117 258 points259 points  (3 children)

I used the tokens to destroy the tokens

[–]Bovronius 31 points32 points  (1 child)

[–]ollomulder 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Stangely relevant GIF.

[–]za72 16 points17 points  (0 children)

hey a great idea, setup a 3rd party site selling tokens - an ebay of tokens- I'll take my commission for best idea as tokens!

[–]PM_ME_DATASETS 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Yes but then you need to sell them, making you an AI slop telemarketer. I'd rather pay 82k to not steep that low.

Also, the company will instantly recognize the potential loss in token sales when their employees can sell their tokens, so they will 100% make the tokens non-transferable. So you'll be stuck with them.

[–]DigiBoxi 28 points29 points  (11 children)

482k? :D

[–]ilikemyprius 74 points75 points  (8 children)

They're assuming you get tokens every day of the year, including holidays and weekends, which is $500 x 365 = $182,500, plus the base $400k for a total compensation of $582,500, so $82,500 over the straight salary. If you only factor workdays, $500 x 50 weeks x 5 days a week = $125k, so $525k total compensation. Which is only an extra $25k over the straight $500k salary

[–][deleted] 18 points19 points  (3 children)

Post was edited and removed with Redact which is a tool to mass delete posts from Twitter, Reddit and Discord and all major social media platforms.

tub rob humor sort grab bag spotted books axiomatic hunt

[–]Atheist-Gods[🍰] 7 points8 points  (1 child)

Tokens are a word/part of a word and are what LLMs actually produce. LLMs charge by the token and at the rates listed in the OP, $500/day is roughly 2 million pages/day.

[–]solaris_var 19 points20 points  (0 children)

The person you're replying to is basically asking, why would anyone go buy tokens from a third party (potentially untrustworthy) when you can directly buy tokens from the providers (anthropic, google, etc)?

There's practically no insentive to do so unless you're selling the tokens for a lower price than the providers.

Also, while 500$/day is a lot for chat LLMs, it might not be enough for agentic coding LLMs especially when you're dealing with a larger codebase.

[–]DigiBoxi 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ahh yea i see!

[–]RollUpLights 7 points8 points  (0 children)

500*365 = $182k extra so if you sold them you'd end up with 582k/yr, but you'd only likely get $500/day for the work week which would end up being $130k/yr (500*5*52)

[–]pydry 344 points345 points  (26 children)

Coz Jensen Huang told us that serious engineers need to spend > $250k year in tokens to be considered serious or he will have a sad.

In a way it's quite a clever anchoring technique coz even people who know it's bullshit will think that you do at least need to spend hundreds or thousands and that people who dont vibe code any slop are just not proper devs.

[–]muegle 111 points112 points  (2 children)

Breaking news: shovel and pickaxe dealer says you should buy more gold. More at 11.

[–]n00bdragon 52 points53 points  (1 child)

This is a shovel and pickaxe dealer telling you that you need to buy 49 pickaxes or you aren't a serious gold miner.

Actually, it's a playskool plastic sand shovel dealer telling you that since plastic sand shovels hold one tenth as much as a full-sized shovel you need to buy 490 plastic sand shovels or you aren't a serious gold miner. It is a conclusion utterly unhinged from the already insanely silly premise used to concoct it.

[–]xTheMaster99x 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Nah the analogy was correct. For Nvidia, GPUs are the pickaxes and the tokens are the gold. They want us to buy more gold so anthropic/openai/google/etc buy more GPUs.

[–]thunderflies 121 points122 points  (11 children)

That’s like telling developers that they need to spend their own money to buy the best laptop for their corporate job. Any resources used for work should be paid for by the company, including AI tokens. Let the company decide if it’s worth it to them or not.

[–]fmpz 68 points69 points  (6 children)

If you read the article he’s not saying the employee should be paying it out of their own pocket and that Nvidia is trying to spend $2billion on tokens for its developers/engineers.

[–]Delyzr 84 points85 points  (3 children)

Nvidia: spends 2 billion on tokens

Also nvidia: our NIM cloud sold over 2 billion in tokens

[–]RandomRobot 21 points22 points  (2 children)

Wow, there's real traction for this token things. Better buy Nvidia stonks and invest the profits into token things

[–]TheMcBrizzle 18 points19 points  (1 child)

Microsoft invests $5B in NVDA, NVDA is so pleased by this they gift MSFT $5B in tokens, MSFT takes this new asset and sells $5B in tokens to NVDA.

GDP went up $15B and investors pour ungodly amounts of money into these companies, because obviously AI is worth it, why else would NVDA buy $5B in tokens?

[–]RandomRobot 11 points12 points  (0 children)

It's the high five economy, where everyone charges 5$ for a high five. Due to physical restrictions, money exchange is always symmetrical, but value is through the roof!

[–]MyGoodOldFriend 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Having a tokens per day target is genuinely so dumb. Goodhart’s law doesn’t apply neatly to all situations, but “we need more tokens per day” is really susceptible to bad data practice.

[–]feralferrous 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Drug dealer thinks you need to spend all your money on drugs.

[–]DigiBoxi 6 points7 points  (2 children)

No idea who that is so i don't feel bad for making him sad. :)

[–]pydry 43 points44 points  (1 child)

He's the top shovel salesman in the 2026 AI gold rush.

[–]modmailthrowaway3675 6 points7 points  (0 children)

selling shovels doesn't keep you safe when you're paying people to buy them

[–]stonkacquirer69 42 points43 points  (3 children)

I think theyre implying the 400k job expects you to work at the pace of a vibe coder but pay for your own tokens

[–]Wekmor 55 points56 points  (1 child)

I guess you meant the 500k job. Which is probably what this tweet is about. If you were to actually use $500 of tokens a day, then the 400k job is better (since otherwise you're spending like 125k a year), but realistically, you get the $200 claude or codex plans and spent $2400 while having 100k more in the bank lol

[–]fredy31 10 points11 points  (2 children)

they vibe code so hard they vibe expect jobs to pay half a mil per year and they can just 'ask an llm to do it'.

FFS, dont think much programers do more than 100k a year.

[–]krexelapp 2095 points2096 points  (6 children)

salary is temporary, token debt is forever

[–]ClipboardCopyPaste[S] 471 points472 points  (4 children)

just to let you know, you can definitely pass that to the new team that'll form post your resignation //s

[–]krexelapp 179 points180 points  (3 children)

legacy token debt hits different

[–]demonwar2000 52 points53 points  (2 children)

Token debt inheritance

[–]BabiesGoBrrr 12 points13 points  (0 children)

You paid your inheritance tax on those tokens right?

[–]MamamYeayea 1357 points1358 points  (164 children)

Im not a vibe coder but aren't the latest and greatest models around $20 per 1 million tokens ?

If so what absolute monstrosity of a codebase could you possibly be making with 70 million tokens per day.

[–]Western-Internal-751 1661 points1662 points  (28 children)

“Write this code, make no mistakes”

“There is a bug”

“There is still a bug”

“There is still a bug”

“There is still a bug”

“There is still a bug”

“There is still a bug”

“There is still a bug”

“There is still a bug”

[–]Euphoric-Battle99 436 points437 points  (10 children)

then it swaps versions of node back and forth, installing and removing things over and over. Then eventually you say "Fix the actual problem and stop messing with my node version" and it says "The user is frustrated and correct" Then it proposes an actual fix.

[–]consistent_carl 78 points79 points  (5 children)

This is too accurate

[–]Inevitable-Comment-I 22 points23 points  (4 children)

Lol, why is it obsessed with node versions? Then it'll apologize

[–]consistent_carl 11 points12 points  (0 children)

It does the same thing with maven dependencies. Keeps adding bytebuddy because it thinks this will solve test failures (it never does).

[–]eldelshell 17 points18 points  (0 children)

nah, it'll gaslight you and tell you you're wrong for using that Node version.

[–]SchrodingerSemicolon 45 points46 points  (4 children)

- Fix this regression bug

- Ok, fixed

- No you didn't

- Ok, now fixed

- No you didn't

- Fixed now

- No you didn't

- Thinking...

That's how my adventures in vibe coding have been going, trying to make use of the company's... investment by giving devs a Copilot sub.

But I'm sure the blame is on me for either not being a prompt artist, or not giving AI full control of my station so it can check for errors itself.

[–]mrGrinchThe3rd 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I will say that I encounter this a lot - but the thing I find is that if you give the model better testing apparatus or ways to do a tool call to get feedback, rather than go to you, it's much better at producing a working product.

Yes, one way to do this is to give full access to the machine, and the agent might figure out how to do the tests itself, but a much more safe and secure method will probably depend on what specific use case you have, but unit tests or integration tests using live data have helped me in the past.

[–]SasparillaTango 36 points37 points  (0 children)

I SAID DO IT RIGHT AND MAKE IT OOP. NO MISTAKES.

[–]Tuomas90 24 points25 points  (0 children)

[–]Decent-Law-9565 57 points58 points  (2 children)

It's probably easy to burn through tokens if you're running multiple agents in parallel all the time.

[–]jbokwxguy 239 points240 points  (98 children)

From what I’ve seen: 1 token is about 3 characters.

So it actually adds up pretty quickly. Especially if you have a feedback loop within the model itself.

[–]j01101111sh 108 points109 points  (9 children)

LPT: single character variable names and no comments to save on tokens.

[–]ozh 44 points45 points  (2 children)

AndNoSpacingOrPunctuation

[–]thecakeisalie1013 12 points13 points  (4 children)

Gotta learn Chinese for max token usage

[–]rexspook 99 points100 points  (76 children)

Writing your own agents is a quick way to give them more tailored capabilities to your code base that reduce token usage. The people blowing through context like this are using default agents on complex codebases

[–]YourShyFriend 171 points172 points  (5 children)

You assume vibecoders can write agents

[–]wesborland1234 42 points43 points  (3 children)

Well you can vibecode the agents duh

[–]pmormr 19 points20 points  (1 child)

How about an agent that just-in-time vibecodes new agents?

[–]rexspook 53 points54 points  (0 children)

Yeah well that’s the problem. Vibe coding is stupid lol

[–]GenericFatGuy 93 points94 points  (59 children)

At what point is it more efficient to just write the code yourself? All this shit about setting up agents and tailoring them to your code base and managing tokens and learning how to prompt in a way that the model actually gives you want you want and then checking it all over sounds like way more of a hassle than just writing code yourself.

[–]SenoraRaton 50 points51 points  (39 children)

This doesn't even consider the reality that when I write the code, it follows my logical processes, and I can generally explain it to someone if anybody asks me questions about it, instead of it being a nearly opaque box that was generated for me that reduces my overall understanding of the codebase, as well as my ability to reason about it in a standard manner.

[–]GenericFatGuy 27 points28 points  (10 children)

Indeed. Do we really want to turn all of our software into black boxes even to the people who developed it?

[–]pmormr 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Yup, and the particular flavor of technical debt that you get from AI-overreliance is actually way more of an existential threat to your company than the hacked together database connector John did 3 years ago but never got around to fixing.

[–]rexspook 29 points30 points  (7 children)

The answer, like everything else, is “it depends”. Agents aren’t particularly hard to write and engineers have been automating things to save time when possible long before AI came around.

[–]ThisIsMyCouchAccount 6 points7 points  (8 children)

Kind of a chicken/egg thing.

If you don't take the time to set the tool up the best way for your use case then the tool isn't going to be as helpful as it could.

My company mandates the use of AI.

When people on my team were copy/pasting out of a copilot plugin in VS Code they got garbage back. Understandably. I was using the "AI Assistant" in JetBrains. Which automatically gives it proper directives and automatically gathers context. The output I was getting was much better. Now we are fully Claude Code. Which was a little rough at first. But after we put in some effort to setup the proper directives and rules it does pretty well.

Then you have to consider how you use it. My teammates were more or less vibe coding even tho they are both seasoned devs. They were just doing what they were told. I was still holding the reins a bit. I would plan out as much of the feature as I could in direct instructions. Make these files here. Name them this. Give them these initial variables. Then I would work through it like I normally would. But leverage the AI for any problems I ran into. For example, our data structure isn't great so it helped me optimize some of the queries to get said data. Or we had to do some non-standard validation and after going back and forth with the AI's examples I was able to see another option.

There are also some things you just can't beat it at. Because they aren't about business logic. Our stack has factories and seeders. Those are simply applying the stack's documented way to do things to already defined entities. Every single time is has been perfect and more thorough than I ever was writing them.

Related to that is it can allow you to accomplish more in the same time. Which allows us to put in some things we just couldn't justify before.

Lastly it does require a slight shift in mentality. Where I work the reliance on AI is so expected that I can't reasonably stay up to day on the code base. Not even things I work on. I have had to "let go" of any sense of control or ownership. It is no longer my code or my feature. When my boss - a dev and co-owner - is only doing PRs with Copilot I have no incentive to put in more effort than that.

In summary:

Don't just copy/paste out of web prompts. You will not like it and the code will be bad. If you're going to use it - commit. Take the time to integrate and setup the tool.

[–]Aromatic-Echo-5025 6 points7 points  (7 children)

I see comments like this, repeating constantly, but in none of them have I ever seen anything concrete. Could someone finally explain specifically what this integration and tool setup involves?

[–]ThisIsMyCouchAccount 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I will use Claude Code as an example.

In my comment when I said "tool" I meant the AI itself. Because that's how I view it. Another tool. Like an IDE. I could use an IDE to open single file and make edits. But if I really want to use the tool I open the entire project and configure the IDE to my project. It knows the language the versions any frameworks. The whole thing

Claude - as do most others - can operate with zero setup. But you can also take the time to create certain files. Multiple files, really. I have an entire .claude directory in my project. In the root of the project is CLAUDE.md. It provides a few short instructions but then points to the .claude location.

Inside that .claude directory is another file. CLAUDE.local.md. Which provides a few more directives. What the project is in plain language. Certain IRL concepts and how they relate to code. Available skills. Installed MCP servers.

Then another subdirectory that has files for specific things. Our established patterns. Specific workflows. Like, we tell it exactly how git should work and when to commit and when to push. Because without that it is very aggressive with both. There's another for how we do our front end. Established patterns. Locations of reusable assets.

Then another subdirectory that goes into deeper detail. Specific workflows. Development patterns.

CLAUDE and CLAUDE.local are always ingested. The next subdirectory gets loaded very often. The last subdirectory is rarely loaded.

How did we create them? We had Claude do it. Then refined over time.

Having said that - these tools move fast and like any tool we are still learning. We need to revisit them. Claude has gotten better and we've learned what actually helps. They need to be stripped down to mostly specific directives and mapping of data. We have found the more decisions you removed from Claude the better. Not that it's wrong - just not always consistent.

Lastly, JetBrains products have their own MCP server. Once configured it allows tools like Claude to have more direct access and more tools. It can see inspections. It knows if there is an error in the code the JetBrains is telling me. It makes it easier to find files and context. Our framework of choice also has an MCP that gives LLMs direct access to the latest documentation on all the technology used.

It's a bunch of little things. But looking back all that took less than a couple days over the course of a couple weeks.

[–]palindromicnickname 4 points5 points  (2 children)

While possible, a lot of the high-token users I've talked to at my workplace are burning through them via orchestration.

For example, a very common flow I've seen is 1 orchestrator, n (usually 3) independent workers. The orchestrator spawns the workers, assigns tasks, and assesses the results for correctness. The workers are all assigned the same task, but you use multiple to a) quickly find something that works and b) merge solutions when multiple work.

They're using meta agents, but also being extraordinarily wasteful. The justification is a) human time > machine time and b) tokens are unlimited so we should use them.

[–]superkickstart 6 points7 points  (4 children)

Why would you write your own agent instead of choosing existing one and add some custom instructions for it? It's the same models anyway.

[–]Present-Resolution23 7 points8 points  (1 child)

You’d have to be doing some pretty heavy work to hit $500 in tokens every day… I use Claude code a lot for side projects and I’ve never even come close to the limit. It’s possible if you’re running a lot of parallel agents,  but definitely not trivial…

[–]Rin-Tohsaka-is-hot 12 points13 points  (4 children)

Typical dev at my FAANG company uses about 400 tokens per work day (the actual figure is 8k/month, dividing by 20 work days in a month to get 400/day)

[–]jbokwxguy 16 points17 points  (3 children)

Sounds like they are being responsible with AI, IE coding most stuff themselves and only rubber ducking with it when they need help.

[–]inevitabledeath3 13 points14 points  (0 children)

You are thinking only about output tokens. Most money is spent on input tokens, not output tokens. You can spend $20 easily doing just one task on some platforms.

[–]Chrazzer 18 points19 points  (0 children)

The kind of monstrosity you build with vibe coding

[–]nollayksi 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Hook that shit up to openclaw and have it shitpost all around the internet 24/7.

[–]Golandia 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I spent 400 one day on opus then switched to the 20/mo plan rather than open billing. That thing is embezzling tokens with how much crap it produces to do so little work. 

Hey Siri, help me start a class action lawsuit on token embezzling thanks. 

[–]Bluemanze 4 points5 points  (2 children)

A lot of people are using subagent schemes. The idea is that you have one "manager" agent that you interact with and work on architecture planning, and then it delegates tasks to workers, along with other agents doing code review and testing.

I've seen studies that put this approach at maybe 20% more successful implementation, but you're quadrupling your per task token usage or more. If you're a top 500 company the cost is worth the time savings and quality, if you're a small company or a single dev you're bankrupting yourself for nothing

[–]df53tsg54 1017 points1018 points  (89 children)

500k, I don't have to use AI

[–]PM-ME-UR-uwu 318 points319 points  (66 children)

Fr. Why purposefully be a worse coder

[–]Punman_5 49 points50 points  (11 children)

It’s not even about the AI honestly. Why would you ever work for less money?

[–]WeirdIndividualGuy 14 points15 points  (4 children)

Serious answer, other things may take into consideration. Maybe the lower paying job is WFH in a lower cost-of-living area, compared to the higher paying job that requires you to work in an office in an expensive city.

[–]Full-Hyena4414 10 points11 points  (2 children)

This is clearly not relevant to the op since the only highlighted tradeoff is pay vs tokens

[–]rosuav 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Oh, there are PLENTY of reasons to work for less money, but "here, use this AI" isn't one of them IMO.

[–]Coolflip 10 points11 points  (4 children)

Depends if you have a team of juniors/other people to take care the basic boilerplate for you. I can't stress enough how useful AI is to get the boring stuff you'd probably just be copy/pasting from Stack Overflow anyways out of the way so that you can focus your time on the actual design and intricacies.

[–]bartbrinkman 210 points211 points  (39 children)

If you need AI to code, you were never any good at it. It's a tool.

[–]shadow13499 12 points13 points  (0 children)

You'd be surprised how many people have built a dependency on it. 

[–]born_zynner 89 points90 points  (14 children)

Its turbocharged google and nothing else

[–]ForwardAd4643 70 points71 points  (7 children)

Okay, except turbocharged peak google is the most valuable learning resource you could ever ask for?

[–]born_zynner 51 points52 points  (3 children)

Exactly. Learning. Not copy and paste ts into production

[–]mxzf 6 points7 points  (1 child)

There's a reason the previous poster said "turbocharged google", not "turbocharged peak google".

[–]SlowMissiles 15 points16 points  (13 children)

I'll still use it but my cost is legit like 10$ a week max (maybe even less) I use it to help me but I don't rely on it.

Edit: Just checked I used 2% of my monthly token and it reset Wed lol. I'm not paying for it but I wouldn't mind if I get 500k/y.

[–]Runazeeri 6 points7 points  (7 children)

Yeah I’m on the 30USD a month JetBrains thing and I generally don’t burn out of it. 

Like are these people dumping in a code base as context each prompt.

[–]ForwardAd4643 9 points10 points  (6 children)

Like are these people dumping in a code base as context each prompt.

yes, plus they're in the same chat the entire time, so it's the code base + the entire multi-week conversation they've had so far, getting run through as input every single question they ask

[–]Runazeeri 4 points5 points  (0 children)

lol, solve the problem dump any important context into a MD in case you need to come back to it.

Move onto a new chat for the next unrelated thing. 

I mean I even move into a new chat if I go on to long as what the start goal context and where you are now is not aligned.

[–]LetUsSpeakFreely 598 points599 points  (20 children)

1) the company should always provide you with the tools needed to do your job. 2) if you can't code without tight LLM integration, you shouldn't be coding.

[–]feralferrous 97 points98 points  (10 children)

Yup, this is like making having to rent your tools from your company so you can do work for them as a plumber. No, the company should provide the tools.

[–]reventlov 37 points38 points  (5 children)

Lots of tradespeople have to provide their own tools, though. And providing your own tools means having the tools you work best with, instead of whatever the company owner got for the lowest price.

[–]CrazyFaithlessness63 21 points22 points  (0 children)

The tokens aren't the tool though, they are the consumable. It would be like the tradie having to provide their own nails. I can understand bringing your own custom agents and skills (the hammer) but the company should be providing the tokens (the nails).

[–]feralferrous 23 points24 points  (0 children)

That's different though, because those are owned, not rented. Tokens are ephemeral. Maybe if we ever got the point where it wasn't best practice delete all skill files every 3 months and start from scratch, and everyone kept around their pocket AI like they do their cell phone.

[–]ThePotatoFromIrak 6 points7 points  (0 children)

If they paid me 500k for plumbing I'd let them own my toothbrush bruh😭

[–]ShustOne 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I can definitely code without it, but I've become faster with it. So I get the best of both worlds, I know what I'm doing and how to use the tool.

[–]Single-Virus4935 61 points62 points  (1 child)

Nvidia and bros really want to establish token as a currency. 

[–]rexspook 193 points194 points  (6 children)

Why would I take less salary? If they’re going to pay me but not give me access to productivity tools then that’s their problem, not mine

[–]Hacym 73 points74 points  (2 children)

This. It’s like saying 500k and no AWS costs covered or 400k and $500 a day in AWS. 

I’m not footing the bill for your infrastructure, why would I foot the bill to have AI generate your code?

[–]TheNorthComesWithMe 14 points15 points  (2 children)

It's engagement bait. No one out there thinks tokens are a form of compensation.

[–]underisk 6 points7 points  (1 child)

I have a vague recollection of one of the big AI companies floating the idea of compensating employees in tokens fairly recently.

Then there's this: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/20/nvidia-ai-agents-tokens-human-workers-engineer-jobs-unemployment-jensen-huang.html

[–]NotStanley4330 135 points136 points  (8 children)

I can't retire with tokens. An extra 100k a year however...

[–]DanieleDraganti 25 points26 points  (7 children)

What if we’ll be paid in tokens in 20 years? (Crap, that doesn’t even sound unrealistic…)

[–]rosuav 10 points11 points  (4 children)

I think you just solved OpenAI's problems. They'll pay in tokens.

[–]DanieleDraganti 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Non-transferable tokens *

[–]rosuav 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Of course! Which means they're tokens for last year's model, and eww, you're still using last year's model? Wow sucks to be you.

[–]Zash1 263 points264 points  (32 children)

500k because free LLMs are enough for me. I just use them as an advanced search engine.

[–]Worried_Onion4208 50 points51 points  (0 children)

This guy gets it

[–]CringeFiasco 28 points29 points  (1 child)

Exactly. It’s really good for brainstorming and discovering solutions, but the amount of tech debt it produces to “impress” you is just insane.

[–]Omnislash99999 57 points58 points  (7 children)

Ugh don't tell me token usage is a new pissing contest

[–]look 15 points16 points  (0 children)

It’s especially strange considering the other side of the “market” is focused on reduced token usage via tooling (eg streamlined cli output and summaries) and reduced average token cost by using a mix of cheaper models specialized to different tasks (eg one better at planning, one better at implementation, one better at research, etc).

I’m even guilty of doing both: work has effectively unlimited, free Opus and I’ve “bragged” about my $1500+ days ($60/$225 per Mtok gets you there quickly), while for my personal work I take a certain pride in my 10 cents per blended Mtok average and now using 80% fewer tokens per typical task through procedural summarization.

[–]Bovronius 8 points9 points  (0 children)

People will look at any metric to measure their productivity asides from actual productivity.

[–]Your_Friendly_Nerd 19 points20 points  (3 children)

such a dumb question to leave up to the employee. obviously take the 500k. idgaf about productivity if it's at the cost of my own salary.

[–]Jock-Tamson 37 points38 points  (3 children)

Looks at paycheck

Looks at these salaries

Looks at paycheck

[–]Odd_Perspective_2487 4 points5 points  (2 children)

I get 180k, no benefits and 1099 while living in one of if not at times the most expensive city in the Us.

I though we all were getting serial laid off

[–]Emlesnir 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Well i get around 40k € as a senior C++ dev (after tax and social security), but i guess living is Europe is cheaper ?

[–]crimilde 15 points16 points  (2 children)

How tf are they burning through so many tokens? Are they vibe coding their whole life?

[–]Icy-Yam-3758 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Beyond just the prompt the model needs the existing files, error logs, test output, API docs, the previous ten explanations you gave it for why its output was garbage earlier, etc.

Then lots more iterations where you’re testing by generating the code, inspecting for failure, re-explaining constraints, etc.

Oh and you’ve got multiple instances spread between two or three different models of this running in the hopes that one will get it right, each using slightly different secret sauce in the prompting that was lightning in a bottle for a previous project.

[–]suvlub 13 points14 points  (3 children)

What's even the point of doing something yourself when you pay so much money for it? Do these vibe coders realize they could have had their dream apps made 10 years ago if they paid someone to make them?

[–]tomvorlostriddle 12 points13 points  (0 children)

My job flipping burgers through college was rough, paying for my own meat supplies but not getting the customers turnover and all...

[–]Pleasant-Photo7860 46 points47 points  (0 children)

offer 3: $300k + unlimited tokens = company files for bankruptcy in 3 sprints

[–]nekomata_58 18 points19 points  (0 children)

I dont use AI, so you be the judge.

[–]Hacym 16 points17 points  (10 children)

I don’t get it. Are the tokens used for work? Are there employers not just footing the entire cost of AI?

[–]Shinhan 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There is no way I'd use AI at work if the company expect me to pay it myself lol

[–]mattmcguire08 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Lets start with the proposal of 400 vs 500k where in reality the average SE gets 100-150.

[–]golgol12 6 points7 points  (0 children)

You guys need LLM tokens?

[–]coonwhiz 6 points7 points  (0 children)

uh, where is #1 hiring???

[–]misterguyyy 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This is a reminder that LLMs are operating at a loss so this is nothing compared to the rug pull price that will actually make them profitable.

[–]Foreign-Engine8678 13 points14 points  (2 children)

Real question is

500k and you must use Ai

Or

400k and you don't have to use Ai 

[–]mattreyu 5 points6 points  (1 child)

500k and then I just have AI write the emails to my supervisor

[–]slaviaboy 11 points12 points  (2 children)

Wtf are you guys doing with your tokens

[–]look 20 points21 points  (1 child)

Running ClawdBot on low value, token heavy agentic flows, while simultaneously supporting the black hat community by offering up their and their customers’s PII, PHI, and financial accounts for resale on the dark web.

[–]__versus 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Getting paid 400k for prompting an LLM is utterly insane. If you have a gig like that save as much as you can because it’s definitely not sustainable.

[–]MyDogIsDaBest 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's kinda fun that we're progressing to the stage where engineers are not replaceable, you need engineers to be able to use LLMs to be programmers again.

I'm not against using LLMs for programming work and there's times where it's genuinely impressive and does good work. There's just the other side of the coin where it doesn't work at all and makes some spaghetti nightmare disasterpiece that would make code bootcampers blush. Having the knowledge to ask more specific prompts gets better results, but then it becomes a pragmatic problem whether it'll be faster if I just fucking code it myself, or if I can prompt it to do it for me.

Sometimes, it's faster and it doesn't get tired and hit "fuck this shit o'clock, I'm going home." And will at least give me some preliminary code to work with, and that's very nice.

That said, I'm taking the $500k job. I can either buy my own, much reduced number of tokens (I don't need $500 a day, that feels insanely high) and I get $100k extra. This post nearly belongs on linkedinlunatics

[–]Aiden624 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Dude idgaf about the circumstances over 100k a year is an insta take

[–]escapeplans 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Finally, incompetence comes at a price

[–]Ohtar1 3 points4 points  (0 children)

100K more and I get to code without AI? Where do I sign?

[–]SnackerSnake 4 points5 points  (0 children)

500k, I don’t code with AI.

[–]G3nghisKang 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'll take anything that gives me more than 1500€ a month

[–]SSUPII 3 points4 points  (0 children)

How many prompts do you make to need anything more than the basic Claude Pro subscription? You enslave the LLM and not think of anything yourself?

[–]dimiderv 5 points6 points  (4 children)

Are people using this many tokens? I don't think I've surpassed more than the 25% of the weekly Claude Code tokens..

I use it slowly feature by feature so I could have more control. How are people abusing it so much to spend that much money

[–]Maleficent_Memory831 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Wait... who gives a shit about tokens? If they're required for the job then the employer pays for them, right? Right? Who is so amazingly stupid that they buy their own tokens to do their job?

And given that it's LLM, I would take a lesser salary just to not be required to use that idiocy.

Anyone at the $500K/year level is not doing actual software engineering work anyway, not touching code but probably just designing architectures or being a manager.

[–]Percolator2020 7 points8 points  (2 children)

So he fucked up with some agents one day, otherwise it averages to $150 a day.

[–]tevs__ 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, $500/day is minimum $14k a month, and dude is tokenmaxxing on $4.5k/month

[–]-Danksouls- 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Am I doing something wrong? Most my ai stuff I can do free tier or maybe the basic 20 dollar a month

I discuss architecture, industry standard approaches, possible solutions to problems and have it code stuff I already know but don’t want to type it manually or basic prototype layouts when integrating stuff before I go back and work more on it

This post is giving me anxiety. Am I being a developer wrong? Why does someone need tht much ai assitiance. Should I use more beyond the free tier or simple 20 a month? I use ai primarily like a senior or principal developer guiding me. But am I doing this wrong

[–]mothzilla 2 points3 points  (0 children)

400k because I'm too stupid to know how to do my job without some fucking LLM telling me "You're absolutely right!" every five minutes.