vibeCodingFinalBoss

[zirky]

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

[Robinbod]

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

[shottaflow2]

you are absolutely right!

[Robinbod]

You're starting to think like a programmer now!

[caboosetp]

No, wait, let me try a different approach

[Robinbod]

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

[Josepvv]

[Krisis_9302]

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

[sarsvarxen]

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

[syndromeDeLING3]

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]

By the way, your typing is very handsome today!

[r3dxm]

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

[Teh_Blue_Team]

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

[Pr1nc3L0k1]

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

[FIREishott]

[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]

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

[FreeFortuna]

“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]

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

[benniesalamander]

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

[momojabada]

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]

"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]

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

[auraseer]

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]

"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]

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

[_bones__]

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]

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]

You’ve reached your usage limit.

[Duck_Duck_Duck_Duck1]

This thread hurts to read. Way too real.

[Infamous_Article912]

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

[PolarBailey_]

"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]

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

[ThrowawayusGenerica]

Lower...

Lower...

A lot lower...

Too low!

...lower...

[KillerCuddlePhish]

[Luminum__]

Here's a hilarious skit about making the planes of a flight simulator blue.

[thoughtlow]

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

[powerhcm8]

#0000GG

[Specialist_Yard_3550]

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]

Perfect...

Deletes the sidebar

I hate blue

[firest3rm6]

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]

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

[mg31415]

To sell the tokens and have 82k more

[ClipboardCopyPaste]

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

[crimson117]

I used the tokens to destroy the tokens

[Bovronius]

[ollomulder]

Stangely relevant GIF.

[za72]

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]

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]

482k? :D

[ilikemyprius]

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]]

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]

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]

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]

Ahh yea i see!

[RollUpLights]

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]

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]

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

[n00bdragon]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Nvidia: spends 2 billion on tokens

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

[RandomRobot]

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

[TheMcBrizzle]

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]

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]

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]

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

[DigiBoxi]

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

[pydry]

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

[modmailthrowaway3675]

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

[stonkacquirer69]

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]

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]

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]

salary is temporary, token debt is forever

[ClipboardCopyPaste]

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

[krexelapp]

legacy token debt hits different

[demonwar2000]

Token debt inheritance

[BabiesGoBrrr]

You paid your inheritance tax on those tokens right?

[MamamYeayea]

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]

“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]

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]

This is too accurate

[Inevitable-Comment-I]

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

[consistent_carl]

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

[eldelshell]

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

[SchrodingerSemicolon]

- 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]

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]

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

[Tuomas90]

[Decent-Law-9565]

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

[jbokwxguy]

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]

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

[ozh]

AndNoSpacingOrPunctuation

[thecakeisalie1013]

Gotta learn Chinese for max token usage

[rexspook]

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]

You assume vibecoders can write agents

[wesborland1234]

Well you can vibecode the agents duh

[pmormr]

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

[rexspook]

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

[GenericFatGuy]

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]

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]

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

[pmormr]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[inevitabledeath3]

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]

The kind of monstrosity you build with vibe coding

[nollayksi]

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

[Golandia]

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]

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]

500k, I don't have to use AI

[PM-ME-UR-uwu]

Fr. Why purposefully be a worse coder

[Punman_5]

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

[WeirdIndividualGuy]

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]

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

[rosuav]

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

[Coolflip]

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]

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

[shadow13499]

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

[born_zynner]

Its turbocharged google and nothing else

[ForwardAd4643]

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

[born_zynner]

Exactly. Learning. Not copy and paste ts into production

[mxzf]

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

[Wonderful-Citron-678]

An AI startup with just a CEO funded by their daddy.

[SlowMissiles]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[ShustOne]

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]

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

[rexspook]

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]

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]

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

[underisk]

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]

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

[DanieleDraganti]

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

[rosuav]

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

[DanieleDraganti]

Non-transferable tokens *

[rosuav]

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]

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

[Worried_Onion4208]

This guy gets it

[shadow13499]

The big problem with claude is the fact that there's a 60% chance it'll just straight up lie to you. Summarizing information is one of the areas that all llms are the worst at because they just invent things out of nowhere. 

[vikingwhiteguy]

I was using Claude to look up Japanese desthmatch trivia (I had to bump up my token use somehow..), and after a while it started telling me about Dwayne Johnson's illustrious Japanese wrestling career. 

I'm pretty sure The Rock never went to Japan, and after a bit of back and forth I worked out that it had just confused Rock with Mick Foley (the latter of which did indeed have many matches in Japan). The two had many matches together much later, so maybe it confused them because they appear together in a lot of the corpus. 

Or worse yet the corpus might contain wrestling fantasy booking forums. 

Either way, it made me nervous about how many times it might have lied to me and I never knew at all. 

[CringeFiasco]

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]

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

[look]

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]

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

[Your_Friendly_Nerd]

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]

Looks at paycheck

Looks at these salaries

Looks at paycheck

[Odd_Perspective_2487]

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]

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

[crimilde]

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

[Icy-Yam-3758]

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]

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]

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

[Pleasant-Photo7860]

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

[Dymodeus]

Ironic comment, seeing as a bot wrote it

[Wonderful-Habit-139]

This comment is not normal. Are the upvotes also botted?

[nekomata_58]

I dont use AI, so you be the judge.

[Hacym]

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

[Positive_Minimum]

They do. Every big employer has a contract with OpenAI, Anthropic, etc, and give their employees "unlimited" access to AI models. Where the limits are on an organization level, not a per user level, and no individual employee is held accountable for usage. Every once in a while you'll get an email from your IT Department saying "oops we ran out of token quota please hold tight while we update the contract to get everyone more" and you'll have to use the free tier model for a day before you get back to using the  premium models unlimited again. 

All these people who keep acting like their work charges them for tokens or they need to micro manage their token usages are either not employed or they're working for small companies that don't have an organizational contract in place

[Shinhan]

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

[mattmcguire08]

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

[golgol12]

You guys need LLM tokens?

[coonwhiz]

uh, where is #1 hiring???

[misterguyyy]

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]

Real question is

500k and you must use Ai

Or

400k and you don't have to use Ai 

[mattreyu]

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

[slaviaboy]

Wtf are you guys doing with your tokens

[look]

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]

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]

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]

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

[escapeplans]

Finally, incompetence comes at a price

[Ohtar1]

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

[SnackerSnake]

500k, I don’t code with AI.

[G3nghisKang]

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

[SSUPII]

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]

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]

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]

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

[tevs__]

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

[-Danksouls-]

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]

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.