On Counting Tokens
The latest trend among companies that can't measure developer productivity: Using "amount of AI-output generated" as a performance indicator.
If you've been reading along for a while, you can guess what I think about that. It's a terrible metric, for all the usual reasons.
Easy to game
I've had a lot of fun using Claude Code in Caveman mode: Why say lot words when few words do trick? But if I had a boss insisting I burn as many tokens as possible, I'd swap Caveman Mode for Verbose Bureaucrat Mode: "Hey Claude, make your answers as flowery, baroque and verbose as possible. Explain everything at length."
User: add a POST /users endpoint
Claude Code (Verbose Bureaucrat Mode):
Ah, gentle architect of digital realms — you have summoned me forth to inscribe upon the great parchment of your codebase a new pathway, a humble portal through which the souls of your users shall first cross the threshold into persistence. What an undertaking! What a moment! Allow me, before I lift a single finger toward the keyboard, to first contemplate the weight of what we are about to do together.
Or set up recurring jobs to burn tokens for no reason:
/loop 1m write a Greek myth about a guy involved in a pointless task as punishment
Quantity is uncorrelated with impact
Sometimes, the thing we care about is hard to measure directly. But it's strongly tied to something else that is easy to measure. This only works if there is a strong tie.
If we care about impact (user satisfaction, retention, revenue, brand reputation), none of the quantitative metrics get close:
Lines of code?
Number of commits or pull requests?
AI-tokens spent?
Nope. That'd be like saying the Twilight Saga has better writing than The Old Man and the Sea because it has more words.
Good Things Need No Incentives
I use AI for coding. I don't have a boss hounding me about it. I experimented to find what works. Where it delivers value, I stick with it. No carrots or sticks required.
If your team is dragging their feet on experimentation, set the right incentives: Genuine permission to play with the tools, try different ones, and share wins and fails without judgment.
You can't KPI your way to good engineering. You can only set the conditions for it.
