The Pragmatic Engineer on 'Tokenmaxxing' — Coding Agent Subsidies May Be Ending, Cost per Merged PR Ranges from $0.28 to $89.32

The Pragmatic Engineer·medium signal

Gergely Orosz covers the tokenmaxxing trend where engineers compete on AI token consumption leaderboards (notably at Meta, where one user averaged 281B tokens). Jellyfish data shows cost per merged PR ranges from $0.28 at low usage to $89.32 at the highest tier, suggesting diminishing returns at scale. The piece warns that current heavily-subsidized enterprise AI coding plans may not last, and asks what happens when the subsidies dry up and companies face true costs.