Comment by lumost
2 days ago
I spend 400-500 dollars per day during active development at this point. However with more aggressive task breakdowns I can spend ~5k per day.
These spend rates are in part due to operating on a larger code base. Operating on a larger code base means more time searching and understanding the code, tests, test output. They are also due to going all-in on agentic coding.
It can feel painfully slow to go back to coding by hand when for a dollar you can build the same functionality in a minute. Now do this with multiple sessions and you can see where the cost goes.
Your reply answers how you are able to spend money, not if it is returning sufficient dollar value per spend..
> I genuinely challenge someone spending $5-$10k a month to demonstrate how that turns into $50-$100k in value.
The problem with HN is that everyone here thinks like an engineer, not like a business owner.
$10k a month on tokens is just not that much when you're already making $2M per engineer. If their productivity has increased even 10% then the spend was well worth it.
Case in point, Meta made 33% more revenue this earnings report. Now you can nitpick and ask for attribution down to the dollar, but macro trends speak for themselves.
Go look up a multi-year chart of their revenue and find the inflection point where the AI made it go up faster (there isn't). In fact revenue growth used to be higher pre-2023.
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