Comment by amluto
3 days ago
I, too, can easily use more tokens to achieve the same task. I can give worse prompts. I can fail to make it clear to the tools where to find the information they need. I can ask them to think hard when the don’t need to ask tell them not to think when they do need to. I can give vague, open ended instructions. I can generate code that sucks and throw it away.
If I do all of this, do I get a promotion?
Even if I'm in the middle of using the AI seriously but then want to rename a variable, I can't do that myself because it'll confuse the AI, so I'll tell it to rename. That seems pretty wasteful.
At least GPT-5.4 and up seem to do okay if I just prefix my next message with something like "(I made edits.)".
That sounds like too much effort. Better to have the AI write you a 20k word manifesto about how much you love your employer and then include that in the context of every request.