I use Opus 5.5 heavily but only spend around $800/week at API rates. I mean, I say "only"... That's a lot in absolute terms, but trivial compared to my salary and EASY worth it.
And someday I hope to understand why they do that. CEO: "Let's see, I can pay $200/month for Bob's tokens, or I can pay $2000/month or so, and then hope he doesn't screw up and rack up a seven-figure bill. The service is the same either way. Hmm."
It's unclear how much OP's company was spending. The article gives a figure of $100k/month per employee.
But even $200/month is worth shaving if it doesn't generate value.
$100k/month per employee?
um.
Corporations pay API rates.
So what, if they're cutting it, it has propagated to the last bean counter that the roi isn't there.
This takes some doing and now is the time where it's dawning on the finance departments.
> So what,
So it's not $200 a month but it can easily reach $200 a day, and unless you're a startup playing with monopoly money the maths don't work
I use Opus 5.5 heavily but only spend around $800/week at API rates. I mean, I say "only"... That's a lot in absolute terms, but trivial compared to my salary and EASY worth it.
And someday I hope to understand why they do that. CEO: "Let's see, I can pay $200/month for Bob's tokens, or I can pay $2000/month or so, and then hope he doesn't screw up and rack up a seven-figure bill. The service is the same either way. Hmm."
It's not like they can't decide to pay API or subscription rates. Subscriptions aren't possible for >150 person companies.
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Besides that the article states quite high numbers, budget is budget in these companies.
You had budget for your normal salaries, for externals and now suddenly you have a few millions additional.
What do you do? You compensate.
Business people doing business things.