Amazon issues AI usage guidelines, discourages tokenmaxxing

Amazon has a message for its software engineers: using more AI is not the same as doing better work. The company published a memo laying out how its engineers and engineering managers should use AI tools. It explicitly discourages a habit that picked up a name this year: tokenmaxxing. The memo first circulated internally in September. Amazon posted it to its website on Tuesday, turning an internal guidance note into a public statement on how one of the world’s largest employers of software engineers thinks about AI and productivity. What the memo actually says The core instruction is simple. Engineers should use AI selectively, and they should measure its value by long-term outcomes rather than by token usage. A quick primer helps here. AI models process text in small chunks called tokens, and every prompt and response consumes them. Think of tokens as the electricity meter on an AI tool: the more you run it, the higher the reading climbs. Tokenmaxxing is the practice of driving that meter as high as possible to look productive. The memo also revises how Amazon defines the role of software development engineers and their managers now that AI tools are part of daily work. It introdu...