Meta has laid off thousands of workers as part of its plan to transition to artificial intelligence (AI). The company reportedly relied on several standards to select employees for layoffs, including performance evaluations, department restructuring, and AI initiatives, with internal experimentation around AI usage metrics reportedly influencing engineering output assessments.
Part of that process included the short-lived leaderboard called Claudeonomics, allegedly created by an employee. The internal leaderboard, which reportedly ran from March, was also known as tokenmaxxing—a system that encouraged engineers to consume as many AI tokens as possible.
AI token consumption was important for an employee since it was a gauge to rank them and determine their efficiency. In internal accounts circulating among employees, higher token usage was informally interpreted as a proxy for AI-driven productivity, while lower usage raised concerns about adaptation to AI tools. That would in turn be essential in identifying which workers were worth keeping or letting go, depending on how they could cope with AI.
While it appeared ingenious, it was also costing Meta a fortune. According to an X user with the handle @sheiyuo, one Meta engineer burned roughly $500K per month in token consumption (roughly 300 million tokens in a month).
A single Meta engineer burned roughly $500K/month in Token consumption (about 300 billion tokens / month) on the company's internal "Claudeonomics" leaderboard that ranked employees by Token usage.The leaderboard ran from March, employees with low rankings were at layoff risk,…
Aware that ranking high on the board was essential for them to keep their jobs, some workers found a loophole to make sure they would be among the leaders. Some allegedly used idle AI agents that ran all day to make sure that they would be in the safe zone, artificially inflating their token usage to improve their ranking.
However, that initiative was also costly for Meta. It increased computing costs, placing the company in a worse predicament. Aside from that, the system was leaked as well, adding more controversy.
The board was shut down on 8 April 2026, allegedly at the behest of an employee to prevent further leaks.
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However, the question now is whether the leaderboard lasted only days or as long as a month.
Source: International Business Times UK
