Meta drops AI usage from engineer performance reviews after "tokenmaxxing" backfires

Meta Platforms Inc. will no longer factor AI token usage into engineers' performance reviews, executives Maher Saba and Santosh Janardhan said in an internal memo, after employees engaged in "tokenmaxxing" to inflate their metrics. The company, which faces internal AI costs heading toward billions in 2026, plans to introduce usage budgets and a central dashboard in 2027, while its new AI agent tool Hatch faces employee privacy concerns during testing.

Meta drops AI usage from engineer performance reviews after "tokenmaxxing" backfires Meta will no longer judge its engineers by how much they use AI tools. AI dashboards and token counters won't factor into performance reviews anymore, executives Maher Saba and Santosh Janardhan said in an internal memo seen by The Information https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/exclusive-meta-tells-engineers-ai-token-usage-part-performance-reviews . What counts now is the quality, speed, and complexity of the work. Meta had previously made AI use a review criterion, which led to what people started calling "tokenmaxxing." Employees burned through AI tokens in bulk just to look good on internal leaderboards https://the-decoder.com/meta-employees-compete-for-token-consumption-on-an-internal-ai-leaderboard/ . The excessive use came with a price tag. Internal AI use alone is heading toward billions in costs in 2026 https://the-decoder.com/meta-shifts-from-tokenmaxxing-to-token-managing-as-internal-ai-costs-reportedly-hit-billions/ , which is why Meta plans to roll out budgets and a central dashboard starting in 2027. At the same time, Meta is testing its new AI agent tool Hatch https://the-decoder.com/metas-paid-ai-agent-hatch-launches-soon-with-a-new-model-called-watermelon-due-in-october/ , which is meant to handle computer tasks on its own, according to WIRED. But the tests are running into pushback inside the company. Some employees are reluctant to connect it to their personal accounts over privacy concerns. AI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans Subscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive "AI Radar" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section. Subscribe now The Information https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/exclusive-meta-tells-engineers-ai-token-usage-part-performance-reviews | WIRED https://www.wired.com/story/meta-pushes-its-new-ai-agent-on-employees-but-eases-off-on-tokenmaxxing/