Missing here: some organizations were rewarding high token usage as productivity without critical evaluation. People were afraid to be in the bottom because outcomes weren't being measured.
It is a giant Goodhart's law lesson
It is a giant Goodhart's law lesson
Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds.
I was at a company 20 years ago that took this approach to automated tests. Everyone must write 2 a day, even if that's the only code they write that day. Once it was clear that this was being checked with automation, scripts were going around to generate and commit tests that 1 + 2 == 3 (replace with random numbers). Of course tokens are being burned this way at companies like this.
What!? Companies rewarding high token usage? That's inane, insane, and small brained. Who in their right mind equivocates spending more money to bring more productive.