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Comment by sho | Hacker News Reader

As many others have said, that's not even slightly impressive. Someone maxing out a single claude ultra plan on opus 5.5 is already doing ~$160k+ per year if the massively inflated API prices are used. I personally have 5 and the only thing stopping me getting more is concern about being banned, I could easily double my usage if it was safe and convenient. Hell, I could probably 10x it or more.

Once you make the jump to agents managing agents the only limit is your budget and your harness's ability to coordinate. We'll all be using far more tokens than this in a year or two.

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What do you do that you are maxing out 5 accounts

I want to know if there are any returns on that. Even with the insane discount on API prices.

Or are people paying $1K/mo (subsidized) just because AI is fun? Can you imagine a video game charging $1K/mo?

Even if it was just for fun, $12,000 a year for a hobby is not cost prohibitive for a lot of people.

Median average single salary in the US is ~64k a year. Spending ~19% of all income on a single hobby is completely out of the question for the vast majority of people.

If you claim it as a business/work expense (In Australia, that gives you a 47% discount), 1K is not even one day's salary for a well-paid dev and just about one day for an average paid dev.

Are Australian software devs really averaging 250k USD per year?

Its bimodal. If you are at one of the big ones yes. Its on levels.fyi (you can narrow to Australia)

No, though a very small minority are in that range with equity etc from Big Tech.

Average base compensation for SWE is ~140k (in the US w/ the highest earning SWEs), so the average is roughly half of that. Earning ~275k is comfortably in the top 20% of all SWEs; 1k a day is easily in the top 5%.

Well, I run a number of apps that have users who appreciate them (I hope?) and they simply wouldn't exist without AI giving me the leverage to build them. So.. yes? What's a "return", anyway? It's worth it to me, obviously!

But you might have hit the nail on the head - yes, it's extremely fun and maybe that's the main reason after all. And FYI many, many people pay a lot more than $1k/m for video games.

I absolutely can imagine a video game doing that, especially if there were some way to make the consumption be conspicuous.

In Tan's case, I think the "fun" thing is the right way to look at it. He gets to play at being a big shot developer and show off on Twitter, so clearly he feels he's getting some value from his spending even if no-one else does.

There is a more serious question about to what degree the AI vendors have a duty of care to prevent addicts from getting themselves into financial trouble - perhaps they might in future face the sort of regulation applied to high street bookmakers. I doubt Tan would fail any putative affordability test, though, so it would still be up to him to seek help for his problem if he feels its getting out of control.

Day job, multiple side projects which are their own entire public apps, research, personal agents, running and developing the custom harness that orchestrates all of the above..

It sounds like a lot when I type it like that, but it's not actually that much if you delegate brutally. Like I said, I'm constantly token starved and could do a lot more!

Feeling productive while achieving nothing.

Very clever - your comment is a description of itself

Have you looked at offers from CommandCode and similar? https://commandcode.ai/pricing

You can get access to DeepSeek 4.1 Flash for almost nothing, on a $1, $10, or $100 subscription. That can complement your 5 Claude accounts, or replace some. DS Flash 4.1 is so fast and cheap it’s ridiculous

All such sites are data harvesting operations. They'll collect your transcripts and sell that data to model companies to train on. It's a big business.

I occasionally get my agents to do sensitive things; I'm not comfortable having my transcripts collected and sold, so I don't use them. They say they anonymize them but who can ever tell? Not for me, thanks.

That there are people like you in a world with starving children sincerely turns my stomach.

There really is no excuse, is there?

This is my daily intrusive thought. "Why the hell am I doing any of this? Why am I not yelling louder at people that have so much and give so little?"

This website is full of people that could save millions of human lives in aggregate, but choose not to and actively argue against the idea because, and I do swear it's a damned curse at this point, "there is no incentive to do it."

I'm not even remotely rich. I have no "savings" or "investments". Yet I have a comfortable life in a house with access to food and care as I need. Sometimes I really hate it.

To your last part, then you’re ok man. Sounds like you have your kindness and empathy intact. It sounds like given the avenue, you would organize for what is right. You have perspective but don’t let it consume you. You need to be healthy because if you care, there might be a chance in the future where you can put that care toward change. And you need to be in your best state to have the largest impact.

There are many people in this world who have more, view people as dirt, and dedicate their lives to keeping people down. Good, kind people who are disempowered by a system that betrayed us all are not at fault. Feel better man.

I hope you regularly have people in your life that do this for you. Thank you. Just thank you.

You cannot change the world, you need to accept that. However, you can have a hell of an impact on your surroundings, like your close family, neighborhood or city. Focus on that. Social media made us forget that.

You're right. And thank you. Sincerely.

If that is the case, how do you use HN or any social media without vomiting all day?

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