$5600 per 28-day period is quite a lot!
Any company, not just Apple, should be tracking whether the extra spending is worth it. There must be a point of diminishing returns where additional AI usage stops increasing productivity at a comparable rate. That point should be your target. Different teams can have vastly different thresholds.
Companies also can't justify ever-increasing costs just because it increases productivity. It's business. You care about profits, not raw productivity. And Apple doesn't seem to be having a particularly great time these days.
They vibe coded some slopware mobile app on a $200 Claude subscription and roleplay as that being productive.
In reality those companies are measuring what the extra cost brought in as a return, and are likely deciding that it was not worth it.
I fully expect this to become the norm, figuring out ways to extract usefulness out of LLMs while spending as little as possible.
I’m not surprised companies are pulling back. That’s a decent chunk of money and CFOs are going to want to know what they’re getting for the money. “More PRs” isn't a good enough answer.
Finally! Gravity and sanity are starting to win.
Or, get this - figuring out what customers really want and need is super hard and churning out code doesn't solve the truly hard problems of software development.
I don't see any indication that LLMs help with requirements gathering or user studies, especially live ones.
You cut it when you have evidence that it was wasteful.