A $500k engineer costs $2k/day — $200 of LLM tokens buying 20% output is easy ROI
generativist · x · 2026-09-26
Yuchen Jin calculates that a $500k engineer costs $2,000 per working day, so $200/day of LLM tokens delivering 20% productivity gains is one of the easiest ROI wins—the real cost is underutilized engineers. hammermt flips the framing: treat salary as a function of tokens, with good token stewards managing $50m token portfolios for a 2% fee plus 20% carry.
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