Engineering Directors & VPs

Per-engineer token caps optimize the most visible cost while hiding labor, delay, and business value. Budget AI production by accepted outcome, not individual contributor.

Price the outcome before its tokens. A rational token budget is a function of total delivery economics, and even 150% of labor cost can make sense when it buys enough time.

Your CFO should not be asking what you spent tokens on as if the model invoice is a minibar tab. Your CFO should be asking why the highest-ROI production input in the software portfolio is underfunded.

Your token burn is not the problem. It is the first invoice honest enough to show that your engineering work has no value discipline.

Before you optimize token spend, measure the completed work, human attention, cycle time, and risk reduction those tokens bought.

Before finance audits token spend, audit the expenses that somehow escaped fiscal responsibility: offshore teams, staff augmentation, systems integrators, consulting partners, Scrum layers, agile coaches, planning ceremonies, and delivery management. How much did they actually cost, and what success rate did they produce?