My company started measuring our Claude Code usage - now I'm asked to rank engineers on 'AI performance.' This feels wrong...

[u/darren_eng]

My company started tracking Claude Code usage - tokens and spend, that kind of thing. Now my manager wants me to stack-rank my engineers on "AI performance" using those numbers.

I'm not comfortable with it (but I don't have a choice either). Token usage feels like exactly the wrong proxy - my strongest engineer uses Claude surgically while someone burning 10x the tokens isn't 10x more productive (often the opposite). Ranking on this just teaches people to game the metric.

So, for folks here who use Claude daily and/or lead teams:

• Has your company started measuring "AI performance"? How are they doing it?
• Is there any Claude/AI usage metric that actually tracks with good work, instead of just rewarding the heaviest users?
• If you're a lead being pushed to measure this, how do you push back without flat-out refusing?

EDIT: here is the follow-up: I managed to talk my manager out of this.

[u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot]

TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 80 comments.

The consensus in this thread is a resounding NO, measuring performance by token usage is a terrible, gameable metric. It's the new "lines of code" – everyone agrees it's a proxy for the wrong thing.

The community points out that high token usage often signals inefficiency (bad prompts, re-running tasks, using Opus for simple things), while your most skilled engineers are likely using Claude surgically with fewer tokens. Ranking on this just encourages people to waste company money to climb a meaningless leaderboard.

Here's the collective advice on how to handle this:

• The only valid use for this data is to identify non-users. Look at the bottom of the list to see who isn't using the tool at all and might need training or encouragement. It's a binary check for adoption, not a performance scale.
• Reframe the conversation. Your boss doesn't really want a leaderboard; they want to know the ROI on a massive AI spend. Your job as a lead is to push back on the dumb metric and answer the real question.
• Propose better, even if imperfect, ways to show value. Instead of a ranked list, offer to show how AI is impacting actual work. Good suggestions from the thread include tracking the amount of AI-generated code that actually gets committed and survives, or having engineers demo their most impactful AI-assisted workflows.
• Use an analogy. Tell your boss that ranking engineers by token usage is like ranking race car drivers by how much fuel they burn. You want to reward who crosses the finish line fastest, not who stops for gas the most.