- Companies are now making AI bot management a key performance metric for employees, shaking up HR.
- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang expects engineers to spend big on AI tokens; Meta requires ‘agent-assisted’ code.
- A Silicon Valley founder tests employee AI reliance by giving access, then cutting it to see who begs.
A bot may not replace you — but employees may be expected to manage dozens of them to do their jobs.
Both the ability to create bots and how much time you spend using them are becoming a key performance metric at a growing number of companies. HR departments are scrambling to figure out how to measure it all.
At Nvidia, CEO Jensen Huang has said he expects engineers earning $500,000 or more to spend at least $250,000 of the company’s cash on AI tokens. He believes anything less is cause for alarm.
“I think a future metric is going to be tokens per employee [and it’s] going to be one of the most important metrics going forward,” said Adam Silverman, who runs a custom agent-building agency. “We’re going to hit a point where employees are spending as much as their salaries on tokens, and it sounds crazy.”
At Meta, engineers are now required to have a certain percentage of their code changes be “agent-assisted,” a figure that factors into performance reviews. Zuckerberg has also urged employees to follow his lead and build their own bots.
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At McKinsey, CEO Bob Sternfels has suggested the firm will soon reach parity between humans and AI agents. There are currently 40,000 employees working alongside 25,000 bots.
But the practical challenge remains: How do you actually measure and manage it? While larger companies are embracing formal metrics, smaller companies are having to get more creative.
One Silicon Valley founder told me he gives employees full access to AI tools, lets them get comfortable, and then shuts it all off. “I’m going to give them the training, I’m gonna give them time to do it. And then I’m going to go and turn the faucets off. And whichever employees don’t message me begging me for access back to it — those are the ones that we really need to put on a performance improvement plan,” he said.
While he acknowledges that this may feel foreign, it’s also a reason for optimism.
Companies tracking AI engagement, he argues, are signaling something important: They’re willing to spend huge sums of money investing in their employees — and their bots.
“Ultimately, the bots will be commoditized,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told NYNext. “What will separate a company? It’s going to be what goes up and down the elevator every day.”
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