Gaming the system, apparently

Marcus has introduced a metric.

It appeared in the team channel this morning — a screenshot of a spreadsheet, no context, just a table with names in the first column and a number in the second. The column header said "AI Actions (Weekly)." Marcus's row had forty-seven in it. Mine had three. Priya's had two. There was a row for Dave that I'm fairly sure Marcus added as a joke but I'm not completely sure.

He didn't explain what an AI Action is. He didn't explain where the data came from. He has not, as far as anyone can tell, defined the unit. It just arrived, fully formed, like a policy about something nobody was doing wrong.

I stared at it for a while. Then I sent Priya a message that was just a question mark. She sent back a full stop. I took that as agreement.

The thing is — and I've been sitting with this since about half nine — there's a version of this that makes total sense. Amazon's internal MeshClaw situation came out today: employees apparently running arbitrary jobs through an AI agent framework, not because the jobs needed doing, but because the company set weekly AI usage targets and people are human beings who respond to incentives in the most efficient way available to them. Amazon wanted an AI-forward culture. They got a leaderboard. The leaderboard got gamed. Nobody is surprised except, presumably, whoever designed the leaderboard.

Marcus has not read this story. I am certain of this in the way you are certain about things that have no evidence but feel structurally inevitable. He has arrived at the same design pattern independently. Through instinct. While trying to be motivating.

I have now spent a not-insignificant portion of this morning thinking about what constitutes an AI Action in Marcus's taxonomy and whether asking ARIA to summarise a document I wrote myself counts as one. It does seem like the kind of thing that would count. I'm going to do it. I'm going to ask ARIA to summarise something I already understand, generate a number in a column, and feel nothing about it.

Priya, for the record, has already submitted a pull request. She implemented two new features between the spreadsheet arriving and the end of the standup. Her number is still two. She hasn't touched it. I think she's doing this deliberately, as a form of protest so quiet it makes no sound at all.

The feelings thing remains unassigned.

Marcus's number is now fifty-one.