# Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending May 15, 2026

Published: 15 May 2026
Canonical: https://www.top10in.tech/posts/week-ending-may-15-2026

## 1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: TOKENMAXXING!

(see 9 for even more) Token usage is the lines-of-code metric of the AI era - easy to measure, [easy to game](https://leaddev.com/ai/tokenmaxxing-and-the-search-for-ai-metrics-that-matter), and totally disconnected from outcomes. Case in point: Uber blew through its entire 2026 token budget by April; Meta killed its internal token leaderboard after backlash. [Mostly Metrics surveyed 250 finance leaders](https://www.mostlymetrics.com/p/the-thing-about-more-tokens-9128) and the consensus looks somethin' like: token spend per employee will settle around 20% of cash comp - roughly equivalent to benefits load........ It's not replacing headcount, just a new line item that scales with it.

Link: https://leaddev.com/ai/tokenmaxxing-and-the-search-for-ai-metrics-that-matter

## 2. FULL BREADTH

You heard of full-stack devs - so how about [Full breadth](https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers)? A new one for your tech dictionaries. These are engineers who go beyond deep-tech skills, adding product sense, design taste, and business insight, making them deadly effective in early-stage teams.

Link: https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers

## 3. LOOP MARKETING

HubSpot has a brand new term for your tech dictionary: [Loop Marketing](https://www.hubspot.com/loop-marketing). It's all about ditching the more traditional funnels we all know well and embracing real-time feedback loops that connect product, content, and community to drive growth. Sounds a bit froo froo, but this matters because now about [60% of all Google searches end in zero clicks](https://www.seo.com/blog/zero-click-searches/#:~:text=How%20common%20are%20zero%2Dclick,decline%20by%2025%25%20in%202026.) - users are getting answers from AI overviews without ever visiting your website.

Link: https://www.hubspot.com/loop-marketing

## 4. POWER LAW

Only 28 investors in the world - the top 0.14% - have backed 11+ startups that hit unicorn status (or $100M+ revenue). That handful drives a disproportionate share of venture returns. Dealroom's [8th annual Power Law ranking](https://dealroom.co/power-law-investor-ranking/) names them - YC leads with 97 outcomes, SV Angel 69, Sequoia 34.

Link: https://dealroom.co/power-law-investor-ranking/

## 5. LEADERSHIP

I'm feeling a little judged - an NBER study of 6,000 CEOs found [90% of firms report zero measurable productivity impact from AI](https://handyai.substack.com/p/your-ceo-is-suffering-from-ai-psychosis). Meanwhile, a Stanford study shows AI affirms users' actions 49% more than humans do, creating a sycophancy loop where leaders overestimate competence. Jake Handy's diagnosis: AI psychosis - optimizing for token consumption, not outcomes.

Link: https://handyai.substack.com/p/your-ceo-is-suffering-from-ai-psychosis

## 6. CONTEXT CHAIN

Feeling judged, part 2. Look at your last few weeks. Was it like mine - [how much was carrying context from one event or team to another](https://educatedguesser.substack.com/p/where-are-you-in-the-context-supply)? Context IS a bottleneck. AI augments innovators and marketers but automates the carriers. Incumbents built their entire org chart around the coordination tax that these AI whippersnappers are now cutting out.

Link: https://educatedguesser.substack.com/p/where-are-you-in-the-context-supply

## 7. VIBE CODING

Escape audited [5,600 vibe-coded apps](https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/vibe-code-a-website/) and found 2,000+ vulnerabilities, including exposed medical records. Democratization of coding is real, but so is the "vibe code cleanup specialist" or whatever we are going to call 'em.

Link: https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/vibe-code-a-website/

## 8. FUTURE OF WORK

Take this with a pinch of salt (because it's from Microsoft) - but they [surveyed 20,000 workers](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/agents-human-agency-and-the-opportunity-for-every-organization) and found organizational factors - culture, manager support, talent practices - account for 2x the AI impact of individual effort. Only 19% of workers sit in the "Frontier" zone, where both individual capability and org readiness are high. The bottleneck isn't your people. It's your operating model (and also maybe [CoPilot](https://www.windowscentral.com/artificial-intelligence/microsoft-has-a-problem-nobody-wants-to-buy-or-use-its-shoddy-ai) - heheh).

Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/agents-human-agency-and-the-opportunity-for-every-organization

## 9. LOCALMAXXING

Following from the SaaS metric of the week **- [Tunguz ran 1,400 tasks through local vs cloud models over five weeks](https://tomtunguz.com/localmaxxing/)**. Result: 50% of daily VC work runs fine on a local 35B model - email, scheduling, summarization, admin. The kicker: local runs 2.1x faster than Opus 4.5 (2.8s vs 5.8s mean). Localmaxxing is coming (Apple [knows this](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/05/were-tracking-423-mac-configurations-to-see-how-apple-is-handling-shortages/)), the inevitable response to [tokenmaxxing](https://mstone.ai/blog/tokenmaxxing-explained-matters/).

Link: https://tomtunguz.com/localmaxxing/

## 10. CASE STUDY

GitHub is [slowly losing its grip](https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/4/28/before-github/). Armin Ronacher (creator of Flask) traces its origin to GitHub becoming the center of open source before being acquired by Microsoft, and now something I call the Miroshitification. Instability, Copilot noise, and no clear leadership. Projects are leaving.

Link: https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/4/28/before-github/

## POD OF THE WEEK

Sendbird CEO John Kim t[racks every token org-wide](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-i-ai-quests-token-leaderboards) across five tiers up to "AI God." The metric that matters: smoothing the usage curve so AI runs 24/7.

Link: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-i-ai-quests-token-leaderboards