If you missed the recent news out of Amazon, it’s both a cautionary tale and a mirror for our own industry. Amazon recently had to dismantle an internal AI leaderboard called “Kirorank.” The goal was noble: encourage adoption of their internal Kiro AI tool. But the reality? Employees—dubbed “tokenmaxxers”—started building autonomous AI agents to perform useless tasks just to inflate their usage scores and climb the ranks.
The result? Massive compute waste and a system that did the exact opposite of what leadership intended. It was built with “good intentions,” but the lack of oversight and disconnected incentives led to spiraling costs.
Sound familiar?
If you replace “AI agents” with “point tools” and “compute costs” with “technician hours,” you have described the state of modern IT operations for many MSPs and internal IT departments. We are tokenmaxxing our own stacks, buying disparate tools for monitoring, RMM, helpdesk, and patching, and forcing our teams to jump between them to get work done.
The Problem: The "Tab Tax" of Disconnected Tools
Walk into a NOC or look at the screen of a senior sysadmin, and you will likely see the IT equivalent of tokenmaxxing. There is a tab open for the monitoring tool (maybe Prometheus or SolarWinds), a tab for the RMM (like Datto or NinjaOne), a separate window for the helpdesk (Zendesk or Jira), and a remote session tool (Splashtop or ScreenConnect) hovering on top.
This isn’t just annoying; it’s expensive and dangerous.
1. The MTTR (Mean Time To Resolution) Black Hole
When a critical alert fires for a Windows Server down or a stuck print spooler, the clock starts. In a fragmented environment, the workflow looks like this:
- Monitor: Alert fires. Tech copies the hostname.
- RMM: Tech switches tabs, pastes hostname, waits for the device to load, and clicks "Start Remote Control."
- Resolution: Tech fixes the issue.
- Helpdesk: Tech switches tabs again, searches for the user ticket, types up notes, and closes it.
Every switch is a context switch. Every context switch adds 30 to 60 seconds. If you handle 50 incidents a day, you are burning hours just toggling windows. This is the IT operational equivalent of running a useless AI script just to boost a score—wasted cycles that generate no value.
2. "Zombie" Agents and Resource Bloat
Just as Amazon’s devs spun up unnecessary agents to game the leaderboard, many IT environments are plagued by “zombie” agents. You have the monitoring agent, the antivirus agent, the RMM agent, the backup agent, and the discovery agent all fighting for CPU and RAM on the same endpoint. This bloat slows down the machine, leading to performance complaints that you then have to troubleshoot using... you guessed it, more tools.
3. Accountability Gaps
When a major outage occurs because a patch failed, who owns it? The monitoring team says they alerted it. The RMM team says they pushed the patch. The helpdesk team says the user didn’t complain fast enough. When your tools don't talk, your data is siloed. You can't see the full timeline of Alert -> Patch Attempt -> Failure -> Outage in one view. You are flying blind while trying to explain SLA misses to upper management.
How AlertMonitor Solves the RMM Chaos
At AlertMonitor, we don't believe you should need four separate tools to manage one endpoint. We built our platform to eliminate the “tab tax” and stop the wasteful practice of tool-hopping.
Unified Monitoring and RMM Workflow
AlertMonitor combines infrastructure monitoring and RMM into a single pane of glass. Here is the difference:
- The Old Way: You get a CPU alert. You log into the RMM. You run a script. You manually copy the result back to the ticket.
- The AlertMonitor Way: You get a CPU alert. You click the "Run Script" button directly inside the alert notification window. The script executes, and the output (Success/Fail, error codes) is automatically appended to that specific alert's timeline and linked to the helpdesk ticket.
Intelligent Automation vs. Manual Tokenmaxxing
Instead of your techs manually clicking buttons to boost their “ticket close” stats, AlertMonitor allows for real, intelligent automation. You can set up automated remediation scripts that run the moment a threshold is breached. If a service stops, AlertMonitor doesn't just page you; it can attempt to restart the service immediately and report back.
This isn't gaming the system; it's optimizing it. It turns your team from firefighters into architects, because the platform handles the repetitive grunt work automatically.
Practical Steps: Streamline Your Remote Management Today
You can start reducing the waste immediately. Whether you are using AlertMonitor or just trying to clean up your current messy workflow, these steps will help.
1. Consolidate Your Scripting Logic
Stop storing scripts in random Sharepoint folders or on individual desktops. Centralize them. If you are using AlertMonitor, push these scripts directly from the library to the target group.
Here is a practical PowerShell script to clear a stuck print queue—a classic task that usually requires remote control access. With a unified RMM, you can push this to a group of workstations instantly without ever opening a remote session:
# Stop the Print Spooler service
Stop-Service -Name "Spooler" -Force
# Remove all pending print jobs (ensure path is correct for your OS version)
Remove-Item -Path "$env:SystemRoot\System32\spool\PRINTERS\*.*" -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
# Start the Print Spooler service
Start-Service -Name "Spooler"
# Confirm status
Get-Service -Name "Spooler"
2. Automate Disk Space Cleanup
Don't wait for a user to complain they can't save a file. Create a scheduled task in your RMM to run this cleanup script weekly on your fleet. It targets temp files and recycle bins that often eat up critical space.
$TempFolders = @("C:\Windows\Temp\*", "C:\Users\*\AppData\Local\Temp\*")
foreach ($Folder in $TempFolders) {
if (Test-Path $Folder) {
Write-Host "Cleaning $Folder"
Remove-Item $Folder -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
}
}
# Clear Recycle Bin for all users (Requires -Force on newer PowerShell versions)
Clear-RecycleBin -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Write-Host "Cleanup complete."
3. Verify Linux Endpoint Health
For your mixed environment, don't SSH into every Linux box. Use the AlertMonitor RMM to run a Bash check across the group to ensure core services are running and disks aren't full.
#!/bin/bash
echo "Checking Disk Usage:"
df -h | grep -E "(/)$|(/var)|(/home)"
echo "Checking Critical Services (Nginx & SSH):"
systemctl is-active nginx
systemctl is-active sshd
Stop the Waste
Amazon deleted their leaderboard because the cost of the “game” outweighed the value. It’s time to audit your own tool stack. If your technicians are spending more time managing their tabs than managing the infrastructure, you are tokenmaxxing your budget.
With AlertMonitor, monitoring, RMM, and helpdesk aren't just “integrated”—they are the same platform. No context switching. No data silos. Just faster resolutions and happier techs.
Related Resources
AlertMonitor RMM & Remote Management AlertMonitor Platform Overview Book a Demo RMM & Remote Management Resources
Is your security operations ready?
Get a free SOC assessment or see how AlertMonitor cuts through alert noise with automated triage.