Career development

Lauren Davis

12h

Hi! Things are getting weird in our department - our boss is acting crazy. Yesterday she said we can’t spend more than 5 minutes on coffee, even though we make it in the kitchen and then go back to our desks. Sometimes I only finish my cold coffee at the end of the day.
She also won’t let two people go to lunch together anymore - only one at a time. She says we’ll get back faster that way. Now... she’s even checking who is friends with whom.
And I heard her say “That’s all” like in that movie with Meryl Streep. Maybe she finally watched it?🤭

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Cynthia Awino
4h
Bosses also go through pressure, she might be handling some difficult situation affecting her psychologically, hence she is behaving that way,... different people react differently when in stress. more
OCHIENG STOCK
5h
It you who understands the environment in which you work. Be your time manager and ensure that you don't get in the mix with your Company Rules and... Regulations (policies) coz it is what will be used to judge who is right /wrong whenever the worse arose. Otherwise start thinking outside the box. more

Mia Ember

Career development

2d

At a job interview the very first question they asked me after introductions was whether I have children. I said “yes, two” and the interview ended right away. The HR person immediately told me that I wasn’t suitable for them.
I’m shocked, because my kids go to kindergarten and my mom helps take care of them when they’re sick. But I didn’t even get the chance to explain that.
Is it normal to... treat parents this way? Or are they promoting a child-free policy?

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Collince Kibere
5h
I think the question was not bad but not was at the right time
Mabolo Kituyi
22h
Kenyan constitution is not applicable in every jurisdiction, furthermore a company might be looking for a single lady who might be given more... responsibility like foreign travels that might not suit a mother of two.Nobody can force employer to employ a mother. more

Anonymous member

Career development

1d

A couple of weeks ago our boss brought in a motivational coach to talk to the employees. She spoke with everyone and made a list of “unreliable” workers. All the creative and skilled people ended up on that list, because they are independent and could leave for another company at any time. I’m on the list too.
Now the boss says the company will be “restructuring”. I wonder if he really plans to... fire the most productive people and keep only the obedient brown-nosers?

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1

Randall Giancaterino
15h
It sounds deceitful. This is a good indicator of your work environment and can assist, moving forward. Watch more what people (some supervisors in... some workplaces) do than what they say. more
Mabolo Kituyi
22h
Restructuring is a soft word for redundancy.You are going home.Look for another job ASAP

Career development

17h

Employers shocked that 1 in 5 Gen Z job seekers has a parent contact...

Mommies and daddies hold their little ones' hands when they're crossing the street. But once those little ones are big enough to interview for corporate jobs, it's time to let go -- that's the argument from employers who are stunned by the number of Gen Zers whose parents are job hunting on their behalf.

It's an alarming trend spurred by the nearly 50% of youngsters who tap mom and dad to write... their resumes -- and the 21% who actually have their folks contact prospective bosses directly, per a 2026 report.

And executives have had enough.

"Zoomers, do not send your mother to my office," scolded a hiring manager, wagging her finger at the wave of 20-somethings who can't stand on their own two feet, in a trending video. "Don't have your mother call me on my phone, call my assistant, [or] talk to my other staff about you coming to my office to be an intern."

"If you cannot have a conversation with me, if you cannot have an interview like grown people do without your parents being involved," she continued, "if that is where your anxiety is, this is not the place for you."

Putting Gen Zs -- adults under age 27 -- in their place is no easy task, owing to the oft-maligned demographic's propensity towards entitlement, laziness and unpreparedness in the workplace, according to recent reports.

To mask their shortcomings, the newbies to big business are shamelessly letting mom do their dirty work, while they kick back and collect the checks.

Researchers for Zety, a virtual career services hub, surveyed 1,001 Zers to determine just how severely the group relies on their heads-of-house for help in the industry.

The poll found that a staggering 44% of Zers get their parents' support in résumé and CV writing, while one in five task them with contacting a potential employer or recruiter for a position.

Moreover, a shocking 20% of parents are joining their grown-up kiddos on interviews, and 10% are even negotiating their big babies' salaries directly with employers.

"Early parental involvement suggests that many Gen Z workers view job searching as a collaborative process rather than an individual milestone," the study authors noted. "This support may help candidates feel more prepared, but it also raises questions about how and when young professionals begin developing independent career skills."

Getting mommy's support may seem like a sweet gesture, but it's leaving a bad taste in business leaders' mouths.

"We had a 20-year-old come in for a job interview at the salon. She brought her mom with her," a hairdresser wrote in the caption of a clip related to the questionable move. "Now listen, I'm all for supportive parents. But was definitely caught off guard ... At what point do you step back and let your kids stand on their own?"

"Is this confidence-building support," she asked her online audience, "or does it send the wrong message in a professional setting?"

And, unsurprisingly, older 9-to-5ers are unimpressed with Gen Z's seemingly immature mess.

"Instant pass on that application," roared an outraged commenter.

"Definitely a red flag," another wrote, in part. Similar sentiments were echoed by a separate naysayer, who deemed the needy, unmanned Gen Z "instantly unhireable."

"I had a girl bring her mom, too," an executive commented. "I didn't hire her." more

Career development

17h

People Who Nail Job Interviews Even When They're Super Nervous Usually Do These 7 Things, Says Career Coach

You've had your resume professionally prepared and sent a handful of applications online. After some back and forth by email and a short phone screen, you got the invitation. You've been asked to come in for a face-to-face interview.

You should be thrilled about this, especially been a few months since you got laid off from work, and the job market has been slow. Still, your palms are sweaty.... Suddenly, you have butterflies in your stomach. Research has shown how job interviews can create anxiety, especially if you haven't had an interview in years and have no idea where to start.

Almost everyone feels nervous before a job interview, even highly qualified candidates. Instead of letting anxiety take over, they rely on a handful of simple strategies that help them stay focused and clear when it matters most.

fizkes via Shutterstock

Sometimes the hardest questions can be about yourself, like your interests, values, goals, preferred ways of working, and ideal work environment. A study suggested taking the time to think these items through, not to ace the interview but to ensure this job is a good match for you.

Remember, you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. Be clear about what you want. And, at the same time, adopt a practical mindset. If you don't get this job, there will be other opportunities, perhaps one that is an even better fit for you. You will be far more self-aware and ready for when that time comes.

RELATED: Boss Uses 'Salt & Pepper Test' In Every Job Interview And Avoids Hiring Candidates Who Fail

Amnaj Khetsamtip via Shutterstock

Find out as much as you can about the company. You can get a lot of clues about the culture from the corporate website, executive bios, and career pages. Research the organization to see what's been in the news. Get a sense of the leadership and potential hotspots by scanning the company's social media. Find out if anyone in your network works or knows someone there. There is nothing like a first-hand account.

Once you've done your digging, consider what questions you'd like to ask the interviewers during the process. Recruiters and hiring managers are always impressed when candidates take the time to learn about the products and services offered, the values, and the most significant business goals.

RELATED: If You Want To Actually Get Hired, These Are 11 'Weaknesses' Bosses Usually Like To Hear During Job Interviews

PeopleImages.com - Yuri A via Shutterstock

Be sure to set aside a few hours for this next exercise: write out the questions you think you'll be asked, along with your best possible answers. Take your cues from the job posting, particularly the qualification section, and you can't go wrong.

Studies have shown that most interview questions are behaviorally based. That means that you'll need to think about situations in the past in which you demonstrated specific behaviors, such as problem-solving or adaptability.

Be prepared to answer the questions in a fair amount of detail, including information such as the context, who was involved, what actions you took, what you were thinking and feeling at the time, what the outcome was, and what you learned from the experience.

And don't forget to write out your responses to challenge questions. These are questions that stress you out the most. When I work with clients on these questions, such as "Why did you leave your last job?" there is a real turning point for them. I give them activities to re-frame their situation in an accurate but more positive light. When they nail this, their confidence soars.

RELATED: The 3-Minute Exercise That Will Help You Answer Even The Toughest Job Interview Questions

fizkes via Shutterstock

Practice makes perfect, and to avoid potential jitters, you must have your responses down pat. Read your answers out loud or even record or videotape yourself. Get a friend, mentor, or coach to help you and give you honest feedback so that your best performance will be in front of the hiring panel.

Neuroscientist Brit Brogaard, Ph.D., explained, "Many people going into an interview are nervous. It's natural. Unfortunately, nervous behavior may lead you to behave in exceedingly annoying ways and make you commit one of the job interview mistakes. You may tap your foot, click your pen, shake your leg, or fail to maintain eye contact. These micro-behaviors can be one reason you don't get a job. Your interviewer may not even be consciously aware of your nervous behaviors, but on a subconscious level, these behaviors may still cause them to dislike you. The best you can do to avoid this is to practice with friends or colleagues ahead of time."

RELATED: There's Only One Right Answer To The 'How Are You?' Question In A Job Interview, According To A Career Coach

Antonio Guillem via Shutterstock

It's no accident that Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Michael Phelps, and Muhammad Ali performed so well. They all used visualization before every event. Retired professional golfer Jack Nicklaus is widely known to have said, "I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp in-focus picture of it in my head."

The same visualization techniques used in sports psychology apply here as well. Never step into a room without having pictured the entire interview from your arrival to your departure. Close your eyes and imagine walking up to the receptionist with conviction to announce yourself, calmly waiting in the reception to be called, firmly shaking the hiring manager's hand, and wearing a genuinely warm smile. Note how you feel.

Now, envision yourself seamlessly answering every question posed to you. Finally, imagine giving your closing statement about why the job appeals to you so much, and what you look forward to bringing to it. You're done. You've shaken hands again, and now you're heading home, enthusiastic about the opportunity and proud of how well you handled the interview.

RELATED: Woman Shares The One Brain Technique She Uses Every Day To Easily Achieve Her Goals Without Burning Out

Kmpzzz via Shutterstock

There's an adage, "Dress for the job you want," and it is true. The interviewer has to be able to picture you in the job. You can get a sense from the company website about the dress code, but it's always better to slightly overdress than show up underdressed.

In general, stay away from anything distracting, such as low necklines, short hemlines, bright colors, or big jewelry. Classic and comfortable work best for most organizations. But the bottom line is you have to feel good wearing it. Ask a friend or partner for color and outfit suggestions that flatter you.

RELATED: Study Finds Most Workers Feel They Have To Hide Who They Are To Get A Job, Including Changing Their Names

EF Stock via Shutterstock

Before you walk into the building, take a few minutes to get grounded. Sit in your car, on a bench, or in a coffee shop and feel your feet on the floor. Put your hand on your stomach and take a deep breath. Count to four and then exhale slowly. Take about 10 breaths and let your thoughts come and go freely.

Then, pump up your self-talk. You can do this! You're ready! Hold your head high, smile, and act confident. Then, you will be. Even if you're over-the-top nervous, you can present yourself as a self-assured professional. It takes some preparation on your part, but stick with it, and you'll shine at the interview as well as in your new job.

RELATED: If You Want To Stop Overthinking And Having A Zillion Thoughts At Night, Start With These 18 Gentle Habits

Lisa Petsinis is an ICF-credentialed career and life coach who works with women who want to show up fully for their lives and build lasting life skills - like confidence and resilience - that will help them achieve their career and life goals. more

Career development

17h

Commentary | Peter "Fish" Case: Politics has no rulebook that anyone actually follows

The devil you know? But what happens when they're all devils and every devil makes the previous devil look better than the last? I really hope at some point we can hold them all accountable; I hope at least history will hold them to a standard that used to exist when the rule of law was the order of the day. Kristi Noem's résumé now needs the word "former" in front of her job title; historians... will probably mark the moment as the most awkward exit interview since Diddy tried to expense baby oil as "office supplies."

Noem already has a résumé highlight reel that reads like a political blooper montage. First there was the now-famous story about her shooting the family dog, which is not usually a recommended chapter in a campaign memoir unless the target demographic is... coyotes. Most politicians kiss babies. Few write about disciplining puppies with extreme prejudice. Then there was the roughly $220 million ad campaign promoting government messaging so relentlessly that people started wondering if the ads were trying to sell policy or just convince the rest of us that $220 million is the new normal price for an enthusiastic PowerPoint. Her exit memo should read like: "Exceptional at communications, fearless in decision-making, and possesses a once-in-a-generation talent for taking a perfectly calm news cycle and lighting it on fire with $220 million of taxpayer money."

But... she's the devil we know... even though we don't really want to know her. But she exited by stating she was proud of her work at the Department of Homeland Security, arguing the department had secured the border and eliminated public safety threats. Calling this situation "BS" might be unfair... to bulls. At least when a bull charges, you know it's coming. Watching the leadership circus around Kristi Noem has been more like a hockey game where the ref skates the puck straight into the net and then insists the other team scored. Meanwhile, two Americans -- Renée Good and Alex Pretti -- ended up dead during federal operations in Minnesota, which sparked nationwide outrage and investigations, let us not forget! Trying to spin that into a victory lap is like the Yankees bragging they beat the Red Sox while standing in the wrong stadium, wearing Mets jerseys. If accountability were a sport, this performance would be the Seattle Mariners of press conferences: with lots of hype, confusing playcalling, and the scoreboard still says you lost.

Some people are starting to treat the firing of Kristi Noem like the political equivalent of a halftime show, lots of noise, bright lights, and suddenly everyone stops looking at the scoreboard. Meanwhile, the conversation about the still-mysterious records connected to Jeffrey Epstein keeps trying to creep back into the game like a fan who wandered onto the field. It's the oldest play in politics: run a flashy trick play so the crowd argues about the replay while the real story jogs quietly toward the locker room. One minute the news cycle is talking about the Epstein files, the next minute everyone's debating who got fired, who's outraged, and who's posting what on social platforms.

If this were sports, it'd be like the Yankees and Red Sox benches clearing while the umpire quietly changes the scorecard. Fans scream, commentators argue, and nobody notices the inning ended differently than it started. Distraction may not win championships, but in politics, it can definitely run out the clock.

Sorry for all the sports references, opening day is upon us and I'm excited for another season of baseball. But it is quickly being replaced by political gamesmanship as America's new pastime; unfortunately people care more about the Yankees vs. Red Sox score than they do about political gamesmanship. Why? Simple, baseball still plays by the rules and adheres to the rules for 162 regular season games. We know what we are getting when we flip on or tune into a baseball game. The game is played for 9 innings and at the end of those innings a winner is declared.

Politics, by contrast, seems to have no innings, no scoreboard, and definitely no rulebook that anyone actually follows. Every "play" is a curveball, a balk, or a sneaky bunt designed to confuse the fans, and somehow the umpire is always on someone's payroll. Instead of cheering for a home run, we're left yelling at the TV while the real action happens behind closed doors, off the radar, or buried in paperwork. At least in baseball, even if your team blows it, you know the game ends. In politics, the whistle never blows, the scoreboard disappears, and somehow the losers keep running the bases anyway. Play ball! more

Career development

20h

How to Apply for a Job Without a CV (And Still Get Hired)

Not everyone has a polished, up-to-date CV ready to go. Maybe you're switching careers, just entering the workforce, or simply tired of the endless copy-paste grind of traditional job applications. Whatever your situation, the good news is this: you can absolutely apply for jobs without a CV -- and actually get hired.

In this guide, we'll cover practical ways to get your foot in the door without... a traditional resume, including how platforms like LoopCV make it easier than ever to start applying to jobs with zero CV hassle.

The traditional CV format has been around for decades, but the modern job market is evolving fast. Here's why more candidates are looking for ways to apply without one:

The reality? Many employers care more about what you can do than the document you hand them. Your skills, portfolio, and personality often speak louder than a formatted Word file.

One of the easiest ways to apply for jobs without a traditional CV is to use a platform built for it. LoopCV is designed exactly for this. You can create a free account, set up your job search preferences, and let the platform automatically apply to matching jobs on your behalf -- without needing to upload a CV upfront.

With LoopCV, you fill in your skills, experience level, and target roles. The platform does the heavy lifting, sending out applications across hundreds of job listings while you focus on interview prep. It's job hunting on autopilot.

👉 Create your free LoopCV account and start applying today

Many companies, especially startups and tech firms, allow candidates to apply through an open application or interest form on their website. These often ask for a brief introduction, your LinkedIn profile, or a portfolio link -- no CV attachment needed.

Look for "Work With Us," "Join Our Team," or "Open Roles" pages. Send a compelling email introducing yourself, your skills, and why you're a fit. A strong email can often replace a full CV for initial screening.

Your LinkedIn profile can serve as a dynamic, always-updated alternative to a static CV. Make sure yours is complete with:

When applying via LinkedIn's Easy Apply, your profile IS your application. No separate CV upload required.

For creatives, developers, marketers, and consultants, a portfolio website can be more powerful than any CV. Showcase your work, case studies, client results, and testimonials. When reaching out to employers or responding to job ads, simply share the link.

Free tools like Notion, Canva, or WordPress make it easy to set up a professional-looking portfolio in a weekend -- even if you have no design experience.

Up to 85% of jobs are filled through networking, according to industry research. A warm introduction from a mutual connection can bypass the CV stage entirely. Attend industry events, engage on LinkedIn, join online communities in your field, and don't be shy about asking contacts to refer you.

When someone vouches for you internally, the hiring manager is already sold before they ever see your application.

LoopCV is a job search automation platform that takes the friction out of finding and applying for jobs. Here's what makes it different:

Whether you're a first-time job seeker or a seasoned professional pivoting careers, LoopCV makes it possible to apply smarter, not harder.

👉 Sign up for LoopCV for free -- no CV needed

Even without a traditional resume, you need to make a strong impression. Here are some quick wins:

Can you really get a job without a CV?Yes. Many employers, especially in tech, startups, and creative industries, prioritise skills, portfolios, and personality over formal documents. Platforms like LoopCV let you apply to jobs directly without uploading a traditional CV.

What can I use instead of a CV?You can use a LinkedIn profile, a personal portfolio website, a GitHub profile (for developers), a cover letter, or a well-crafted introductory email. The key is to communicate your value clearly, regardless of format.

Is LoopCV free to use?LoopCV offers a free plan that lets you get started with automated job applications right away. Visit www.loopcv.pro to create your account and explore the available plans.

How does LoopCV work without a CV?LoopCV lets you build a profile with your skills, experience, and job preferences. The platform then automatically applies to matching job listings across multiple job boards on your behalf -- without requiring a traditional CV upload to get started.

What types of jobs can I apply to without a CV?Many roles in tech, marketing, design, customer service, sales, and freelance work can be applied for without a traditional CV. Entry-level positions, startup jobs, and roles at companies that emphasise skills over credentials are particularly open to non-traditional applications.

Will employers take me seriously without a CV?Absolutely -- especially if you come prepared with a strong LinkedIn profile, portfolio, or a well-written personal pitch. Many hiring managers care most about whether you can do the job, not the format of your application.

How can I make my application stand out without a CV?Focus on specificity and proof. Tailor every message to the role, mention something specific about the company, and back up your claims with numbers or examples. A targeted, thoughtful application with no CV will always outperform a generic one with a full resume.

The job market no longer demands that you fit neatly into a two-page document. Skills, initiative, and the right tools matter more than ever. Whether you choose to build a killer LinkedIn profile, put together a portfolio, or let LoopCV do the legwork for you, there are more ways than ever to land a great job -- CV or not. more

Career development

21h

Get ready to ace your next job interview

Imagine this: you've seen a great job, you've crafted a brilliant application, and now you've been invited to interview. Well done! We all know how nerve-racking job interviews can be, but don't worry, we've got you covered with our three secret weapons!

Join our upcoming workshop: Confidently Prepare for a Job Interview: A Step-by-Step Guide

📅 Thu 23 Apr | 13:15 - 14:15 | Online

👉 Book your... place now on myCareer

Read our Quick Guide to Interviews & Assessment Centres. It contains everything you need to know from how to research an employer, what to do on the day, and some of the most common interview questions.

📚 Read here (or pick up a copy in firstpoint)

Then practice everything you've learnt with a video mock interview. With Shortlist.Me, you can experience an interview from the comfort of your own home! Practice answering questions and learn how to use the STAR method to give your best answer! At the end, get AI feedback and evaluate the structure, content and communication style of your answers to better prepare for the real thing! Don't worry, no one else will see your answers so you can hone your skills risk-free.

💻 Get started with a mock interview more

Career development

22h

Craft My Writing Application

I'm preparing to apply for a writing and content-creation role and I'd like a compelling, professionally formatted application package that stands out in a competitive creative market. The main piece I need is a tailored job-application letter that captures my tone and highlights the skills most valuable to employers in this space, while subtly weaving in keywords that applicant-tracking systems... favor. You'll receive my current résumé, links to recent articles, and the specific job posting. From there, I'd like you to shape a concise cover letter that shows clear understanding of the company's voice, addresses their stated pain points, and demonstrates measurable results from my past work. Where relevant, suggest quick edits to my résumé so both documents feel cohesive and focused on writing, editing, and content strategy strengths. Deliverables * One ready-to-submit cover letter in both PDF and editable format * A tracked-changes version of my résumé with recommendations (no full redesign needed) I'll consider the project complete once the letter reads naturally in my voice, is free of grammar issues, meets the word count or character limits of the job portal, and all feedback rounds are implemented. more

Career development

23h

Surveilled and Sold: Privacy and Sanctuary in Portland - Feet in 2 Worlds

Surveilled and Sold is an investigative series about how surveillance technologies track immigrants in an era of mass deportation -- and the ways private companies and the U.S. government buy, sell, and exchange our personal data.

When I first see Nemorio, he is sitting by himself at the Voz Worker Center in Southeast Portland, Oregon. The 56-year-old is bundled up in neon-colored winter clothes... and watching a soccer game on his phone.

Job hunting looks a lot different than it used to. When he joined the Worker Center 14 years ago, he left behind standing on a cold street corner for a safer, warmer place to find work. Nemorio is a professional landscaper, but he takes all sorts of jobs: a request to help someone move, paint their house, clean their business's exterior, or other construction or landscaping-related needs. A Portlander of 22 years, he has worked for some of the same clients for over a decade.

Nemorio is one of dozens of immigrant day laborers searching for work at the Worker Center. Along with central heating, coffee, pastries, and conversations to pass the time, the Center also provides a degree of security for its workers, some of whom are undocumented. A poster that says in big block letters, "NOT OPEN TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC," is pasted over the front door, next to a Ring camera. Volunteers regularly sign up for shifts to sit on a folding chair and guard the front door. Often bundled up in rain jackets with hot tea in hand, they observe the Worker Center's surroundings -- watching who approaches the building. With increased ICE presence in Portland over the past year, their job is to alert workers if they spot masked agents.

When I initially approach Nemorio, he politely declines to participate in an interview. But he stays in the same room as I speak to another member: a house cleaner from Oregon City, fresh off a two-hour bus ride into town. Not long after we begin talking, one word piques Nemorio's attention -- enough to join in on the conversation.

"Camera."

The house cleaner and I are discussing high-tech cameras that are installed all over the city of Portland. They're hard to miss, with big solar panels and a recording of a male voice repeating the same message: "This property is being monitored by video surveillance 24/7." When I show Nemorio a photo I took of a camera in a Lowe's parking lot, he recognizes it immediately. He's seen the cameras everywhere, he says. He begins listing grocery stores like WinCo and Fred Meyer. He remembers one in particular at La Tapatia, a Latino grocery store in Gresham -- a city bordering Portland. "ICE was looking for somebody there," he says.

He's seen the cameras out in nearby towns like Beaverton, too. "There are more undocumented immigrants and more troubles there."

Any one of those cameras in the parking lots he named could be capturing his truck's license plate every time he drives past, silently recording his routine movements.

And any of them could've been the one that led to an encounter last October, when an ICE vehicle followed Nemorio's truck, landscaping equipment in tow, after he left a work site. He says he was lucky, because the agents eventually split off to follow a different car instead.

"It's better now," he says. "I'm lucky to have no problems. Maybe Jesus protects me."

This happened to him despite living in a sanctuary city within a sanctuary county and state. In 2026, Nemorio and other immigrant Portlanders face daily threats and fears of being targeted or profiled while driving. Surveillance technologies are helping federal immigration agents bypass state and local sanctuary protections to reveal immigrants' personal information and track their movements -- in many cases, leading to their arrests without a warrant or reasonable suspicion.

Over the past year, immigrants in Portland and across the country have had growing suspicions of being watched and followed. It's not unwarranted: ICE arrests quadrupled last year, and street arrests increased by 1100% nationwide. The number of ICE detainees went up 75% in just one year.

This has all been disrupting immigrants' daily lives. A 2025 survey by KFF and the New York Times shows that 41% of immigrants are worried that they or a family member could be detained or deported. About 14% avoided seeking medical care. Around 13% were not showing up to work. While their fears are valid, what they don't know is how they're being surveilled.

These concerns have prompted Portland community organizers to take action. Elizabeth Aguilera is the Director of Communications of an immigrants' rights advocacy group called Adelante Mujeres. Last year, they started organizing volunteers to drive children to school and pick up groceries for families who are afraid to leave their homes.

Allies in Portland's city government are also responding in their own ways. As Portland's only immigrant City Councilor, Angelita Morillo co-sponsored an emergency ordinance last fall to codify Portland's sanctuary city declaration into law. "The community wanted us to indicate that we were working on these issues and taking a critical look at them," says Morillo.

While Nemorio doesn't know the mechanisms behind the cameras, he has a hunch about why they're here.

"Somebody is looking in the cameras," he says.

The cameras are automated license plate readers (ALPRs). They are typically installed on road signs or bridges. They can also be mounted on police cars or left on mobile trailers for extended periods of time in the parking lots of grocery stores, shopping centers, banks, and gas stations.

You've most likely seen them around your neighborhood. ALPRs are used in all 50 states by over 4,000 local law enforcement agencies. In the Portland metro area, there are approximately 130 ALPRs installed. Nationwide, these ALPRs have captured millions of people's movements -- likely including yours.

ALPRs record every vehicle they see, capturing and logging its license plate number and characteristics, along with the date and time. These cameras all feed into one network, which can reveal a person's daily routines -- recording what streets one takes to go to work, school, places of worship, medical appointments, and so on. Those details are then stored in an easily searchable database.

It's a system that runs with little to no oversight.

Police don't need a warrant to look up a license plate. Curiosity alone is often enough reason to search for a track record of a car's movements. Officers can construct a list of targeted plates and receive an immediate alert once an ALPR detects one, detailing exactly when and where it was found. Police can also access data from cameras owned by private businesses such as Home Depot and Lowe's, which are popular gathering sites for day laborers.

Two companies, Flock Safety and Vigilant Solutions, corner the market on selling these tools to law enforcement agencies and private corporations. These companies claim their missions are in service of public safety and crime solving. But both have been known to collaborate with the Department of Homeland Security on immigration enforcement efforts.

ICE routinely taps into vehicle location data collected by local and state police departments for deportation operations. A lack of federal data privacy protections allows ICE agents to buy access to private databases through data brokers. The agents can use these databases to match license plate numbers and ALPR data to DMV records as a loophole circumventing sanctuary laws. It's a quick and easy way to reveal someone's image, address, and daily movements.

During President Donald Trump's second term, license plate reader data -- combined with subscriptions to private data brokers -- are increasingly being exploited to find and seize immigrants. ICE does this without warrants across the country, including in sanctuary cities and states like Portland, Oregon.

"About a third of the detentions are happening out in community, and usually [while someone] is in a vehicle going between one place to the other," Aguilera says. "Part of that is because of these surveillance techniques, including tracking license plates."

Local sanctuary protections only function on the local level, determining what city and state resources and personnel can and can't be used for. They are not enough to stop federal agencies from buying access to data brokers and using surveillance technology to monitor Portlanders. And these sanctuary protections have not stopped the Portland Police Bureau from sharing its residents' information with a database ICE can access.

According to Aguilera, most detentions in Oregon last year occurred along the highway through Washington County, where one-sixth of all Latino Oregonians live. Smaller towns within the Portland metro area (like Beaverton, where Nemorio was followed) are where day laborers often find work. 90% of these vehicle stops, Aguilera says, usually happen between six and nine a.m., when people are heading to work or school.

On an early morning last October, a farmworker in Woodburn, Oregon was on her way to a job. Just like Nemorio, that same month -- in a town 30 minutes away -- she was being followed while in transit.

But unlike Nemorio, her car was pulled over by DHS officers. The agents who stopped her did not ask her name or show any papers. They broke the glass of her car window and detained everyone in the car. Immigration enforcement swept her up along with 30 others that day. Their arrests were part of an ongoing surveillance and deportation campaign in Oregon called Operation Black Rose.

"They sit and surveil and run license plates," says Aguilera. "And then they're doing sweeping arrests without [reasonable] suspicion."

In February, a federal judge issued an emergency order to halt warrantless arrests in Oregon. By that point, over 800 ICE arrests had occurred in Oregon between January and October of 2025, with over 500 immigration arrests in Portland alone.

"What does that say about us as a sanctuary city?" Marina Ortiz asked the city council at a hearing in September. Ortiz is co-chair of Latinx PDX, a resource group for city employees. "Sanctuary must be more than a word. No one should have to fear that a lunch break or commute home could change their life forever. Yet for many city employees and community members, that fear is real. We need more than your symbolic words."

A month after Ortiz's plea, Portland City Council passed an emergency ordinance to codify the city's sanctuary status. The ordinance legally prohibits all Portland city employees and resources from assisting any federal agency with immigration enforcement.

"I'm really not a fan of resolutions that say we care about X group of people but we're not gonna do anything materially for them," Councilor Morillo says. In 2017, during President Donald Trump's first term, the city council passed a resolution declaring Portland a sanctuary city. "City Council encourages all Portlanders to unite and work together to promote kindness and understanding in our shared community," the city council wrote in the conclusion of the 2017 resolution.

But resolutions are not legally binding. They merely express the formal opinion of the city council. Without specific policies that define what sanctuary status means in practice at the city or state level, these declarations remain mere political statements.

This criticism was echoed by city residents who urged city council to codify sanctuary protections at the public hearing in September.

"Prior to this year, sanctuary policies sort of felt like the equivalent of a company changing their logo to a rainbow during June," said Portland resident Jack Dickinson at the hearing. "We no longer live in a world where that can be justified as sufficient."

But even with the new emergency ordinance, local sanctuary laws cannot override federal policies. That means sanctuary laws cannot protect immigrants from deportation or criminal prosecution by the federal government.

By the time the city's sanctuary status became law last October, immigration arrests in Oregon had shot up almost 80 times more than the year before.

Portland resident Nick Kai remembers that two of those arrests involved immigrant fathers in their neighborhood in the same week. Kai is a trained legal observer with the National Lawyers Guild. One of Kai's neighbors was taken by ICE on his way to work. At the same hearing, Kai shared that they now drive their friend's daughter to school because her mother is afraid to leave her home.

"True sanctuary means safety in every part of your daily life, not just when you enter a city building," says Kai. "It's sanctuary in schools, churches, hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, community centers -- every essential thing that we need. No one should live in fear of being torn from their family simply by leaving home. That is sanctuary."

Both the Portland Police Bureau and the Sheriff's Office in Multnomah County, which encompasses the city of Portland, have denied any active contracts with Flock Safety. Yet in January 2026, the police bureau confirmed a recent contract with Motorola Solutions, the owner of Vigilant Solutions.

This relationship suggests Portlanders' private information may be being shared without their knowledge, regardless of citizenship status.

"That information is being funneled systematically all over the country to private data brokers," says Laura Rivera, a senior attorney with Just Futures Law, an organization that provides legal support to immigrants' rights organizers. "[They] sell it to law enforcement agencies and private parties that could exploit it."

Since 2017, Vigilant Solutions has sold license plate data to DHS and its agencies via Thomson Reuters, a data broker company. The data is searchable through a Thomson Reuters investigative database called CLEAR.

Through its new contract with Motorola Solutions, any plates read by ALPRs owned by Portland Police Bureau will feed into CLEAR -- right into the hands of ICE -- in direct violation of the city's ordinance and the state's Sanctuary Promise Act.

That's not the only way ICE can access Portlanders' data. A public records request Feet in 2 Worlds submitted to the Portland Police Bureau showed the its active subscription to LexisNexis Accurint, a different investigative database with access to millions of people's names, social security numbers, addresses, vehicle registrations, utility bills, and ALPR data, among many others.

In an email to Feet in 2 Worlds, Sergeant Kevin Allen -- the Public Information Officer at the police bureau -- said that the bureau uses the database to "assist in identifying and locating subjects involved in investigations."

The police bureau's subscription includes access to another investigative database originally developed for the federal government after 9/11. The Accurint Virtual Crime Center (AVCC) was created to conduct mass personal data searches of Muslims to generate suspect lists following the 9/11 attacks.

As a condition of access to AVCC, the police bureau and other local law enforcement agencies must share their data with the Public Safety Data Exchange database (PSDEX). PSDEX compiles data from thousands of law enforcement agencies nationwide.

ICE has access to both AVCC and PSDEX.

The Portland Police Bureau is handing over its data to the same investigative database ICE uses to find immigrants. That means even if Portland law enforcement is not directly cooperating with ICE, Portlanders' data can still be accessed by ICE.

Importantly, ICE can also access jail release data through AVCC. ICE often asks local police to hold someone in their custody for an extra 48 hours through a form called a detainer request. Once ICE knows the exact date and time of a detainee's release, agents can arrive at the jail and directly transfer them into federal custody. The police bureau's FAQ says that "officers shall not honor or comply with federal agency immigration detainer requests," in compliance with sanctuary city laws. Their data-sharing with PSDEX -- formalized in a contract -- undermines that claim.

When Feet in 2 Worlds reached out to the Portland Police Bureau, Sergeant Kevin Allen denied any participation in PSDEX via an email statement. "We do not see this anywhere in the current contract with LexisNexis," he wrote. He also denied that the police bureau is contractually required to share license plate data and jail release data to LexisNexis's databases, including the post 9/11 tool AVCC.

Yet the addendum Feet in 2 Worlds received via a public records request states that the police bureau "agrees to submit to LexisNexis Customer Data Contributions."

"ICE is looking to exploit data brokers increasingly to power its deportation machine," says Rivera, the attorney with Just Futures Law. "We're seeing right now under this government how data brokers and other surveillance tools are being weaponized to criminalize our community members and expose them to arrest and deportation on a new scale."

Without strong federal data privacy laws preventing the sale of people's personal information, sanctuary protections will remain toothless against these loopholes. Meanwhile, the federal government is building and bolstering a vast surveillance infrastructure to harvest our data -- targeting immigrant communities first. more

Career development

1d

The Lawyers and Scientists Training AI to Steal Their Career

This article is a collaboration between New York Magazine and The Verge.

The LinkedIn post seemed like yet another scam job offer, but Katya was desperate enough to click. After college, she'd struggled to make a living as a freelance journalist, gone to grad school, then pivoted to what she hoped would be a more stable career in content marketing -- only to find AI had automated much of the... work. This company was called Crossing Hurdles, and it promised copywriting jobs starting at $45 per hour.

Katya clicked and was taken to a page for another company, called Mercor, where she was instructed to interview on-camera with an AI named Melvin. "It just seemed like the sketchiest thing in the world," Katya says. She closed the tab. But a few weeks later, still unemployed, she got a message inviting her to apply to Mercor. This time, she looked up the company. Mercor, it seemed, sold data to train AI, and she was being recruited to create that data. "My job is gone because of ChatGPT, and I was being invited to train the model to do the worst version of it imaginable," she says. The idea depressed her. But her financial situation was increasingly dire, and she had to find a new place to live in a hurry, so she turned on her webcam and said "hello" to Melvin.

It was a strange, if largely pleasant, experience. Manifesting on Katya's laptop as a disembodied male voice, Melvin seemed to have actually read her résumé and asked specific questions about it. A few weeks later, Katya, who like most workers in this story asked to use a pseudonym out of fear of retaliation, received an email from Mercor offering her a job. If she accepted, she should sign the contract, submit to a background check, and install monitoring software onto her computer. She signed immediately.

She was added to a Slack channel, where it was clear she was entering a project already underway. Hundreds of people were busy writing examples of prompts someone might ask a chatbot, writing the chatbot's ideal response to those prompts, then creating a detailed checklist of criteria that defined that ideal response. Each task took several hours to complete before the data was sent to workers stationed somewhere down the digital assembly line for further review. Katya wasn't told whose AI she was training -- managers referred to it only as "the client" -- or what purpose the project served. But she enjoyed the work. She was having fun playing with the models, and the pay was very good. "It was like having a real job," she says.

Two days after Katya started, the project was abruptly paused. A few days after that, a supervisor popped into the room to let everyone know it had been canceled. "I'm working assuming that I can plan around this. I'm saving up for first and last month's rent for an apartment," Katya says, "and then I'm back on my ass. No warning, no security, nothing." Several days later, she got an email from Mercor with another offer, this one for a job evaluating what seemed to be conversations between chatbots and real users -- many appeared to be from people in Malaysia and Vietnam practicing English -- according to various criteria, like how well the chatbot followed instructions and the appropriateness of its tone. Sign the contract, the email said, and you'll have a Zoom onboarding call in 45 minutes. It was 6:30 p.m. on a Sunday night. Scarred from the abrupt disappearance of the previous gig, she accepted the offer and worked until she couldn't stay awake.

Machine-learning systems learn by finding patterns in enormous quantities of data, but first that data has to be sorted, labeled, and produced by people. ChatGPT got its startling fluency from thousands of humans hired by companies such as Scale AI and Surge AI to write examples of things a helpful chatbot assistant would say and to grade its best responses. A little over a year ago, concerns began to mount in the industry about a plateau in the technology's progress. Training models based on this type of grading yielded chatbots that were very good at sounding smart but still too unreliable to be useful. The exception was software engineering, where the ability of models to automatically check whether bits of code worked -- did the code compile, did it print HELLO WORLD -- allowed them to trial-and-error their way to genuine competence.

The problem was that few other human activities offer such unambiguous feedback. There are no objective tests for whether financial analysis or advertising copy is "good." Undeterred, AI companies set out to make such tests, collectively paying billions of dollars to professionals of all types to write exacting and comprehensive criteria for a job well done. Mercor, the company Katya stumbled upon, was founded in 2023 by three then-19-year-olds from the Bay Area, Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha, as a jobs platform that used AI interviews to match overseas engineers with tech companies. The company received so many inquiries from AI developers seeking professionals to produce training data that it decided to adapt. Last year, Mercor was valued at $10 billion, making its trio of founders the world's youngest self-made billionaires. OpenAI has been a client; so has Anthropic.

Each of these data companies touts its stable of pedigreed experts. Mercor says around 30,000 professionals work on its platform each week, while Scale AI claims to have more than 700,000 "M.A.'s, Ph.D.'s, and college graduates." Surge AI advertises its Supreme Court litigators, McKinsey principals, and platinum recording artists. These companies are hiring people with experience in law, finance, and coding, all areas where AI is making rapid inroads. But they're also hiring people to produce data for practically any job you can imagine. Job listings seek chefs, management consultants, wildlife-conservation scientists, archivists, private investigators, police sergeants, reporters, teachers, and rental-counter clerks. One recent job ad called for experts in "North American early to mid-teen humor" who can, among other requirements, "explain humor using clear, logical language, including references to North American slang, trends, and social norms." It is, as one industry veteran put it, the largest harvesting of human expertise ever attempted.

These companies have found rich recruiting ground among the growing ranks of the highly educated and underemployed. Aside from the 2008 financial crash and the pandemic, hiring is at its lowest point in decades. This past August, the early-career job-search platform Handshake found that job postings on the site had declined more than 16 percent compared with the year before and that listings were receiving 26 percent more applications. Meanwhile, Handshake launched an initiative last year connecting job seekers with roles producing AI training data. "As AI reshapes the future of work," the company wrote, announcing the program, "we have the responsibility to rethink, educate, and prepare our network to navigate careers and participate in the AI economy."

There is an underlying tension between the predictions of generally intelligent systems that can replace much of human cognitive labor and the money AI labs are actually spending on data to automate one task at a time. It is the difference between a future of abrupt mass unemployment and something more subtle but potentially just as disruptive: a future in which a growing number of people find work teaching AI to do the work they once did. The first wave of these workers consists of software engineers, graphic designers, writers, and other professionals in fields where the new training techniques are proving effective. They find themselves in a surreal situation, competing for precarious gigs pantomiming the careers they'd hoped to have.

Each of the more than 30 workers I spoke with occupied a position along a vast and growing data-supply chain. There are people crafting checklists that define a good chatbot response, typically called "rubrics," and other people grading those rubrics. Others grade chatbot answers according to those rubrics, and still others take the rubrics and write out what's often described as a "golden output," or the ideal chatbot answer. Others are asked to explain every step they took to arrive at this golden output in the voice of a chatbot thinking to itself, producing what's called a "reasoning trace" for AI to follow later when it encounters a similar task out in the real world.

Sometimes the labs want only rubrics for prompts their AI can't already do, which means companies like Mercor ask workers to produce "stumpers," or requests that will make the model fail. "It sounds easy, but it's really hard," says a worker who was trying to stump models by asking them to make inventory-management dashboards. Models fail in counterintuitive ways. They may be able to solve advanced-physics exam questions, but ask them for transit directions and they'll recommend transferring on nonconnecting train lines. Finding these weak spots takes time and creativity.

One type of project gathers groups of lawyers, human-resources managers, teachers, consultants, or bankers for something Mercor calls world-building. "You and your team will role-play a real-life team within your profession," the training materials read. The teams are given dedicated emails, calendars, and chat apps and asked to create a hundred or more documents that would be associated with some corporate undertaking, like a fictional mining company analyzing whether to enter the data-center business.

After several 16-hour days of fantasy document production, one worker recounts, the resulting slide decks, meeting notes, and financial forecasts are sent to another team, which uses them as grist in their attempts to stump a model operating in this simulated corporate environment. Then, having stumped the model, that team writes new, more nuanced rubrics, golden answers, and so on. Workers can only guess who the customer is or how many others are working on the project -- based on references to teams like Management Consulting World No. 133, there could be hundreds, maybe thousands.

There are people hired to evaluate the ability of image models to follow their prompts and others who summarize video clips in extraordinary detail, presumably to train video models. Efforts to improve AI's ability to have spoken conversations have resulted in a surging demand for voice actors, who might find themselves recording "authentic, emotionally resonant" speeches, according to one listing. "I just tell people I'm an AI trainer, then it sounds more professional than what I'm doing," says an aspiring screenwriter who was instructed to record himself pretending to ask a chatbot for a fitness plan while pots and pans clanged in the kitchen. Another time, he was told to record himself dispensing financial advice over the phone to a parade of people he assumed were other workers.

This audio might then be broken down and sent to someone like Ernest, who used to make a living as an online tutor until the company he worked for replaced him with a chatbot. When we spoke, he was listening to minutelong clips of random dialogue slowed to 0.1x speed and marking when someone started and stopped speaking down to the millisecond. Many of the clips included a person talking with a chatbot and interjecting "huh" or "I see," so he assumes he was improving AI's ability to have naturally flowing conversation, but he has no actual idea.

As is standard practice in the field, the project was referred to by a code name and the client only ever as "the client." The entire system is designed so that workers have minimal insight into the supply chain they are part of. If they find out who the customer is, they are contractually forbidden from telling anyone, even their own colleagues. Nor are they allowed to describe the details of their work beyond broad generalities like "providing expertise in XYZ domain to improve models for a top AI lab," according to one Mercor agreement. So afraid are workers of inadvertently violating their confidentiality agreements and getting fired that when they discuss their work in public forums, they mask their already code-named projects with additional code names, for example by referring to a project called "Raven" as "Poe."

Katya's second project with Mercor was far more stressful. There was less work to go around, and it came in fits and starts. Managers would drop a message in the Slack channel saying new tasks were incoming in half an hour, and, she says, "everyone in Slack would drop what they were doing and jump on them like piranhas," working as fast as they could while the bar showing how many tasks remained slid toward zero. Then they were back in Slack again, politely begging supervisors for more work and more hours, talking about their kids' birthdays or their need to pay rent, or telling anyone who might be listening that their availability was wide open in case there was more work to be done. Soon, Katya was dropping everything at the sound of a Slack ding too. "Sometimes I'm on the toilet or at dinner and I get the Slack notification. I'm like, 'Oh, sorry, I gotta work now.'"

That project soon ended and then came another. It was nearly identical to the first, which she had enjoyed, but now, on top of writing rubrics, she had to stump the model and complete the more-difficult task in the same amount of time. She was also getting paid $8 an hour less. This is common at Mercor. Nearly every worker I spoke with reported that demands increased, time requirements shrank, and pay decreased as projects continued. Those who couldn't meet the new demands got "offboarded" and replaced by new recruits.

Chris joined Mercor last year, after a difficult few months struggling to find film work. Unlike many people who suspect they're casualties of automation, he knew for certain that this was the case. He'd had a recurring job drafting episodes for an unscripted television show -- doing preinterviews, sketching scenes, writing the reality-TV equivalent of a screenplay. But in late 2024, he was told the show would be running on a "skeleton crew" and his work was no longer needed. He found out later the company was using ChatGPT to draft new episodes. So that October, when Chris received an offer to write an entire sci-fi screenplay for a major AI company, he said "yes," grim as the prospect was. Since then, he has gone from gig to gig. "This is my only source of income right now," he says. "I know people who are award-winning producers and directors, and they're not advertising that they're doing this work, but that's how they're putting food on the table."

His first jobs with Mercor were, like Katya's, relatively pleasant and well paid, but soon came the 6 p.m. fist-bump-emoji Slack exhortations to "come on team, let's push through this," followed by sudden halts and months of silence. "You were just constantly waiting for the crack of the starting gun at any hour of the day," Chris says. Then it was crunch time again and managers, increasingly panicked as deadlines neared, started threatening workers with offboarding if they didn't complete tasks quickly enough.

The time he spent working was tracked to the second by software called -Insightful, which monitored everything he did on his computer. Time that the software deems "unproductive" could be deducted from his pay, and if a few minutes passed without him typing, the system pinged him to ask whether he had been working. Sometimes Chris saw people post in Slack that they'd gone over the target time on a particularly tricky task and that they hoped it would be okay; the next day, they would be gone.

Increasingly worried he would be offboarded too, he started working off the clock, deactivating Insightful while reading instructions so he could move faster. If he went over the target time, he turned the clock off and kept working for free.

Companies say this software is necessary to accurately track hours and prevent workers from cheating, which, in this case, means using AI, something all data companies strictly forbid. The ground truth of verified human expertise is what they're selling, and when AI trains on AI-generated data, it gradually degrades, a phenomenon researchers call "model collapse." Employees of data companies say it is a constant battle to screen out AI slop. For workers, AI is a particular temptation as pressure increases. When the retail expert trying to stump models with analytics dashboards had her target time dropped from eight hours per task to five to three and a half, she turned off Insightful and sought outside help. "To be honest, I went into Copilot and ChatGPT and put my prompt in there and said, 'How can I work this so you guys can't answer it?'" Then she went to another chatbot and asked if the prompt sounded AI generated and, if so, to make it sound more human.

"It's just so horrible, the mental effect of it," says Mimi, a screenwriter who has worked on multiple streaming shows and has been training AI for Mercor for several months. She found out about Mercor from a fellow screenwriter who dropped one of its job links in a Writers Guild of America Facebook group.

Like a lot of people in this line of work, Mimi is conflicted. "One documentary-maker who's won Emmys, he messaged me and he was like, 'I'm being handed a shovel and told to dig my own grave,' and that's exactly how everyone thinks about it," she says. Still, as a single mom, she needed the money. She was thankful for the work at first, then the project was paused, unpaused, and paused again. For five weeks, she was told a project would be starting imminently. When it finally did, requirements were added, while the expected time shortened, and she raced to keep up under the watchful eye of Insightful. She felt that someone put it well on Slack when they said it was like they were living in a fishbowl waiting for their human masters to drop in food, and only the ones who were fast enough to swim to the top could eat.

"Last night, I got so fucking stressed because my kid came home and it was 7 p.m., and I get this message, 'The tasks are out!,' and I'm just working, just trying to get as many hours in before I can go to bed," Mimi says, choking up. "I spend no time with my kid, and at one point, he can't find something for school and I just start screaming at him. This work is turning me into a fucking demon." She's especially disturbed by the surveillance: "The idea that somebody can measure your time and that all the little bits that go into being a human are taken away because they're not profitable, that you can't charge for going to the toilet because that's not time you're working, you can't charge for making a cup of coffee because that's not time you're working, you can't charge for having a stretch because your back hurts. This is why unions were formed, so people could have guaranteed hours and guaranteed lunch breaks and guaranteed holidays and sick pay. This is the gig economy to the very extreme."

This is what concerns her more than the AI itself: that it's bringing to knowledge work the sort of precarious platform labor that has transformed taxi driving and food delivery. Meanwhile, she watches in horror the desperate gratitude of her colleagues as they rejoice at the 7 p.m. announcement of incoming work.

"How long are these tasks expected to last?" one worker asked in Slack.

"I'm wondering too, I'd like to know whether I can sleep or not ."

With no answer forthcoming, they swapped tips on how to stave off sleep.

When Mercor began recruiting aggressively last year, it framed itself as a more worker-friendly version of the platforms that had come before it. Criticizing his rival Scale AI on a podcast, Foody, Mercor's CEO, said, "Having phenomenal people that you treat incredibly well is the most important thing in this market." Workers who joined during this time do report being treated well; the pay was better than elsewhere, and instead of being managed by opaque algorithms, as is common, there were actual human supervisors they could go to with questions.

But people who have worked in management at data companies say they often start out this way, wooing workers off incumbent platforms with promises of better treatment, only for conditions to degrade as they compete to win eight-figure contracts doled out by the half-dozen AI companies who are interested in buying this data in bulk. At Mercor, there was the additional complication of management largely consisting of people in their 20s with minimal work experience who had been given hundreds of millions of investor dollars to pursue rapid growth.

"I don't care if somebody's 21 and they're my manager," says Chris, the reality-TV producer. "But they've never worked at this scale. When you try to find some kind of guidance in Slack, very maturely and clearly explaining what the situation is, you get a meme back with a corgi rolling its eyes and it says, 'Use your judgment.' But it's like, 'Use your judgment and fuck it up, and you get fired.' You went to Harvard, you graduated last year, and your guidance for a group of people, many of whom are experienced professionals, is a meme?"

Lawyers, designers, producers, writers, scientists -- all complained of inexperienced managers giving contradictory instructions, demanding long hours or mandatory Zoom meetings for ostensibly flexible work, and threatening people with offboarding for moving too slowly, threats that were particularly galling for mid-career professionals who felt their 20-year-old bosses barely understood the fields they were trying to automate.

"The founders pride themselves on '9-9-6,'" says a lawyer, referring to a term that originated in China to describe 72-hour workweeks associated with burnout and suicide but has been appropriated by Silicon Valley as aspirational. "You need to be accessible at all hours, and they're going to pump out messages at 6 a.m., and you better jump because the perception is you will be offboarded and another person will replace you."

"It's not just that team leads are young, project managers are young, senior project managers are young. It's that the senior-senior project managers, the ones responsible for the project in its entirety, are young. I guess that comes from the top because they're young, right?" says Lindsay, a graphic designer and illustrator in her 50s who came to Mercor after 85 percent of her work evaporated over the past year, owing, she believes, to improvements in generative AI.

Increasingly desperate for work, she scoured job boards; it seemed the only listings matching her expertise were offers to help build the technology she blamed for demolishing her career. "I swallowed my hatred and signed up," she says. After some initial work producing graphic-design data, she was invited to join a job for Meta grabbing videos from Instagram Reels and tagging whatever was in them. It was boring, and at $21 per hour, the pay was middling, but Lindsay needed the money. So, she discovered when she was brought into the project's Slack, did approximately 5,000 others.

In early November, a Mercor representative announced that Lindsay's project would be ending owing to "scope changes," though workers had previously been told the project would run through the end of the year. Lindsay and thousands of others found themselves removed from the company's Slack.

Soon, an email arrived in their inbox, inviting them to a new project called Nova paying $16 per hour.

Thousands of workers poured into the new Slack only to discover it was the exact same job, now paying 24 percent less. All but two of the Slack channels had been deleted, including the watercooler, support, and help rooms. The ability to direct-message one another had also been cut off. There were no team leads to be found. With no one to ask for assistance, workers flooded the main rooms with pleas and indignation.

"Nobody knows what's going on. Everybody's really confused," says Lindsay. "The messages are coming so fast in that channel. It's just absolute chaos. 'Help, please. What do I do? What am I supposed to do? Where do I go? Can I get started tasking? Am I supposed to redo all the assessments that I've done before?'"

Someone emailed support asking for help, and for some reason that email was sent to every one of the thousand-some people on the project, who seized on it and began to reply-all with their bafflement and outrage. "It was absolute carnage," says Lindsay. "There's no other word for it."

Workers began posting complaints on Mercor's sub-Reddit, only to have their posts quickly deleted by the Mercor representatives who moderate it. In response, two unsanctioned Mercor sub-Reddits were created, where workers could freely express such sentiments as "CHILDREN RUN THIS COMPANY, THEY WILL SOON HAVE THEIR DAY OF RECKONING."

"It's just really sad," says Lindsay. "There are some people in there where it's genuinely the difference between them being able to feed their families and not feed their families."

"I hate gen AI," she adds. "I think AI should be used for curing cancer. I think it should be used for space exploration, not in the creative industries. But I need to be able to pay my rent. And then when people like Mercor pull this stuff where they treat you like nothing more than a lab rat -- I've been working for a very long time. I have never, ever been treated as badly as this."

Intermittent work, extreme secrecy, and abrupt firings are the norm across the data industry. On Surge AI's work platform, called Data Annotation Tech, workers are not only regularly terminated without explanation; they are often not even told they've been fired. They just log in one day and find the dashboard empty of tasks. The phenomenon is so ubiquitous they call it simply "the dash of death."

Last year, a Texan with a master's degree in divinity who was teaching voice models to respond to queries with appropriate levels of feeling -- different tones for a user telling them their dog died versus asking for a trip itinerary -- logged in to work one morning and found his dashboard empty. Scrolling to the bottom of the page for the support button, he discovered it no longer worked. That's when he knew he had been terminated. His mind raced through possible reasons: Had he worked too much? Had his quality slipped? He knew he would never find out. "I felt cut adrift," he says. Anxious about how he would pay his bills and care for his ailing dog, he grew depressed, then horrified. He thought about his teacher friends who couldn't get their students to write and all the people graduating with now-worthless computer-science degrees. "The technology makes us see everything as a utility, something to be used," he says, a category that he feels includes discarded data workers like himself. He resolved to become a chaplain, figuring that no matter what the AI future holds, people will need a fellow human to be there for them.

The on-again, off-again nature of the work is not just the result of company culture; it stems from the cadence of AI development itself. People across the industry described the pattern. A model builder, like OpenAI or Anthropic, discovers that its model is weak on chemistry, so it pays a data vendor like Mercor or Scale AI to find chemists to make data. The chemists do tasks until there is a sufficient quantity for a batch to go back to the lab, and the job is paused until the lab sees how the data affects the model. Maybe the lab moves forward, but this time, it's asking for a slightly different type of data. When the job resumes, the vendor discovers the new instructions make the tasks take longer, which means the cost estimate the vendor gave the lab is now wrong, which means the vendor cuts pay or tries to get workers to move faster. The new batch of data is delivered, and the job is paused once more. Maybe the lab changes its data requirements again, discovers it has enough data, and ends the project or decides to go with another vendor entirely. Maybe now the lab wants only organic chemists and everyone without the relevant background gets taken off the project. Next, it's biology data that's in demand, or architectural sketches, or K-12 syllabus design.

To compete, data companies arrange things so that they will always have workers on call while preserving their freedom to drop them at a moment's notice. "Every vendor is going to have some kind of setup whereby they don't really make promises to people," says a senior employee of a major data company. The companies rarely have much notice of these shifts themselves, sometimes because the AI developers aren't sure exactly what data they need in the first place, other times because they are shopping around for the best deal. "They want to keep us in the dark," the employee continues, "so we inevitably keep the contributors in the dark, then a purchase falls through and you have a thousand people you've trained and formed a relationship with just saying, like, 'What the fuck? Why isn't there work?' It's a horrible feeling from an operator's perspective, too, but obviously it's way worse for them."

The workers at the bottom of this supply chain exist in a state of extreme precarity and maximum competitive frenzy -- especially because their strict confidentiality agreements make it impossible for them to establish any kind of seniority or relationship that might outlast a particular project. "The power is all on one side because they can't talk about it," says Matthew McMullen, a strategy-and-operations executve who has worked in the industry since the self-driving-car boom in the mid-2010s. "The labs benefit from you not being able to leverage your experience in the market, and this silence is like their pricing power. The silence is their ability to extract mass information from people without giving them the power to object or to unionize or to make companies themselves. As long as they can't prove what they've done, these raters can't demand what they're worth. The only way that people can demand things is by showing their ability to step up, to take on more work. The only power that they have is to keep going, to get back in line."

Which is what they do. When a project for Mercor ends, managers often post a link to other projects on the platform and encourage people to apply. "But again, there are thousands of people applying, so you throw your application into a hole and hope to hear back at some undefined point," says Katya. While they wait, workers sign up for Handshake, Micro1, Alignerr, or another of the ever-growing number of data providers.

These companies are always recruiting. Like Mercor, many use AI interviewers and automated evaluations, meaning they have no incentive to limit the number of interviews they do. Mercor offers referral bonuses of several hundred dollars, leading some to promote the company so aggressively that mentions of it have been banned from several sub-Reddits. Katya has applied for dozens of jobs and gotten three, not an unusual ratio.

Nor do companies bear any cost for overhiring. Because workers are ostensibly independent contractors, they are not owed paid time off, breaks, health care, overtime pay, or unemployment benefits. It's free to keep them hanging around, and a surplus of vetted workers ensures they will jump quickly to finish tasks before someone else does. It all combines to create an arrangement in which employers can turn labor on and off like a tap. (Reached for comment, Mercor spokesperson Heidi Hagberg said that "the nature of this is project based contract work, meaning it can extend, pause, or end at any time, especially as the client's scopes and needs evolve," and that many of the worker complaints "were centered around the misalignment of expectations of a full-time job versus -project-based work.")

If you move fast and get lucky and have the right combination of expertise and stay on the right side of each platform's unique and mysterious recipe of productivity metrics, you can make decent money. I spoke to a playwright making $10,000 a month, a multitalented chemist who at various points found gigs demonstrating poker and singing for AI. But even then, there is an inescapable awareness of ephemerality because producing training data means working toward your own obsolescence. While the number of people doing data work may continue to rise, any particular gig will last only as long as it takes for the machines to successfully mimic it. It takes years for a human to develop expertise, and sooner or later, they're going to run out of skills to sell.

A worker with a master's in linguistics had found steady rubric work for a year, but late in 2025, he noticed it was becoming more difficult to stump the models. Any obscure theory or Indigenous language he asked about, the model would find the correct papers. Instead of submitting three or four rubrics per week, he was lucky to get one. Everyone else on the project was following the same trajectory, so he wasn't surprised when it came to an end. Their know-how had been extracted. In the past, he'd always been able to find a new gig, but now when he looked around, he saw only requests for medical experts, human-resources managers, and teachers. He has now been without work for five months and isn't sure what to do next.

To the extent that policy responses to AI automation are discussed at all, they mostly concern what to do when AI renders large categories of workers obsolete. Maybe this will happen, but another possibility is that particular tasks will get automated and humans redistributed to other parts of the production process, some revising so-so AI output, others crafting rubrics to improve it. Much of this work will be inherently intermittent, which means it will be done by independent contractors, workers whom current regulations leave almost wholly unprotected. Daron Acemoglu, a professor of economics at MIT who studies automation, compares the situation to that of weavers, who before the industrial revolution were "like the labor aristocracy," self-employed artisans in control of their own time. Then came weaving machines, and in order to survive, they were forced to take new jobs in factories, where they worked longer hours for less money under the close supervision of management. The problem wasn't simply that technology took their jobs; it enabled a new organization of work that gave all power to the owners of capital, who made work a nightmare until labor organizing and regulation set limits.

Early labor skirmishes are already happening, mostly in California, which has some of the most aggressive rules around classifying platform workers. Three class-action lawsuits have been filed against Mercor in the past six months. (Similar suits were previously filed against Surge AI and Scale AI, which is settling.) The lawsuits all accuse the companies of misclassifying workers as independent contractors given the "extraordinary control" they exert over them. This is "an entirely new kind of work," one that the company trains people to do and that cannot be done except on the company's platform. Workers have so little visibility into what they're working on that one person, alleges a suit filed in December, accepted a Mercor project only to be tasked with recording himself reading sexually explicit scripts. Once he discovered this, the worker risked deactivation if he abandoned the project, forcing him to "choose between being paid and being humiliated."

These companies are reminiscent of Uber and Lyft a decade ago, says Glenn Danas, a partner at the law firm Clarkson, which is suing Mercor and several other data platforms. Yet in some ways these workers are in a worse position, more replaceable despite their advanced degrees. Uber drivers have to be physically present in a city to work, and they can organize and push for regulation there. If the same were to happen with data workers, companies could just recruit from somewhere else where people will work for less. When Mercor cut pay for its Meta project to $16 per hour, it dropped below the minimum wage in California and other states, yet people there kept working because they needed the money. This was something at least one supervisor acknowledged, writing in Slack, "While we won't actively hire from any states where the minimum wage is above the project's rate, if you are already active on the project and would like to work at the $16/hr rate, we want to enable you to do so."

Entire professions risk a similar race to the bottom, says Acemoglu, if companies are able to pit workers against one another, each selling their data before someone else can underbid them. "We may also need unionlike organizations that exercise some sort of collective ownership and prevent any kind of simple divide-and-rule strategies by large companies to drive down data prices," he says. "If there isn't the legal infrastructure for a data economy of this sort, many of the people who produce the data will be underpaid or, to use a more loaded term, exploited."

Katya was among the thousands of people invited to join the $16-an-hour Project Nova and was appalled by the low pay. "I think that was Mercor's experiment in how close to the bottom they can scrape without jeopardizing the data that they're getting," she says. Her main project had been paused for weeks and might resume the next day or never.

In the end, she decided the money wasn't worth it. She applied to work at a local coffee shop. It wasn't the career pivot she'd imagined when she went to grad school; she just hoped working as a barista would be more stable. "At least when you work at a coffee shop for minimum wage, you have some friends to talk to and a boss who pretends to care about you. You have some kind of security; you know what your hours are going to be week to week," she says.

But then she heard her phone ding. One of her projects was back on. more

Martin Firth

Career development

6d

I’m on a trial period at work and I’m not sure if I want to stay at this company. Our workday ends at 7 PM and I go home on time. But my coworkers don’t understand why I don’t stay late. They say I’m not interested in the company and that I don’t care about my job.
I honestly don’t understand, are they jealous or do they just want to control me?

5

caleb mark
1d
Most private institutions careless about work and life balance.i worked in a company where we resume work by 8am and no closing time and no overtime... payments but u there not come to work late the next day. more
Mark Wabwile
1d
You need to have a work life balance. If your productive hours have yielded the days expected output . Don't mind on what others say.
1

Career development

5d

9 Elements Every Successful Career Portfolio Needs

In today's competitive job market, having a well-structured career portfolio can significantly enhance your employability and professional reputation. A career portfolio showcases your skills, experiences, and achievements in a tangible way, allowing potential employers or clients to assess your qualifications at a glance. Here are nine essential elements every successful career portfolio should... include.

1. Personal Branding Statement

At the heart of your career portfolio lies your personal branding statement. This statement encapsulates who you are as a professional, what you do, and what makes you unique. It should articulate your values, expertise, and https://www.behance.net/johnlowryspartancapi?locale=en_US career aspirations in a concise manner. Crafting a strong personal branding statement not only sets the tone for your portfolio but also ensures that all subsequent information aligns with your professional identity.

Example:

"I am a dedicated marketing professional with over five years of experience in digital strategy, specializing in data-driven campaigns that enhance brand visibility and drive engagement. My passion lies in merging creativity with analytics to deliver measurable results."

2. Comprehensive Resume

Your portfolio should feature an up-to-date resume that highlights your work experience, education, skills, and certifications. Unlike a traditional resume, your career portfolio can include more detail about specific roles or projects, spotlighting your unique contributions and achievements. Utilize bullet points for clarity and consider tailoring your resume format to reflect your personal branding.

Tips:

* Keep the design clean and professional.

* Use relevant keywords that align with your target position.

* Include quantifiable results wherever possible to substantiate your accomplishments.

3. Work Samples

One of the most impactful components of your career portfolio is a collection of work samples that showcase your skills and expertise. This could include reports, presentations, design works, writing samples, or anything else that relates to your field. Ensure that each sample is presented professionally, and consider explaining https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/john-lowry-spartan-capital-individual-biopdf/256694384 role in the project and the outcomes achieved.

Suggestions:

* Choose work samples that are relevant to the positions you're targeting.

* If possible, include a mix of individual and collaborative works to demonstrate teamwork and leadership skills.

4. Case Studies

Incorporating case studies into your portfolio can offer deeper insights into how you approach problem-solving and project management. A case study describes a particular project from inception to completion, detailing the challenges faced, strategies implemented, and results achieved. This format allows you to showcase your critical thinking and analytical skills, making it especially appealing to employers looking for tangible evidence of your success.

Structure:

* Title: Clearly state the project name.

* Challenge: Describe the problem you were solving.

* Approach: Explain the strategies you employed.

* Results: Quantify your achievements.

5. Testimonials and Endorsements

Including testimonials from colleagues, supervisors, or clients can add credibility to your portfolio. These endorsements speak to your character, work ethic, and professionalism, serving as powerful references that back up your claims. Choose testimonials that highlight specific skills or achievements relevant to your career goals.

Tips:

* Ensure that testimonials are up-to-date and from credible sources.

* Use quotes or paraphrases to make them more impactful.

* If possible, include a photo of the person giving the testimonial to enhance credibility.

6. Certifications and Professional Development

A section dedicated to certifications and professional development can significantly enhance your credentials. List any relevant certifications, licenses, or training programs you've completed. This demonstrates your commitment to continuous learning and staying current in your field. Include dates and the organizations that issued the certifications.

Suggestions:

* Highlight certifications that are particularly relevant to your industry or target job.

* Consider showcasing ongoing training or skills improvement initiatives.

7. Portfolio Projects

If your career involves creative work, such as graphic design, writing, photography, or software development, consider including a distinct section dedicated to portfolio projects. This space allows you to curate comprehensive examples of your best work, providing a visually appealing showcase. Each project should include:

* A brief description of the project.

* Your specific role and contributions.

* Relevant tools or technologies used.

8. Professional Network

Including a list of professional organizations you belong to, as well as any leadership roles you've held, can demonstrate your involvement in your field. Membership in reputable organizations can indicate your professionalism and dedication. Additionally, you can highlight any conferences or workshops you've participated in, showcasing your engagement with industry developments.

Example:

* Organizations: American Marketing Association, Project Management Institute

* Roles: Committee Chair for Annual Conference Planning

9. Future Goals and Aspirations

Concluding your career portfolio with a section on your future goals can round out your professional narrative. This element allows you to express your ambitions and how they relate to the positions you are pursuing. Clearly articulating your career objectives demonstrates foresight and commitment to professional growth.

Tips:

* Align your goals with the sectors or roles you are applying for.

* Keep this section concise yet impactful, reflecting your passion and dedication.

Conclusion

Creating a successful career portfolio involves a thoughtful blend of personal branding, professional experience, and a demonstration of skills. By incorporating these nine essential elements, you can build a powerful portfolio that not only showcases your qualifications but also tells a compelling story about your career journey. As you update or refine your portfolio, remember that it should be a living document, adapting to reflect your evolving skills and achievements. In a competitive job market, a well-organized and vibrant career portfolio can make all the difference in landing your next opportunity. more

2

Renata Fester
3
1d
Such useful information and so necessary for people to understand that a key point - It is and always needs to be a living document. Adding skills and... knowledge as you acquire them is critical. Equally important is removing obsolete skills that may no longer be applicable in a particular job requirement, even though the person who has those skills is still able to use them. Typical, e.g. being able to type 100 words/min. Not necessarily a skill applicable to a job requirement, though useful for the person who has this skill. more

Career development

1d

15 Times an Ordinary Job Interview Turned Into a Story Worth Telling

Job hunting often feels like an unpredictable adventure. We spend hours rehearsing answers to tough interview questions, polishing our resumes, and dressing for success, but the hiring process loves to throw curveballs. The candidates in this article faced some of the most unexpected tests from recruiters and hiring managers. As it turns out, quick thinking and a good sense of humor can sometimes... help you land the job much faster than a flawless college degree. more

Career development

1d

13 Real Job Seekers Share How a Small Change Led to Career Success and Happiness

Job hunting for 2 months. Same pattern every time. Recruiter calls me a "great fit." Asks my availability. I respond fast. Then ghosted.

It happened 4 times in a week! So I changed one small thing in how I reply. Cut my ghosting rate in half.

The trick is about your availability. Now, every time I send availability, I also send a short "receipt" email that is basically impossible to... misunderstand or ignore. It's not rude, it's not a novel, and it doesn't beg.

It's just a clean summary of what we agreed on, plus a clear next step. Like: "Confirming I'm available Tue 10:00-11:30, Wed 14:00-16:00, Thu 9:00-10:00. Please let me know which slot you'd like to lock in and I'll hold it. If none work, feel free to send two alternatives and I'll respond the same day."

That's it. I stopped answering with a wall of open-ended niceness like "I'm flexible any time!" because I realized that gives them nothing concrete to act on. © RiddleFerryboat / Reddit more

Career development

1d

Graphic Design Online Courses Portfolio: 2025 Design Guide

Maria Kristoff

Career development

3d

Hi! I work at the front desk with clients. It’s the season when many people get sick, so my colleague decided to eat garlic every day to stay healthy. His desk is about two meters from mine, but the smell is very strong and it’s hard to breathe. I tried joking that he could eat spinach or radishes instead, but he believes only garlic will protect him from illness. I’m not sure how much longer I... can handle it and the smell might scare our clients too.
How can I politely ask him not to eat garlic before work? Thanks

more

Kiona Lee
1d
Warmly suggest chewing cloves and name some benefits like vitamin C and other things. It helps with breath as well.
Renata Fester
1d
Its very difficult to counter someone's personal beliefs about the efficacy of certain products for health reasons. This really is more about the... image it portrays to clients. As front desk employees, you two are the face of the company, the first impression a client gets about the company, and this is the priority. While having a kind clear conversation about the odour and it potential impact on visiting clients might be necessary as the first step, you may not have a choice about escalating this issue to HR if clients begin to complain or you suspect clients are getting an unsatisfactory first impression about the company as a result. As a professional front-line employee, your colleague should know better and should be aware that first impressions matter. All it will take is one client to come in after a bad commute or other unrelated stressor and get the whiff of garlic for things to go sideways, and the MD or CEO to get an earful, and he could lose his job. more