My takeaway after a few weeks doing contract AI work through Mercor
After reading other contractors’ experiences, I realized that short project cycles and sudden offboarding seem pretty common with this type of work. I wasn’t particularly surprised when mine ended this morning.
My biggest takeaway: treat this as a side gig, not a real job.
Task availability can be unpredictable, and projects can change or end quickly. When work was available, the pay was good and I learned something about how AI evaluation works. That’s valuable.
But I wouldn’t organize my career around waiting for the next batch of tasks.
Use these projects to earn some extra income, learn something new, and add relevant experience to your resume. At the same time, keep refreshing your resume, building your skills, networking, and looking for stronger long-term opportunities.
I also think expert work can become much more interesting than repeatedly judging outputs. I’d like to see more projects that actually use people’s domain expertise to design workflows and solve realistic problems.
Keep looking forward.