u/GODISABOTTOM

Got assigned FOUR AI labeling/evaluation projects/

Thousands of rows.
Hours of annotation work.
Actual mental labour.

Pay rate?
$0.00.

Then the email hits: “You may receive a one-time $50 payment once the project reaches production and is accepted.”

Brother WHAT production !!!!!! So basically: Train our AI. Do repetitive human labour.
Help improve our product. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll buy you dinner afterward.

These AI companies are getting way too comfortable treating skilled workers like disposable NPCs running side quests for “future opportunities.”

Thankfully I stopped falling for this nonsense. If you’re job hunting, please don’t let desperation make decisions for you. Some of these platforms survive entirely on underpaid hope.

*** Also not allowing to post img/Gif files, yk exactly what you guys are doing****

https://preview.redd.it/ul4tlacgzb2h1.png?width=1984&format=png&auto=webp&s=8e1dba3609d67ff057b0de50efee9f53d527bd4d

So I just got invited to join “Centific Global Technologies” on Data Foundry as an “AN” and I genuinely have no clue what level this is or what exactly they expect from me

The mail talks about AI training data, annotation tools, projects, tasks etc.

Has anyone here worked with them before?

Also what even is “AN” 😭

Would love some real experiences before I hit that pink “Accept Invitation & Get Started” button like it’s Squid Game.

PS: I am already a OneForma account holder, so this invite button takes me to a specific website that seems to be by them too and tells me to log in with email address.

Hi people,

So this is my overall two cents because I constantly see people asking the same questions here. Do with it what you will. Also, people with actual concrete knowledge and experience, please feel free to add or correct things.

I’ve worked across multiple data annotation platforms for around 3 years (early 2024 was my first project) now. Mind you, I have literally done $0/hr work before because one company claimed the product was “not in production stage yet” lol. So yes, this industry is very much the wild west.

I’m posting this specifically here because Mercor seems to be one of the biggest and most discussed platforms currently.

First things first: yes, this industry is biased (not in a way you think). Most hiring managers strongly prefer EN-speaking locales unless the project specifically requires niche non-English languages. But the messed up part is that many so-called “non-EN” countries have massive populations where English is effectively their primary working language across education, work, and day-to-day thinking. Yet people still get filtered differently because of geography alone.

I’ve seen people being forcefully routed into multilingual projects purely because of region, even when the only language they are professionally comfortable working in is English.

The pay, project stability, and hiring cycles are all over the place. Nothing is guaranteed. If you land a contract, grab it immediately, finish onboarding ASAP, and try to get some work hours in fast because competition is insane now compared to 2020-2022. In 2026, literally everyone knows about AI training work now. Even school graduates are entering & saturating the space heavily.

And yes, companies absolutely overhire, remove people quickly, then rehire again. That cycle is extremely common. Many times entire datasets go bad, quality collapses, and they restart hiring for the same project again.

A lot of instructions will contradict themselves and make zero sense. You still have to stay transparent and honest because if you slip up, they now have a valid reason to remove you. Whether the same transparency is reciprocated from the other side? Usually not.

A huge amount of decision-making is automated. Despite all the “humans train AI” messaging, a lot of task reviews, routing, moderation, and support systems are heavily dependent on automation and AI-assisted filtering. Yes, some tasks go through manual QA pipelines, but usually only selected samples or edge cases. Entry-level reviews and most moderation decisions are rarely deeply investigated manually.

Support systems are also increasingly barricaded behind AI. For basic issues, fine, AI support works alright. But even many edge cases are now being handled through automated systems. Sad, but that’s the reality.

Do not expect stability. Seriously, do not emotionally rely on any project just because things were going well for a few days or weeks. I’ve personally had my heart broken way too many times to tell you otherwise.

Also accept that probably 70-80% of your queries may remain unanswered because many answers would reveal too much about internal systems, workflows, moderation logic, or operational structures companies do not want openly discussed.

Document absolutely everything. Keep screenshots of bugs, errors, timestamps, project changes, and communications. Always escalate issues formally when possible because even if it never reaches proper human review, you at least create a record.

And yes, mainstream generalist LLM training has mostly peaked now. Companies already trained systems on absurd amounts of data over the past few years. Most current hiring is slowly or already have shifted toward domain-specific expertise, technical backgrounds, STEM fields, specialised research knowledge, and niche professional skillsets.

Ironically, I’ve seen highly skilled corporate professionals struggle to land projects while random EN-locale freshers get onboarded instantly. Early-stage AI training heavily relied on mass-scale beginner labour, but that phase is slowing down now.

So keep upskilling. Reskill constantly. Tailor your résumé. Keep tweaking your Mercor profile and LinkedIn regularly. Search aggressively because many listings do not even show up properly unless you dig for them manually.

And lastly: no matter how experienced, niche, diligent, or high-performing you are, nobody is immune here. That’s just the nature of this industry currently.

I am on my Explore Page! I see this notification, can someone please tell me what does this mean? I did not click, hover or expand any job listing. Just on my EXPLORE main DB: "You've already been hired..."

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Was assigned a 72hrs/week cap but didn’t even get to work 7hrs on this particular project. The lack of communication, zero transparency, over-hiring... I’m talking 4-5k people in 24hrs... then booting 80% of them within the next 48hrs, when most didn’t even get to work. It’s so unhealthy and messed up. Absolutely unhinged. That’s the name of the game, I suppose.

With 3y+ experience in this field, I gotta say, not one corp is gonna treat you well. Doesn’t matter how domain-specific your skills are, how brilliant your performance is, how insane your QA/ratings are, or how consistent you’ve been.

One company keeps assigning me to projects with $0.00/hr saying it’s in “production” and they’ll pay a one-time amount only if your submitted tasks get selected. Another pays $12-$15/hr but is desperately tryna find a reason to boot me. And then this... the pretentious facade of these $90-$100/hr project BS schemes while kicking thousands of people who didn’t even get to work.

This is literally how these companies are becoming billion and trillion-dollar corporations. Of course. How else!???

https://preview.redd.it/lelbef0lip0h1.png?width=558&format=png&auto=webp&s=33fef7c4e337d293b94e10e0c92fbfc190ccff23

I submitted mine 18 hours ago, and they already finished grading 4.9k members in the Slack for the initial stage of the contract? How? Nothing was manually graded after all. It was certainly automated.

All this blah blah blah about “you cannot use AI to train AI,” yet you guys are using AI to evaluate our human answers and inputs, and making decisions based on that. Wow.

https://preview.redd.it/9j1hfggnon0h1.png?width=1444&format=png&auto=webp&s=04687f8f6b9de5d7a64b863ad3a53d9d86a6611a

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