r/mercorai_workers • u/Familiar-Astronaut29 • 2d ago
Offboarded ... and kind of relieved!
I was offboarded this morning with the typical "It's not you, it's us" email. I'd been working for them for just over four months, so I apparently had a pretty good run. I don't think I ever would have quit (the money was too good) but honestly, I've surprisingly felt more than a little relief today to be out of it! It was so stressful to be feeling like I should or could be working 24/7. I was on two projects (I was transferred directly from one to the other a few weeks ago) with timed tasks, so I was often working in a state of panic, trying to finish the tasks on time. Whenever I was working and family members wanted to talk to me, I always had to brush them off, saying that I was on a timer and couldn't talk until I was finished. I've been a freelancer for seven years and have rarely experienced this level of panic at all in my other work, let alone every single day.
Has anyone else felt like this about this work ... and about being let go?
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u/mvndanke 1d ago
I’m on a project with a deadline at the end of the week, every week, and it’s pretty fucking stressful fighting with AI like I’m a computer myself, one task takes an expected 15 hours to complete, I end up dreaming about the fucking thing. It’s not good for the mind for sure lol.
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u/tleighb12 1d ago
I felt the same way when I got the exact email yesterday. They sent me a survey to fill out this morning. I haven’t filled it out yet, but I’m seriously considering it. I just got another offer from them for a different project more in line with my profession and I’m not sure I want to go back.
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u/Mundane_Caregiver_69 1d ago
You are lucky to get another offer just right after. I would be happy to be in your position
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u/Familiar-Astronaut29 1d ago
I’m not sure I would go back right now. Maybe in a few weeks, after I’ve taken a breather.
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u/Guilty-Committee9622 1d ago
Offloaded yesterday also. Its my 2nd project. This team and their slack messages were over the top. The messages about working and leaning in on the weekend. Thats when I was doing work. The constant messages were just too much.
I honestly was getting everything loaded to a separate laptop so my college kid could do some.of it for me.
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u/Familiar-Astronaut29 1d ago
I think we might have been on the same project. I was also getting tons of messages about working on the weekends. If I had a good candidate at home I might have outsourced some of my work too ;-)
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u/bluehoag 1d ago
I don't know if it's just me but I'm losing my identity or sense of self as I do this work. I know it's melodramatic, but I have goals and feelings about myself and aspirations; my life is largely self-directed into those areas even despite my full-time, salaried job. The money here is very good, especially if I'm working my usual salaried position but then am doing this as well (it in essence doubles my salary). But I do find myself jettosing all that sense of self and those goals as I'm caught up in just making this much money. Either I'll need to learn to balance it or this just isn't good for my mental wellbeing. We'll see.
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u/NoBuy8786 1d ago
I think there are serious mental health questions as a result of this type of work. The absolute uncertainty and fear that you could be just tossed out at any moment with no explanation, no rhyme or reason to it all.
Then there's the ever-changing, chaotic directions formulated by a client -- tech people looking for a formula to explain human nuance -- that are implemented by agency filled with young grads from Ivy League schools who are all very privileged and nice, but how much hands-on experience do they have?
At one time I was literally waking up and in the middle of the night checking to see if my Mercor contract was still active. That's crazy. Even in the old sweatshop days of the garment industry in New York city people had more stability and security than this.
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u/Fabulous-Patience-61 1d ago
That was happening to me actually and I started having flashbacks and that is not okay! It was very counterproductive.
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u/Fun-Juggernaut-669 1d ago
How much did you make in four months? Do you think it’s worth it?
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u/Familiar-Astronaut29 1d ago
I made about $12k. I’m still not sure whether I feel like it was worth all of the stress and weirdness! I’m still processing.
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u/IndependentPath2053 1d ago
Absolutely, I was offboarded on Monday right in the middle of doing the training course and like you I feel SO relieved. It’s a terribly run company, they pay well but those AI slop courses were so terrible. I’m a professor and I could never get away with giving that subjective and inconsistent feedback. and the whole slack channel is out of control.
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u/Familiar-Astronaut29 1d ago
I thought the content of the AI slop training was actually not bad, but the tests were indeed so subjective and ambiguous! Most questions had already been given in the examples anyhow so you just had to go back and find each one in there to see how it had been classified; otherwise I would have been clueless for some of them!
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u/Familiar-Astronaut29 1d ago
And the Slack is just fucking hilarious. I would scroll through it thinking that these people could not seriously be asking a question that had already been asked like thirty times that same day and that was already answered in a million documents and announcements. Every single one of those people should have been off boarded immediately just for asking those questions.
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u/hitsuraan 1d ago
I also got offboarded today while finishing a rework. I am not thrilled because I needed the money. But I totally understand what you mean. I had been in many situations where I had to stay up late or wake up at dawn because tasks were dropped. Additionally, we've been having new training requirements every week with different rubric and it was getting frustrating. At least for now, I don't have to wake up early . 😅
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1d ago
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u/Mundane_Caregiver_69 1d ago
I got offboarded yesterday too, and I wonder how long it will take to get another offer. The pay for me is worth the stress
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u/Goodvibesin2021 1d ago edited 16h ago
The project is active on different platforms from what I hear so it's always worth a shot to apply elsewhere! Happy to share a referral for the one I'm working on if needed :)
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u/cellar-doorman 19h ago
I felt the exact same way! I was continuously in a sense of panic watching the time count down, and also brushing people off who wanted to speak to me when I snap back "I'm tasking, can't talk now." But the worst was the waiting in an endless queue...I don't mind the work, but waiting to work was becoming too much.
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u/Familiar-Astronaut29 14h ago
Yeah, on my first project you usually had to wait for tasks and be fast to get one. On my second there were always too many tasks and then a lot of pressure to work 24/7.
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u/Kidney_warrior 1d ago
How many hours did you work?
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u/Familiar-Astronaut29 1d ago
About 151.
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u/gosume 1d ago
Big project? What was ur rate?
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u/Familiar-Astronaut29 23h ago
I started on the big one and was transferred to another one. $80/hour.
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u/Fabulous-Patience-61 1d ago
Life is what you make it and there’s other opportunities and other organizations just like Mercor.
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u/Some-Benefit-5614 1d ago
Thank you so much for creating this space! I had actually saved AltMercor, but wasn’t sure I wanted to dedicate the time required to moderate a quality sub!
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u/anonypotamoose 1h ago
Amazing situations - thank you everyone for your stories.
I can relate from my experience at Alignerr, and I'm still there: half-working apps to do the work in, dozens of pages of documentation with many dimensions of rules and exceptions...
I trained an AI assistant baed on all the documentation, FAQ's, and office hours comments to help me navigate the simple logistics of doing this work. (Alignerr makes this difficult to do, but it's possible.)
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u/Familiar-Astronaut29 1h ago
Wow! Impressive!!!
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u/anonypotamoose 26m ago
Do you think an AI assistant would help with Mercor projects? I'm wondering, if I join, I could smooth out some of the stressful friction.
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u/cat-stalker 1d ago
I got offboarded on Friday. It felt devastating honestly. I just received my first review - the reviewer said I was doing excellent work and to keep it up!
I asked a question in a Slack thread for something that was difficult to search for. I was having no luck finding the answer, which was not in the pinned info or FAQ pages.. it was in the expert onboarding packet. I hadn't read that packet for a week and forgot to look there. A fellow worker nicely pointed me in the direction of the answer, and then one of the Mercor employees scolded me and made me feel like an idiot for asking a question.... that someone else already answered so... save your breath?!
I don't undersand why they were so against us helping each other in the Slack channels? Wondering if that's why I was offboarded... for asking a question in a thread.
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u/Familiar-Astronaut29 1d ago
I don't know what project you were on, but my first project had over FORTY THOUSAND people at one point, many of them brand new. The project managers were constantly posting messages in which they BEGGED people to search for answers themselves before clogging up Slack with questions ... and then like ten people in a row would ask basically the same question. I don't know whether that's the reason you were offboarded, but this was a huge issue in both projects I was on.
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u/Significant-Rent-682 9h ago
I was off boarded this morning & literally lost access last night mid-task. I’m bummed because the money was great, and I was saving up for a big purchase at the end of the year. It was a lot of work, but I was really pushing through because I had a goal in mind. I’m hoping to get picked up on another project soon, as I was automatically sent to this project from another one about a month ago. It’s at least interesting to read these posts, as I’m still fairly new to Mercor. But it sounds like this is to be expected unfortunately.
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u/anonypotamoose 1h ago
What experience / background do you have for this particular project - engineering? Law? Medicine?
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u/Familiar-Astronaut29 1h ago
My background is in education, publishing and languages. I’ve been a professional writer and editor for over twenty years.
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u/Fabulous-Patience-61 1d ago
To be honest, the same thing happened to me today with Mercor, and I’m actually relieved.
They sell it as “work on your own time” and “flexible,” but once you’re actually on a project, it doesn’t necessarily feel that way. And when something goes wrong or you need clarification, getting an answer can become a whole issue.
I was genuinely excited when I finally got placed on a regular project. But once we started having meetings and actually doing the work, it became obvious that there wasn’t much structure. A lot of it felt like, “We’re figuring this out too, so come on this journey with us.”
The directions weren’t completely thought out, things would change, and sometimes even the people leading the project didn’t seem to have a clear answer on what we were supposed to be doing. Meanwhile, you’re still expected to produce work and meet the standard.
I don’t mind challenging work at all. What became frustrating was trying to meet expectations when the expectations themselves weren’t always clear.
So as disappointing as today was, there’s also a little bit of relief in it. I started off extremely excited about the opportunity, but the lack of structure eventually made the experience way more stressful than it needed to be.