I work in Hollywood. Everyone Who Made TV Is Now Secretly Training AI

People who were already turned off by their NDA started talking. Helena, the conflict prevention moderator of the Mercor subreddit, went to great lengths to take the piss out of disgruntled employees who were happy to leave names for “confidential jobs”—something strictly prohibited by the non-disclosure agreement every employee must sign before being hired as an Independent Producer.

Elsewhere, on another mission, the Handsome Swede was not doing well. Affected by Covid, he told his team leaders that he could not produce what was needed every week and was quickly fired. He went into melee again to get another job.

The wages were dropping every week. When I started analyzing contractor jobs in early 2025, companies like Mercor, Handshake, Turing, Task-ify and Outlier were offering $150 an hour for “specialists,” $35 to $75 an hour for “generalists.” Today, Mercor says the average hourly rate on its platform is $105. But in my research across the industry as of early 2026, professionals were typically making $50 an hour, and entry-level workers were making as little as $16 — less than California’s minimum wage. Contracts were now called “sprints”. The work had to be done, quickly, as quickly as possible, to complete a job that lasted 24 hours. The rush was as important, selfish, and as irritating as hunting.

Fatigue has led many people to go to court. Several lawsuits have alleged that Mercor misrepresents its workers as independent contractors, saying that the demands of the job – frequent hikes, endless retraining, the need to check emails and Slack several times a day, make phone calls and do very short notices, expect workers to complete several hours each week – are job characteristics. But compared to regular workers, contractors receive almost no workplace protections against arbitrary arrests, restricted hours, denied time off, or retaliatory strikes. Which sounds like a big risk if, like me, you’re tired of the bull and complain. Out loud. Most of the time.

Christmas Day arrived. I didn’t get the extra $3-5K that I thought Project Dead Language would cost, and my bank account ended up being about $14. Because of my fear and the fact that I had enough cash to make ends meet, I accepted two construction jobs at $16 an hour that were about to expire. It has recruited thousands of job descriptions across multiple platforms to meet tedious goals. The whole business had the feel of an overcrowded refugee camp that has long been operating to meet basic needs, but not to live, comfortably. I had already completed most of the climbing steps. Most importantly, emphasized in the literature, and upload on Slack.

I couldn’t access Slack.

I called Zoom’s helpline.

“Do you stay here all day?” I asked a faceless man as, in another square, an old woman peered suspiciously into her camera wearing a handkerchief attached to an oxygen tank, which was behind palm trees. “Very good,” shouted the faceless man. “I hope they will pay you well,” I said honestly. “They don’t,” he replied, before informing me that I was already a member of the Slack channel I’d spent two days waiting to join, and that I’d missed five important questions in a letter I’d failed to read.