Corporations Are Getting Away With Abusing Desperate Workers

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]So jobs that I used to go on where I would be making $50 to $70 an hour are now hiring for $25 to $30 an hour.

[00:00:10]>> I honestly think these companies are using interviewees to mine for ideas for strategies.

[00:00:18]>> And now is a really really good time not to pay as much because you have so many desperate people out there that we're going to find someone who's willing to take less money. Corporations are making work worse. From the job search to the job itself, and AI has become the perfect excuse. Every week there is another news story about how companies are planning massive layoffs every single job. Now, it's not just you apply and you go through a couple interviews.

[00:00:46]It's like interview, do you gel with the team? Let's do a panel. Now, you have to do a presentation of free work for us.

[00:00:53]Then you have to talk to like the executive on the team. It takes longer than a month and half of them are scams.

[00:00:59]Half of them aren't real. They're just trying to see what the interest is and how low they can get the salary. Is the incentive a desperate workforce?

[00:01:09]Of course, they want us desperate. They want us to feel grateful for any work we can get. The comments on this one are ridiculous. I literally had an interview today and it turned out to be an MLM. My favorite rejection gave me a swag bag with a blow dryer. I use it daily, unfortunately. Imagine interviewing at a company. They reject you, but they give you a swag bag with their stickers so you can put it on the back of your laptop for free advertisement at the coffee shop. And if you're lucky enough to get an offer, that's when they start lowering the pay. Any of the tech workers still unemployed from the mass layoffs? Have y'all been getting feelers sent out by recruiters yet? Suddenly, I have a lot of recruiters in my inbox for contract work. 6 months to one year at a time, but they are all hiring for a ridiculously low hourly rate. So jobs that I used to go on where I would be making $50 to $70 an hour are now hiring for $25 to $30 an hour, which is about the same amount that I make doing retail management work, except with my retail manager job, I at least get benefits.

[00:02:19]And now I'm sitting here with interviews from the big five that offer the same amount as my retail job, but I mean less honestly cuz I don't get health insurance. I don't get benefits and I don't get paid time off. Contract work is becoming the new normal. A talent agency found that 67% of companies increased contract hiring in the second half of 2025. Contracting is perfect for them. No benefits, no severance, no commitment. And like he said, this isn't just tech. Layoffs and lower pay is happening across the board.

[00:02:55]>> I just got laid off. I was laid off from my outpatient job and I was working at a NICU follow-up clinic. I have never experienced something like this before.

[00:03:02]I have a lot of feelings about this. I think the biggest one I'm feeling though is disappointment and a little I'm a little bit angry. This is the first time where I have seen with my own eyes that we treat healthc care like a business.

[00:03:15]sucks because at the end of the day, the people who are suffering this layoff the most isn't me. It's not the nurses.

[00:03:20]Although yes, we are suffering. It's the kids.

[00:03:23]>> When I was graduating high school, everyone said to go into nursing.

[00:03:27]Nursing is a stable career. Nothing feels stable anymore. Online, people describe what's happening as the job market is bad. AI is replacing jobs. And yes, both of those are true, but it's not the full story. Corporations understand that the economy is horrible right now. People are living paycheck to paycheck and they are taking advantage of people. The concept of a take-home project during an interview process is so wild to me. Companies are asking candidates to do strategy decks, case studies, sometimes hours of work just to maybe make it to the next round of interview. As a recruiter, I've seen both sides of this. I know that companies want to see how you think, but some of these assignments feel like straight up unpaid consulting. Like, why are candidates solving your business problems before they even have a job?

[00:04:10]And the sad thing is that candidates right now are so desperate that they'll actually work on these projects for hours just to maybe get ghosted on Monday. For certain roles, I can understand companies wanting to do some type of test. But these tests are becoming common across all industries and they used to be like hypothetical questions. That's no longer the case.

[00:04:31]These are real business problems that they are currently facing that they would like to know how you would solve.

[00:04:37]I honestly think these companies are using interviewees to mine for ideas, for strategies. My husband has been looking for work. Three of these interviews have stuck out to me. They've gone all the way through like fifth round interviews and sixth round interviews. During these interviews, each company has asked him to solve a hypothetical situation for their company and asked him to present to their seuite executives how they would solve this, what type of strategy would they use, would he use that type of thing. So he'll, you know, spend a week creating a deck and the CEO is there and the hiring manager and then like 10 other people are there and everybody's really engaged and they ask a ton of questions and things like that. So my husband thinks the interview went really well and then the end of the week comes, nothing. He's completely ghosted.

[00:05:34]>> These companies are getting fresh ideas, new strategies, all from these interview projects without having to hire anyone.

[00:05:41]I actually think this is going to get a lot worse with the use of AI because AI cannot come up with new ideas. So, they'll just keep doing these interview processes and harvesting fresh ideas.

[00:05:53]People in the comments are saying the same thing. I saw a video of someone who did an entire catalog for a company as part of their interview process. And the following month, his layouts were on the company website, but he wasn't hired.

[00:06:07]You're not crazy. I remember seeing a video months ago about a girl who watermarked her project and the company was trying to get her to take the watermark off and she refused. The amount of new hires that are being thrown into these roles and given zero training. I mean onboarding is so important. I I mean just the basics I mean anything. But I understand why it's happening. those employees that had all the knowledge that were probably holding a lot on their plate, probably doing way too much for way too little, you know, money left and they took all that knowledge with them. Now the company's like, "We don't really know how to do the job, but we believe this person will figure it out." And then it's like in a couple weeks or months and they're like, "Oh, you haven't figured it out? Oh, okay. You're not going to be a good fit."

[00:06:52]What companies aren't really onboarding anymore. They expect you to shadow an employee who was also trained by shadowing another employee. There's no dedicated team to walk you through how the company operates. This comment says, "I just accepted a new job 2 months ago and have no training. I'm so frustrated." You'd think these corporations would want to set their employees up for success. Instead, when you can't figure it out, they just fire people because they know there's a line of candidates waiting for the opportunity. I was told that I wasn't meeting expectations in my most recent meeting. And I am baffled and have to share this. My manager told me that my work wasn't enough, like what I had done wasn't enough. But I literally have the transcript in my app to our past meeting where I was recognized in front of all of my co-workers for getting everything done before anyone expected me to. So, I don't understand how last week it was great and I was exceeding expectations and now I'm getting told I'm not meeting expectations, but it's really funny because we're right at that time where we're supposed to go up for bonuses. I can't believe they're trying to gaslight me. I believe it. These companies have no shame. They want to pay as little as possible. This reminds me of when it was leaked that Microsoft was asking their managers to adjust employee rankings so that fewer people would hit the top tier, which also meant that fewer people would qualify for the raises and bonuses that came with it. That's the pay side.

[00:08:19]But then there's also the new productivity expectations thanks to AI.

[00:08:23]In a leaked memo, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, said the company could lead the industry in artificial intelligence if they just worked harder.

[00:08:31]60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity and I think we have all the ingredients to win this race, but we are going to have to turbocharge our efforts. Cool. Are you going to turbocharge those salaries and benefits?

[00:08:45]The sad reality is we're already way more productive than we've ever been long before AI was in the picture. BLS data proves this. We are producing a lot and this data only accounts for working hours. It doesn't count all the hours we spend off the clock answering Slack messages or fixing something on the weekend. We are constantly plugged in producing more than any generation before us and somehow it's still not enough for them. Now they're doing salary resets.

[00:09:17]>> Coming out of co during the great resignation, we're all familiar with that at this point. There was essentially an arms race for talent. And now that things have cycled and they need to offset some of this headcount.

[00:09:26]So they start doing all the layoffs, right? But now as people come back in, they're like, "You know what? We don't want to pay them as much anymore." And now is a really, really good time not to pay as much because you have so many desperate people out there that we're going to find someone who's willing to take less money. And in doing that, it's not just a short-term fix. They're actually resetting the market. So just because you got a job in 2022 making 100 grand, that same job today may pay 75 or 80 hard stop. At a time when inflation is out of control, they want to cut our salaries. And with the economy in the state that it's in, with these AI layoffs, they finally have enough desperate people to accept a 20 30% salary reduction. This comment is spoton. Competitive wages mean companies are all competing with each other to pay as close to zero as possible. But AI has become this magical word that allows them to get away with all of this. But the the painful part is that because of the AI increased improvements and because of the freelancers that we have, we currently don't see enough work to be done. And I also think that in the future because more and more is being done with AI, we also don't really see how we can progress from this further to continue from this further. So um I'm sorry to say, but I'm af I'm afraid we uh we don't see the role anymore the way we saw it. Um, so, uh, I'm very sorry for this. Please don't take it on a personal level.

[00:11:00]>> His excuse is that AI is doing more of the work and the freelancers, aka contractors who are cheaper, can handle the rest. There's just nothing left for her to do. If you've ever worked in tech, you know that is a lie. Jira always has tickets. There is always something to do. But AI has become the new excuse that allows them to cut cost.

[00:11:23]And the biggest companies are leading the way. Coinbase just announced they're laying off 14% of their workforce, cutting what their CEO calls pure managers in favor of one-person teams.

[00:11:36]Essentially, one person managing a team of AI agents that handles everything from coding to design to product management. It's an eight-p person team except it's one human managing seven AI agents. This is what they mean when they say jobs are evolving because of AI.

[00:11:54]Companies are now hiring AI orchestrators, essentially AI managers.

[00:11:58]They told us that AI would do the boring work. Turns out the new work is just babysitting AI. And the most frustrating part of all of this is that it comes at a time when they're making record profits. According to the New York Times, in the last quarter of 2025, pre-tax corporate profits hit a record, the highest share of gross domestic product since recordeping began in 1947.

[00:12:24]We're producing more than ever.

[00:12:26]Corporations are earning more than ever, but somehow this translates to us getting less. It used to be shameful for corporations to lay off employees, but now they have this perfect narrative. AI is changing everything and that does a lot of work for them. It allows them to do these layoffs to lower wages, cut benefits and not hire as much because AI is so efficient. And somehow this excuse is making it acceptable. And just like that, it becomes our new normal. If you're struggling with the job market right now, just know that I literally was offered a job, signed a legal contract, was told to quit my current job, was meeted and greeted by the whole team, got in coffee, so excited to have you next week. And then on my last day of my 2 weeks notice for the job that they told me to quit, I was told that the company did not have the funds to bring on a new person and they were rescending my offer.