Corporations are investing in Big Tech, not us

I just graduated with my master’s degree, I have four years of interning experience from college and graduate school. And yet I have yet to get past the first round of any interview. I have been autofiltered out by Workday’s AI for jobs I am well qualified for. It has been 8 months of applying now. Something needs to change quickly or else I am going to go broke. It’s already a pain in the rear to pay rent, let alone to have a life.

I worked in search engine optimization for the same small agency for 11 years. I was a content marketing expert. In my last 2-3 years with the company (2022-2025), I was encouraged (and then required) teach myself how to use AI tools. I spent months training chatgpt to do my job by creating custom GPTs. No official training was provided, and my pay was not increased to reflect the expanded responsibilities. In my last year at the company, my two teammates (under my leadership) left - one was let go, and one left by choice. They were replaced by a freelancer and I was expected to pick up the slack using AI. A few months later, I myself was let go.

I was one of 3 union-represented members of a social media team for the California Academy of Sciences, a science museum and biodiversity research organization. I’m primarily a science communicator and content creator. I mostly focused on short-form, educational videos for TikTok and Instagram and my team always had a ton of work. Besides making marketing videos, we were also one of the primary science communicators for the incredible biodiversity and conservation research our scientists were doing around the world. I worked there for 2.5 years until I got laid off this June. At around my 1.5 year mark, there was a major restructuring and our division (including my team and the major contents teams like Exhibits) were renamed the “Innovation” division and a new “Innovation Director” was hired. He was an ex-tech executive who wanted to “innovate and optimize” workflows at the museum and bring new visitor experiences. A year later, that manifested into 90% of the Exhibits team laid off so the few remaining stragglers could produce AI-created or rented temporary exhibits. They laid off my entire team because they figured social media creation could be replaced by AI generated content. This is a museum that charges $55/person for admission by the way. Almost all the major creatives in the building were laid off, presumably to be replaced by AI. It’s been a few months, and they’ve already reposted my former job with one single “social media manager” role, expecting them to produce the content that 3 people made while probably heavily using AI. It’s funny because from what I’m hearing from the folks who are still there, they’re already considering hiring back the laid off Exhibits folks because AI can’t cut it or produce quality exhibits.

I had no idea they were using my own d*mn work to train AI to replace me. Worked on a Microsoft game with no idea the studio was feeding his own work into an AI built to replace him. Laid off three days before Christmas.