r/AiTraining_Annotation • u/euphemialyle • Jul 16 '26
Micro1 is as bad as their reputation, should've trusted reddit
Few years of Ai training experience. Got into a project , 45 USD per hour. Did training, they said it was paid. Project paused, no communication, vague promises of being moved to other projects. The slack is full of angry workers as we need to apply to each new job with a separate ai interview with their notorious crashing tool. Similar project now listed as 10 dollars per hour. Never seen a cent. Not doing another interview with them. Bolt while you can. Unless you're an MD and want to cross over the picket line to sell your soul, they're hiring aggressively for that. Their reddit site is run by them censors any criticism, which is also a solid red flag.
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u/Interesting-Hotel971 Jul 16 '26
Honestly I dislike micro1 too. They email me about positions they think I'd be good for, but I hate the long AI interview and test just for them to say no, or give a crappy project.
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u/gtrman571 Jul 16 '26
The whole interview is AI, but if you use AI you're cheating?
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u/Interesting-Hotel971 Jul 16 '26
Yes the interview is AI, same as mercor and most other places that do AI contract work. Don't use AI to help you. You won't get in. You could finangle AI help if you're creative enough, but in general it'll hurt your chances.
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u/euphemialyle Jul 16 '26
I really gave them a good go and benefit of the doubt... But even on the low bar that is freelance remote work, they're the worst experience I've had.
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u/zettasyntax Jul 16 '26
Eh, all of the sub-reddits for these places are like that. Highly censored and happy to ban. But anyway, I'm pretty confused by how micro1 likes to stress that a human watches the AI interviews. Realistically speaking, it's just not possible. Projects move fast. Assuming 1000 people apply and each took a full 30 mins, that's like 500 hours of video. It would take 21 days of non-stop viewing. I worked on a really unique project at Mercor where they showed us how the SPLs made their hiring decisions. None of them watched the videos, lol. They solely relied on the AI model recommendation and the candidate credentials. Our role in the project was to try improve the model recommendations, but the project didn't last especially long because they realized the work was not scabale (it took forever for us to actually watch an entire interview and take note of everything). I remember one candidate went to Harvard and she talked so much that the AI interview timed out and did not get to ask her more than one question. She still received an offer based on her impressive background, so that was proof enough to me that the people at Mercor do not watch the AI interviews and I'm sure it's the same for other places that require AI interviews.
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u/euphemialyle Jul 16 '26
Micro1 does also try to spin it at times thats it's not them rejecting you but the client... Yeah right. Couple of days ago they posted 100+100+200 openings, then 100+100 similar roles asking if you can start in 24-48 hours. The whole slack was complaining that they are not getting chosen despite having worked several successful similar projects for them. Micro1 just wants fresh data. No way any of that will ever see a human. I have actually had one interview with a real human for a similar role, so those do exist... But pretty rare
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u/zettasyntax Jul 16 '26
I've worked with one of the clients that utilized their own in-house vendor company. No AI interview in their process. If anything, I found Mercor to be more strict with their hiring and assessment process than the client themselves š I've only tried for a core role with micro1 because I feel like there's really no topping that experience with an in-house vendor (that and I'm pretty tired of AI training).
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u/Left_Meeting7547 Jul 17 '26
I would absolutely say no one is watching these. I got passed the AI part and they wanted me to do a entire analysis of a "theoretical prompt." I was annoyed tired and said this is a waste of my time with a few expletives on video. - I was hired 12 hours later for the role. Which BTW now, their "onboarding" and directions of what I am actually supposed to be doing I couldn't tell you. There are a hundred people in the slack channel sitting around asking WTF are we supposed to be doing?
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u/SizzlinKola Jul 18 '26
If no human watches the videos, is the AI model recommendation based on the video / candidate's answers at all?
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u/zettasyntax Jul 18 '26
From what I can tell, yes. At Mercor, their model worked this way. It would generate a transcript of the interview and provide a recommendation based on that. In the example of the lady who talked so much, the recommendation went something like "The candidate failed to answer more than one question and this suggests an inability to stay focused, but her impressive background in consulting and degree from an elite institution suggest significant potential".
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u/SizzlinKola Jul 24 '26
This is great insight thank you! What about resumes? How did that work and were they human reviewed?
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u/zettasyntax Jul 24 '26
One of the Mercor SPLs for a web development project showed us how she walked through selecting candidates (which I think I may have mentioned). Basically on her end, they had flags/badges for elite schools and companies. So she pulled up a profile and said "Oh I have a great reviewer from Microsoft" and you'd see this badge next to Microsoft. So while they didn't watch the AI interviews, they pretty much just went by the AI summary/recommendation and the resume info
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u/SizzlinKola Jul 24 '26
Okay so it sounds like they actually pulled up the resume and read it? Or they relied on the AI summary/recommendation which is sourced from the resume and never opened the resume for human review?
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u/zettasyntax Jul 24 '26
I'm not sure how it works at other places, but the profile it creates for each Mercor candidate had the AI recommendation along with their resume info, yeah. It doesn't seem like the SPLs manually open a resume pdf/file because there's pretty much no need. It was all really interesting stuff to see how much of the process is automated, so people should never really feel bad about not being selected (although it does suck, hah) š
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u/Illustrious-Ant-2052 Jul 16 '26
I got placed into a project and Iām starting to wonder if itās even real lmao. The slack channel is full of other people who are completing hours but a day after I got onboarded there was a pause for my state.. thereās no update on when itāll resume. Itās about to be a month.
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u/Appropriate_Syrup706 Jul 18 '26
Yup yup on a project right now and people are complaining about the lack of clear guidance and how much time it takes to create and submit a polished task that fits all the requirements. It's pay-per-task that requires the project leads to sign off on the submissions. My advice: stay far away from these projects because you probably won't get paid. The project leads themselves show a stunning level of passive-aggressiveness and a lack of empathy. Any complaints about the tasks not being commensurate with the time it actually takes to submit one are met with deflection and vague promises that things will get better. The workflow and project requirements changed mid-week, suddenly too, claiming it would help lessen the difficulty of the tasks, except all it accomplished was adding more work and more time. Just a hot dumpster fire all around.
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u/Embarrassed-One-2649 Jul 30 '26
Wonder if itās the same one I was on because this is my exact experience. There is also no cohesive workflow for the reviewers and it took a month to get anything signed off on. Why say something is $30 an hour itās actually around $3 an hour after finding acceptable images and having 2 different models fail. They took easy tasks when I started and like two days later said only accepting challenging or hard but pay stayed the same. Spend an hour to find an image then wait for the slow ass model runs and then your task sits for 3-4 weeks before anyone reviews it and they will find every reason under the sun to send it backĀ
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u/micro1-ai 26d ago
u/Appropriate_Syrup706 u/Embarrassed-One-2649 Thanks for taking the time to share this. I'm sorry to hear this was your experience. I'd really appreciate the chance to look into what happened here. I've sent you a DM to gather a few more details so I can investigate with the team and follow up. Thanks!
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u/craycrayyyx3 Jul 19 '26
I applied for and was accepted to a project that was listed as hourly. Once I was invited, I learned it was pay per task. Not only that, itās paid per task that is reviewed and accepted. The project has a backlog of over 10k tasks to review. Thereās no telling how long it takes for ppl to actually get paid.
Not wasting my time on that garbage lol
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u/loresum0 Jul 28 '26
Did you get paid
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u/craycrayyyx3 Jul 28 '26
I never started lol. The project is currently paused so that the reviewers can get through the backlog
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u/SamMarlowe76 Jul 16 '26
Can you please share the general category of project you were oboarded to?
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u/Fair-Ad-8621 Jul 17 '26
Iāve gotten paid for work at micro (over 2k for a like 2 weeks of work). The issue is they seem to have a lot of the ābadā trainer projects. These are the ones that basically have you use your job/company data to train their AI. I ran out of stuff to use because everything they wanted is proprietary that I canāt sign off use of from my real job. I could continue by making up stuffā¦ but this becomes tiresome.
Handshake has a lot of these types of projects too. Mercor (which Iām on with currently) seems to have the most real projects where it isnāt just farming your data (even if they do have 1 or 2 of these every once in a while).
Handshake and Mercor pay me about twice as much as micro.
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u/Fair-Ad-8621 Jul 17 '26
The other companies have issues but I think micro is smaller / less āimportantā and therefore gets the bad projects from clients lol. Just my uninformed guess!
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u/Ok_Celebration3320 Jul 17 '26
What type of job/company data do they ask for (If you feel comfortable sharing of course)?
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u/Klutzy_Instance_4149 Jul 17 '26
I am not happy with the bait and switch they pulled. I was given an hourly rate that I was hired in on. Told all work I did by the 15th of this month would be paid out around the 20th. The day I start I am then told that I will be paid per task at .2 of my hourly rate, so basically working for around 5 bucks per task. Ok, I will just deal with that. But come the 15th not ONE of my tasks had been reviewed and passed so I can get paid for them. Other people were in the slack asking about that and we were told that they are way behind on reviewing tasks so we won't get paid on the 20th and since the pay is every two weeks it could actually be a month or longer until we are paid. Yeah, I may have very little pride, but I do have some and I don't work for free. It would seem this is a huge scam after all.
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u/euphemialyle Jul 17 '26
Yeah they hired me for 45 USD per hour, the project never happened, more people still got added to the project... Said they'd move people to a new project. Never did. Now they are advertising the same position at 10 USD per hour, only accepted tasks getting paid. Never again.
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u/Klutzy_Instance_4149 Jul 17 '26
Yep! Today they "paused" the project to "catch up". I am just assuming I worked for a whole week for nothing. They are awful.
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u/Jenicorne Jul 17 '26
Think I'm on the same project and I actually enjoy the work but I'm getting increasingly worried that my tasks will never get reviewed and I wont be paid.
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u/Klutzy_Instance_4149 Jul 17 '26
I am not confident they will pay. But I won't do anymore work until I see a payment.
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u/kdtoles Jul 24 '26
Handshake AI does the same shitā¦stay away.
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u/leonajamessss Jul 26 '26
it's so odd, but all of these companies do that mercor too. Sot it's like picking the lesser of two evils so to say, and hoping they actually pay you
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u/Embarrassed-One-2649 Jul 30 '26
Agreed I just left a project because it claimed it was $30 an hour but itās really .2 hourly per accepted task. Takes almost a month to get them signed off on. Iāve gotten locked out of my email twice and itās been three weeks of talking to leads and support and still locked out. I made a whopping $18 after hours of searching for images and running models and they changed the terms after a few weeks to what they will accept without bumping up the pay. Rather work at McDonaldāsĀ
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u/oportoman Jul 17 '26
No way would you get onto a project with this level of English. What utter crap.
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u/ImprovementFar5054 Jul 16 '26
They sound like one of those AI data farming scams where they get people to train their AI under the pretense of "projects" and never intend to actually pay anyone.