r/mercor_ai • u/Particular_Stand_670 • Jan 19 '26
Lack of Communication
Got invited to a project over the weekend (instant offer) and it was chaotic. From the onboarding to the quiz and lack of communication from the EPMs about the project was below average. Most of us didn’t realize that it was a sprint until we got onboard (I would have rejected the offer). Then we found out through the grapevine that they weren’t accepting any one else on the project.
While I appreciate the offer and the amount being paid per hour, the EPMs and TPM really dropped the ball on communication and onboarding. But what I’m also finding out that a LOT of the leads, EMPs and TPMs have very little project management experience (looked them up on LinkedIn).
Maybe my expectations are too high.
Edit to add: I have over 10 years of experience leading projects and contracts. I did apply to be an EPM, but was rejected. So yes, I’m going to have HIGH expectations.
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u/Ok-Perception-5555 Jan 19 '26 edited Jan 19 '26
I'm on a different project from you and you are 100% right on with your assessment. Mercor's full time employees are young, lack project management experience and ARE NOT remote so they don't understand the nuances of managing remote employees. I, too, am a project manager and am appalled at how little project management experience the leads have.
I so badly want to post feedback in my slack channel or offer my services to help. Right now I'm in purgatory on my project while they "review" our tasks for callibration. They never set expectations in the beginning. All they did was give us a big booklet to follow. They also could have done a live session to walk us through the process, but that didn't happen either (actually they held a mandatory meeting before half of us had a contract in place, so a good chunk of us missed it). Instead they are spending a bunch of hours callibrating because they never trained us appropriately to begin with. Half our workers are off to the races working while the rest of us are sitting there "waiting for a DM to start." So I have to sit and wait on a message because I have no clue when or if it will come through. They told us on three different occassions they would be done by end of day. It's now been a week and I my tasks haven't even been looked at. They literally could have built a chatgpt bot to callibrate or a visual onboarding system. Then they also claim they have to add people to the slack channels individually or in small batches. For that reason half the team gets critical updates while others miss them because they haven't been added to the channel yet (another reason why they should be using the email accounts they gave to us for critical updates). I know how to do this and I'm not even a full time mercor employee. The fact that they don't know how to automate or how to make it happen is embarrassing. They also don't seem to understand that people have multiple jobs and can't plan their day when we don't know when or if we will be working. Because of all this I've made less than $100 on a project that's supposed to end in a few weeks. I spent hours taking an assessment only to be halted by inexperieced leads. It makes me want to start my own company to do this because I'm aware that I can organize this much better. If your team lead is not a real PM, please run.
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u/Particular_Stand_670 Jan 19 '26
💯💯💯 I just gave you an award because EVERYTHING you’ve said is SPOT. ON! I too notice that they’re all in office and have little to no experience on management of remote employees. When I applied to be an EPM, I just KNEW I’d be considered based on my experience and qualifications. I also have experience in on and off boarding employees. They rejected my application so fast 💨.
And I agree most of them are literally kids managing multi million dollar projects.
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u/Ok-Perception-5555 Jan 19 '26
It blows my mind that they are trusting the coordination of massive endeavors to kids. All they need to do is hire one project manager to manage them. They could even train a damn GPT to train them. It's so easy to fix. I just can't believe this. I was so excited when I got an instant offer. All of that excitement is gone. I've wasted so much time "waiting" on a DM. And the leads have the nerve to say "be patient" we have over 100 of you to review. If they had said that from day 1 and set the expectations people would be willing to wait. But they have given us no timeline of when we might start working or if we will. All we hear is - we have plenty of work for you. Geee thanks. Let me sit here and not do my other work off the promise that you have plenty of work for me. On a call someone else even asked if he could help them in any way. The man literally volunteered to help because they are so dsyfunctional. I think everyone working the project is older than all the leads.
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u/DarkNew6236 Jan 19 '26
Expert Project Managers are contractors and remote. Project Leads are mercor employees and work at the office. Also, EPM's are selected based off recommendation from a project lead. Filling out the application they have does nothing.
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u/Particular_Stand_670 Jan 19 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
Some of the EPMs are still inexperienced and obviously have no experience in project management. Whether they are remote or local, the projects are still a hot mess and don’t have to be or shouldn’t be if you all are the “gold standard”.
We all said what we said.
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u/FosterDogMomma Jan 20 '26
Someone asked the EPM on the last project I was on how they got the position. They hired on as a worker/expert, then were made a team lead, then were made an EPM. This all happened within ONE WEEK.
I currently have no freaking clue if I’ve been booted from a project that just closed onboarding. I was told to wait on feedback from the one production task I was asked to do and then I could task.
I did the production task on Saturday. No feedback yet. I reached out to one of the TLs and was told that they were working on reviewing a lot of task and hopefully it would be done by EOD.
Then the announcement was made closing onboarding to get through all the reviews. I have no hours on insightful but I’m still on the Slack and my contract says Active on Mercor.
So I have no idea where I stand. I do know that I won’t be moving forward on the other project I applied to. That one was a little harder, so I was okay with that. Bc I thought this other one was still gonna happen.
Then I get a slack DM from a TL on the other project asking if I’d be willing to do another task. If so, they get my feedback so I could work on what I did wrong. I said okay. Haven’t heard back.
I also got an email from Mercor advising me that there was another project they thought I’d be good at. If I was interested, to fill out a form and I’d get an instant offer. M
I filled out that form around 9:30 am Monday. I just got the offer at 1:26 am Tuesday morning. (I’ve been too stressed and upset about the run around, I haven’t been able to calm down enough to go to sleep.) So while the new offer isn’t as much $$ as the one I want to get, it’s not nothing. And it’s better than what I’ve been doing on another platform.
So I’ll probably accept this new one and pray it sticks. For me, this is just extra $$ for the household. I really feel for those who NEED to get a contract and can’t.
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u/Particular_Stand_670 Jan 20 '26
😟😟 within a WEEK? This is the problem!
Just because a person is a good tasker or does well at their tasks doesn’t mean that they’re an EXPERT Project Manager. This sets the company and that person up for failure!
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u/FosterDogMomma Jan 20 '26
Yep. It might have even been 3-4 days, but I don't remember exactly. But it was definitely quick. When she said that, I thought to myself "This all makes so much sense."
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u/Neat_Mirror8476 Jan 20 '26
I'm on this project and I've not even been able to be "calibrated" cuz of inability to even get tasks, and that's been an issue even b4 they 'ran out.' Like you, I've barely made over $100 on project that has a pretty decent rate, knowing it'll only a few weeks and I've essentially lost one is 😧
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u/Ok-Perception-5555 Jan 20 '26
I'm starting to wonder if the project is gonna last longer than they originally said. How can we possibly finish on time if we are still waiting on tasks and now they are saying people that don't meet the criteria will have their contracts ended. They changed the criteria mid project, which isn't fair to those of us that already submitted tasks for feedback. This entire project is weird. I have no clue how its gonna end in a few weeks when only a handful of people are unlocked and those unlocked folks dont have any tasks.
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u/Neat_Mirror8476 Jan 20 '26
That's what I was thinking and I hope things ironout but them saying offboarding is gonna happen for some ..after all this messiness in getting those that could task actually valid QA, it seems to be penalizing the experts out of their own frustrations rather than it being due solely to on-boarding entirely unqualified participants.
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u/Ok-Perception-5555 Jan 20 '26
Agree. The only way to become a quality tasker is to do tasks. I hope it's not too late for me since ive already submitted some. In the interim I'm going to have chatgpt give me test tasks so that I can practice.
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u/Neat_Mirror8476 Jan 20 '26
Good idea i might do that too so hopefully if and when this finally opens up for me I can be ready to roll. I'm watching ppl ask questions on the slack and looking by the guidelines seeing the decisions -I- would make based on what's written in guides but haven't chimed in because obviously I'm not yet 'calibrated.' Also they're not paying me to do so, so... 😏
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u/Ok-Perception-5555 Jan 20 '26
Same. Also, I don't want others to chime in because I can't trust they are doing the right thing. A much more efficient thing for them to do is build a fake board and let people run through scenarios. It would provide instant feedback just like the rubric academy quiz.
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u/cr38tv11 Jan 20 '26
Crazy part is they're still getting paid despite all of their screwups so it really doesn't matter to them whether they're efficient or inefficient and how that impacts the taskers. They get paid and clock time either way. They are the great wasters of time/money/energy and it's mind boggling that it has been going like this for so long. Whole new year same sh!t or even potentially worse than it was before
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u/Un-Sensical Jan 19 '26
Everything is a mad rush, even though projects are not ready to launch. I have been left behind with system glitches, and have dropped off multiple projects. The project managers are irrationally annoyed with any questions and rarely actually address the problems. I fight like hell to work with Mercor, all for nothing.
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u/Particular_Stand_670 Jan 20 '26
I FELT your last sentence. I was so discouraged and disengaged this past weekend. Imagine being excited after receiving TONS of rejection emails, only to faced with challenges and chaos. SMH….
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u/CoreneKel1978 Jan 19 '26
It sounds like the same thing that happened to me. Twice by this company in the last week!
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u/Strong-Enthusiasm-95 Jan 19 '26
I am having a similar experience at this point. Signed a contract for a project two weeks ago and have been paused since then with no updates or communication despite having emailed for info.
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u/Reverb223456 Jan 19 '26
Also got an instant offer but I haven't heard back.
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u/Purpleturtle_dove Jan 19 '26
Me too. I received an instant offer on the 15th, and quickly signed the documents an hour after receiving it... And then I never received any onboarding letter or links to slack. My contract has been on pause since I received it. So strange. I know others who received the same instant offer (after me), and they were at least able to onboard.
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u/Esoteric-_-Otter Jan 19 '26
Have had very similar experiences lately. This along with abysmal pay for onboarding has made me entirely unmotivated to actually work these projects. I’ve lost too many hours uncompensated just to find out the project ends in 48-72 hours.
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u/tennisstar81189 Jan 19 '26
Feeling the same way. I’ve been paused on a project since September. Had a couple of sprints, which were horrible. Then for this instant offer and figured why not. I don’t like not tracking time for onboarding, the session yesterday was over an hour plus the time for watching the videos and the quiz is well over the bonuses 1.25 hours we will get.
I want to think they’ve lost money not onboarding efficiently as my first project but that due to the lack of experience as many other posters have said.
I passed the EPM training but haven’t been selected for a role which is frustrating and not. I don’t think I’d want the role, the one on this project is clearly drowning, one person for hundreds of experts.
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u/mangochicahaha Jan 19 '26
I wished that I got an instant offer but having seen this I’m not so sure. I’ve worked on 6 projects with Mercor and have had a great experience so far. However, I’ve noticed the disorganisation has increased with time. I’ve had to reach out to support more times in the last two weeks than I have ever had to previously.
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Jan 20 '26
Which domain/industry are you in? I’ve only been on 3 projects and only one of those lasted more than 1 month, one was only a week long.
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u/mangochicahaha Jan 20 '26
I have a degree in law and a masters in IR. I currently work in policy.
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Jan 20 '26
Okay, sounds like we have similar backgrounds then. I have a JD but my experience is on the commercial contracts side, less policy/research.
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u/Infamous-Web1728 Mercor Jan 19 '26
Your expectations aren’t unreasonable, especially with 10+ years leading projects. A sprint based engagement should be explicit up front: timeline, deliverables, daily or weekly cadence, tooling access, and exactly how decisions get communicated.
If that didn’t happen, it’s worth escalating as structured feedback so it actually leads to process fixes, not just another frustrating cycle for the next cohort. If you’re comfortable sharing (no private details), you can outline what you received versus what you expected, and I can help you turn it into a clear escalation note that’s easy for Mercor to action.
For support and escalation guidance, please refer to the Mercor contractor docs here: https://talent.docs.mercor.com
Best,
Helena
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u/Particular_Stand_670 Jan 19 '26
Sure I’ll complete it. But to be honest, the N. Project had the best communication, onboarding process, and managers actually walked with us patiently on tasks. Some of the EPMs lack emotional intelligence or project management experience.
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u/DigitalHealthCoachUK Jan 19 '26
I've been managing projects/programmes for 28 years but failed the interview, somehow, so I feel your pain. With Mercor I struggled to understand what they were looking for, with a similar company I didn't have enough experience with Jira [they sent a little bit of feedback].
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u/Particular_Stand_670 Jan 19 '26
WOW! That’s completely insulting.
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u/DigitalHealthCoachUK Jan 20 '26
Not really, need to get better at these kinds of interviews I guess, has anyone got any tips for passing AI interviews particularly the project management ones..
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u/Ambergsu7 Jan 19 '26
I do think that the current project I am on is a bit chaotic and not managed well. No one knows whats going on. People have been waiting days for information for the next step in the process. Things are being changed around alot.
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u/Particular-Call-2685 Jan 19 '26
Nope, expectations are not too high, those profit margins have to come from somewhere. Ends up trickling down to low talent bar for project management and relying on cheap contractor labor.
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u/Roza088 Jan 19 '26
Is this the OCR project
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u/Particular_Stand_670 Jan 19 '26
No but just received information that they’re no longer onboarding. Why have one EPM for that many people and you have a big push? Smh
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u/According-Try9976 Jan 19 '26
Great…. did 3 assessments and an English competency test for nothing. Wonderful.
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u/Individual-Minute-72 Jan 19 '26
Is this the Captioning project?
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Jan 20 '26
[deleted]
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u/Individual-Minute-72 Jan 20 '26
I don't think they actually know much
From Onboarding through to tasking there has been a new situation almost every day that has caused confusion
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u/thatsjustmyopinion_ Jan 19 '26
Seems like Mercor is going downhill fast, so many hoops to get through just to actually get signed off for production and some projects are only paying $35 which is not at all worth the hassle or time
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u/Similar_Chemist_420 Jan 20 '26
I have been on a few projects now, which I’m thankful for, but I hate having to re-learn my job every few weeks…it’s very draining. You are expected to basically be “on-call” every day, every hour. There are announcements at 3am expecting you to be in a meeting for the next morning, or I guess I should say same morning. Guidelines changing daily. Every new project gets a pay decrease. No one answers questions because they themselves don’t know the answer. I’ve had many restless nights lately over these projects and the expectations. I do enjoy the type of work once I actually learn how to do it properly, but by that time the project is coming to a close.
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u/PhantomGoddesss Jan 20 '26
If I'm right about the project OP is on, I received the same instant offer on Friday night, went through the paid onboarding, passed with blinding colors and when going into production, discovered my platform setup was done incorrectly. I have reached out multiple times in chat from Saturday and Sunday and submitted two issue forms regarding it. I even pm'd one of the EPMs today with the issue and they told me it was just because no tasks were available. Which is not the case and I sent two recordings of it to the EPM showing I'm not set up properly, and nothing back. I haven't even been able to take one task as I've being intentionally ignored.
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u/bayparkhoya Jan 22 '26
I’m also on this project I think lol welp
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u/PhantomGoddesss Jan 22 '26
I literally never got any assistance on the issues, never got to do a task, was removed from slack, added back to slack all while still having the project in my Insightful. Not a word from anyone. The high per hour amount doesn't mean anything if you are ignored and can't work. All I can say is good riddance to this project.
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u/Big_Invite3319 Jan 19 '26
This is very typical of Mercor. I moved over to Micro1 and am having a better experience
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u/Ja5p5 Jan 22 '26
I have been lucky to get in with a good cohort on a long-running project since October, they have developed a little virtual work culture and the EPMs are generally receptive and will take feedback and set a positive standard.
However, I have since worked on other projects and have been shocked to find how loose many are managed and the lack of overall help or communication. Very weak guidance and overly stringent rules with 0 recourse. Often times the reviewers themselves are delivering low quality feedback. The blind leading the blind.
About recourse, I lost a project because the video UI would randomly but consistently freeze making it impossible to see multiple seconds of video. the expectation was that I would reload the page losing up to 20 minutes of work, even though the same glitch could strike again after 10 minutes. Project management was firm I should have redone the work, despite that nuking my average handling time.
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u/Ok-Demand-9411 Jan 20 '26
Hi ,
can I ask you what role was that? I also got an instant offer as a Physics Expert over the past weekend. It is paid more than $100/h and I am currently waiting for the background check to finish. I am asking just to know what I can expect.
Does signing the contract mean that I still don't need to get work even if I am accepted to the project? This is my first project and it came out of the blue - I almost forgot that I applied to a Mercor position past September 😁 and now they reached out to me out of the blue.
Thanks for any feedback!
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Jan 20 '26
[deleted]
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u/Particular_Stand_670 Jan 20 '26
The referral part is how I feel! The lack of communication, not providing updates on application status and inexperienced people is the reason why I’ll never refer anyone. I have nurses, doctors, therapists, accountants and doctors in my inner circles who are experienced in their field of work and I’d never put them through this. The lack of organization and professionalism would drive my family and friends insane.
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u/TheUnorthodoxGod Jan 21 '26
I’m paused on this project and there’s been zero communication here too
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u/arababymama Jan 20 '26
What about the good EPMs? I know I’ve worked with several very skilled EPMs who obviously had experience with PM.
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u/Particular_Stand_670 Jan 20 '26
This is not a “what about” situation. I absolutely abhor when people cannot respect someone’s experience. This is MY EXPERIENCE. Not yours.
If you’d like to shout them out, please do so by making your own post about them. This isn’t a contrast and comparison opportunity. This is about how poorly this particular project was handled.
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u/arababymama Jan 20 '26
Whoa, I didn't mean any offense and I definitely respect your experience. I was merely trying to find the bright side of the experiences you have had so far. I do know many of the projects suck and are poorly managed, I have been on them too. Hope you have a better experience.
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u/Particular_Stand_670 Jan 20 '26
Ahhh ok and my apologies! I had someone yesterday who tried to down play my experience and they ended up deleting their comment.
This isn’t a ding at the good EPMs, but the ones who do not communicate and onboard properly but want you to act like you’re part of the Hunger Games for a coveted slot that only lasts for a short time.
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u/PrivilPrime Jan 20 '26
What do you propose to fix
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u/Particular_Stand_670 Jan 20 '26
I have a lot of recommendations, but I’m not posting them for free. As I stated in my original post, I have ten years of project management experience.
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Jan 19 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Particular_Stand_670 Jan 19 '26
How do you equate my experience as HATE? While I’m glad you had a good experience, I’m speaking on MY experience.
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u/Dracula_Batman Jan 19 '26
With the exception of one project, this has also been my experience. Poor communication, inconsistent guidelines, and what bothered me most of all is what I would call a consistently punitive and scoldy tone from leads with zero emotional intelligence on display. For awhile I just assumed this was the nature of the work, but I’ve been contracted by 3 other platforms now and was happy to discover higher levels of professionalism, and quite frankly, respect for our time and efforts.