The Weirdest Gig in Tech: Getting Paid to Train Your Replacement

The hottest gig in tech isn't building AI. It's training AI to do your old job.

And it pays well. Should you take it?

Let me be clear: this is the weirdest labor market moment in tech history. We're living through something unprecedented. Companies are paying white-collar workers to essentially write their own replacement manual. The individuals make short-term money. The companies get leverage. Everyone calls it a win-win.

But there's a hidden cost no one's discussing.

The Economic Rationality Trap

Look, I get it. The economics are straightforward. If you're a software engineer, data analyst, or customer service specialist being offered good money to train an AI system, turning it down feels stupid. You can get paid now to do this work, or you can get displaced later for free. When you frame it that way, the choice seems obvious.

Take the money.

But here's what makes this moment so bizarre: it's economically rational for individuals while being collectively insane. Knowledge workers aren't just watching automation happen to them—they're actively participating in it. They're training their own competition, and unlike previous automation waves, this is voluntary and accelerated.

Think about that for a second. During the industrial revolution, workers weren't asked to help design the machines that replaced them. Factory workers didn't consult on assembly line optimization. Their jobs disappeared, yes, but they didn't speed up the process. This time? We're enthusiastically helping.

This Isn't Your Father's Automation

The "teach AI to code" phenomenon proves this isn't a repeat of blue-collar automation. It's hitting knowledge workers first and hardest.

For decades, the social contract was clear: get an education, develop specialized knowledge, and you'd have economic security. Physical labor could be automated, we were told, but thinking? That was the safe zone. The realm of human irreplaceability.

That contract is burning.

The people who thought their jobs were safe because they required "thinking" are the exact people being asked to document how they think. Every prompt you write to train an AI model is a step-by-step guide: "Here's how I approach this problem. Here's how I handle edge cases. Here's my decision-making process."

You're not just doing a task. You're externalizing your expertise.

And unlike a junior employee you might train, who could only do one job at a time, these AI systems scale infinitely. Train it once, deploy it everywhere. The leverage is asymmetrical in a way we've never seen before.

The Security Implications Are Worse

Let's talk about what's really being transferred here, because it's not just "how to write a function" or "how to analyze data."

Everyone training AI is teaching it their company's specific workflows. Their decision trees. Their edge cases. Their vulnerabilities. The way your finance team handles exceptions. The shortcuts your legal team uses to vet contracts quickly. The unwritten rules your security team follows when triaging alerts.

We're not just automating tasks—we're externalizing institutional knowledge to systems we don't control.

Think about the security implications. Every piece of training data is a map of how your organization operates. The AI doesn't just learn the task; it learns your organization's patterns, your blind spots, your architecture. You're creating a detailed playbook of your company's operations and handing it to a third party.

Who controls that data? Who can access those models? What happens when an employee at the AI company gets curious? What happens when there's a breach?

We spent decades teaching employees not to write down passwords, to protect proprietary processes, to guard intellectual property. Now we're systematically documenting all of it and feeding it into external systems because it's wrapped in the shiny package of "AI training."

The irony would be funny if it weren't so dangerous.

The Pricing Is Wrong

Here's the uncomfortable truth no one wants to say out loud: the pricing is completely wrong.

If you're training an AI to do your job, you're not selling your time. You're creating an externality. You're selling leverage against every other person who does what you do. Think about that scope. You're not just impacting your own future employability—you're impacting the entire labor market for your profession.

The market rate for that should be astronomical. It's not.

Most of these training gigs pay what? $50-150 per hour? Maybe $200 if you're specialized? That's good money for hourly work, sure. But you're not being paid for hours. You're being paid for creating a permanent asset that eliminates the need for human labor in your field.

The math doesn't work.

If training an AI eliminates the need for even 100 future jobs (a conservative estimate given how these systems scale), you should be getting a percentage of those savings. You should be getting equity. You should be getting royalties. You're creating something with enormous downstream value, and you're being compensated like you're doing data entry.

This is the ultimate arbitrage. Companies get permanent leverage—the ability to do work without ongoing labor costs. You get a one-time payment that doesn't reflect the actual value transfer.

So Should You Take It?

The question isn't whether you should take the money.

It's whether you're being paid enough for making yourself obsolete.

And right now? You're not.

I'm not going to tell you what to do. Maybe you need the money. Maybe you figure the automation is coming anyway, so you might as well get paid. Maybe you think you'll be one of the few who transitions to managing AI instead of being replaced by it.

All of those might be true.

But let's at least be honest about what's happening. This isn't just another freelance gig. This isn't just another way to make money with your expertise. You're participating in the systematic automation of knowledge work, and the compensation structure hasn't caught up to the reality of what you're selling.

The weirdest part? We're all acting like this is normal. Like it's just another evolution in how work gets done. Like the fact that we're voluntarily and enthusiastically training our replacements is somehow... fine?

It's not fine. It's unprecedented.

And if you're going to participate, at least demand to be paid like it.