That's exactly what happened at Mercor, the San Francisco-based data-labeling startup currently valued at a cool $10 billion. Reports have surfaced painting a picture of a company culture that's less "move fast and break things" and more "break people and move on."
The details are grim. Employees working until 2 a.m. on projects described as "strategically incoherent." Constant restructuring that left teams whiplashed and demoralized. Workers fired without notice or severance. Some reportedly stiffed on their final bonuses on the way out the door. And through it all, Mercor's three co-founders have ascended to become the youngest self-made billionaires of 2025.
Self-made, sure. But at whose expense?
Look — we're not anti-hustle here at The Dissent. We believe in free markets, hard work, and the right of companies to set high standards. But there's a difference between a demanding workplace and what former employees are describing as "inhumane working conditions" and "face time slavery." When you're withholding earned compensation from departing workers, you're not running a lean startup. You're running a grift with venture capital backing.
As one SF resident put it: "A 23-year-old is not going to know how to properly run a company. There's a reason why mature companies have bureaucracies like HR that would have never let such a survey fly."
And here's the libertarian case for why this matters: markets only work when contracts are honored and workers have real information. When companies dodge severance obligations and stiff people on bonuses, that's not capitalism functioning — that's fraud wearing a Patagonia vest. The youngest billionaires in America didn't build a $10 billion company through innovation alone; they built it by treating human beings as disposable inputs.
Mercor's product is literally human data labeling — the unglamorous backbone of AI training. The irony of a company that profits from human labor while allegedly treating its own employees as expendable shouldn't be lost on anyone.
San Francisco has seen this movie before. The question is whether anyone with actual authority — investors, board members, regulators — will bother pressing pause before the credits roll.
