Support Human

“Y’all remember when Klarna announced back in 2024 how awesome their chatbot was and how it was doing the work of 700 agents, then just a year later admitted that its “pursuit of cost-cutting in customer service, fueled by advancements in artificial intelligence, has gone too far” because the support the chatbot was providing was low quality and customers wanted to speak to humans?

"Your favorite brands’ favorite platform The brands you know and love? Chances are, they’re powered by Klaviyo. Here, you’ll be part of what keeps those brands growing and connecting with millions of people every day.

Look, I know some people care about this. I am not one of them, and when getting to things like actual benefits takes scrolling almost all the way to the bottom of the Careers page, I'm gonna call you fucking ridiculous. Because it's fucking ridiculous.

Three promises we make to every Klaviyo: You’ll do challenging, meaningful work—pushing boundaries, driving growth, and creating lasting impact. You’ll work with ambitious, bold peers—bar-raisers who inspire each other and do work people rave about. You’ll work on an inspiring mission—empowering creators to own their destiny.

Most jobs I looked at were fine; not amazing, but not actively concerning. But I came across some that were full of flags, which -- over 10 years working in CX and in Tech -- I've learned not to ignore lest I end up in a bad job for the wrong company.

I started to write down those flags, trying to figure out which were serious enough to be red flags and which were just reasons for caution as yellow flags. Putting them on a bingo card made it a fun game for me rather than a depressing exercise I had to do.

Eventually, I had enough entries to fill up a few bingo cards, and I realized it wasn't just a silly game -- it was a real tool I was using to avoid jobs that would be a bad fit for me. Then I realized it could be a helpful tool for others, too.

Thus Bad Job Bingo was born.

In this batch: I rate 10 jobs, including roles in support engineering, trust & safety, community, and knowledge:

Our collective ambition is bold. We are creating an entirely new category and customer experience – one that democratizes luxury

Girl, what were you doing at the devil’s sacrament

The Archive of Our Own (a project of the Organization for Transformative Works) announced today that it had surpassed 10 million registered users this month (which, as their release points out, is roughly the population of the entire country of Portugal).

AO3 is, of course, one of the largest (if not the largest) fanfiction archives in the world. It’s relevant to this newsletter not only because yours truly is an avowed fangirl, but also because it’s a monument to a bygone internet era that’s completely free from enshittification: no algorithms, no AI, no marketing, no data-mining, no mobile apps, just a simple platform for finding and reading fanfiction that is entirely funded and managed by fannish volunteers. It also deals with some of the thorniest moderation dilemmas of our time, and has evolved a works-tagging system that outshines anything that has come before it in Tech.

Since its very inception, AO3 has been a canary in the coal mine for the state of the internet. Whatever laws and legal cases and technology that threaten the health and existence of AO3 will invariably threaten future freedoms of and on the World Wide Web. The fact that AO3 has stuck around long enough to accrue over 10 million registered users is a miracle wrestled into being by the enormous effort of impassioned coders, tag wranglers, legal scholars, and support and trust & safety professionals, all of whom volunteered themselves for a community they refused to see become a victim of censorship and capitalism. That’s a miracle that we should all celebrate.