Work is a Verb

Issue #15

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Hey Reader,

There's a new productivity tax spreading through remote teams: glossy-looking AI output that can't be trusted, verified, or shipped. It clutters Slack, complicates codebases, and multiplies in shared drives.

It has a name: work slop. Unlike the obviously low-effort AI spam clogging social media, work slop often looks and feels high-quality at first glance. That's what makes it dangerous. A polished-sounding output missing key context can waste more time than no output at all.

Here’s the damage: BetterUp Labs × Stanford Social Media Lab found that ~40% of U.S. knowledge workers received AI-generated “workslop” in the past month, and each incident took about two hours to fix. Time spent verifying, rewriting, or re-doing work that looked finished but wasn’t. That’s not a productivity gain; it’s kicking the can down the road at scale.

Zooming out, MIT Media Lab’s Project NANDA reports that about 95% of enterprise gen-AI initiatives show no measurable P&L impact.

That isn't stopping CEOs from rapping about AI on investor calls, though, and a surprising number of companies are mandating adoption. The thing is... employees are already adopting; they just aren't sharing that with leadership.

Meanwhile, shadow AI is booming. Your employees are learning AI the practical way, through trial and error. The ones still learning are generating your work slop, and although many employees are actually making great use of AI, they're not sharing what works.

Why? Because mandates without training breed fear, and the perceived reward for AI efficiency is getting replaced by AI. Fear pushes usage underground. Underground usage creates wildly uneven quality. And nobody builds institutional knowledge about what actually delivers results.

When constrained by sources, prompts tied to SOPs and human-in-the-loop workflows, AI can be a game changer. When it's adopted just to check a box, the game still changes... to a needle-in-the-haystack hunt for hallucinations.

The problem isn't the technology. It's treating it like magic instead of a power tool. A tool that amplifies productivity and is capable of creating amazing things when used correctly, or expensive garbage when it's not.

Your Q4 Playbook:

Standardize: Offer best-in-class AI tools so people don't have to bring their own and create an organized place for employees to share prompts, projects, and context.

Define Intent: Be transparent about your vision for AI adoption at your company. So many companies have used AI as a justification for layoffs that employees can only assume the worst. Cost cutting is the laziest application of revolutionary technology—how are you going to use AI to grow and benefit all of your stakeholders instead?

Train & Incentivize: Run workshops for your team or sponsor outside training. Pay a micro-bonus for shareable prompts or playbooks that move the needle.

The Power of Empty Space: Why a Full Calendar Saps your Strength Let's delve into why our primary organization tool can feel so unnervingly chaotic and explore effective strategies to reclaim our most valuable resource. ​ Read more

Quick job board update: We're still cooking. 👨‍🍳

If you replied to my last email with ideas, thank you. Seriously. Your feedback is shaping what we're building—from the filters we're prioritizing to the company vetting process we're refining.

If you didn't get a chance yet, it's not too late. Hit reply and tell me:

• What's the most annoying thing about your current job search?
• What features would we need to make this your one-stop resource for finding remote job openings?
• How can we make it easier for you to find companies that actually deserve you?

P.S. — If you're not actively job searching, forward this to someone who is so they can get early access when we launch.

Working remotely—but never alone,

Jim