Welcome back! "The Bear," everyone's favorite kitchen dramedy, is back for its third season. We figured out how much the characters would actually get paid working at a restaurant in Chicago.
In today's big story, we're looking at how people are secretly outsourcing parts of their jobs, but job promotions are harder to get than ever.
What's on deck:
But first, strange times.
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Let's be honest: Work has gotten really weird.
The workplace has been in a constant state of change since the onset of the pandemic. There was the great resignation and quiet quitting. Super commuters and the overemployed.
But now the workplace has reached its most (or least) evolved form: People paying others to do their job for them.
The use of "shadow stand-ins" — someone you outsource parts or all of your job to, unbeknownst to your employer — is on the rise, writes Business Insider's Rob Price.
Remote work, global social networks, and ubiquitous software tools mean workers can easily find low-paid helpers, often in India and Pakistan, to do their grunt work. Facebook and Telegram are home to thriving marketplaces for hiring this hidden labor.
Workers hiring shadow stand-ins can be unqualified for their jobs, overwhelmed, greedy, or just lazy. And they often have, shall we say, less-than-ideal views of their employers.
"For-profit corporations are government-sanctioned psychopaths, existing only to predatorily and parasitically earn profit," one disciple told Rob. "Corporations are owed no moral obligation whatsoever."
The irony is the shadow stand-in ecosystem operates similarly to the companies these outsourcers so despise. Shadow stand-ins are typically paid a fraction of the salary earned by the actual employee. One employee also described to Rob struggling to deal with a shadow stand-in's sub-par work and eventually "firing" them.
Meanwhile, the people who are doing all the work themselves are having a tough time getting any recognition.
The percentage of promotions being handed out continues to shrink as companies keep their belts tight amid high interest rates and uncertain economic conditions, writes BI's Aki Ito.
And don't bank on this just being part of a broader workplace cycle. Hard lessons were learned in 2023 when companies issued wave after wave of layoffs. They now seem desperate to avoid ballooning back up in size and salaries.
If promotions are out of the question, changing jobs has always been the best way to get a big salary bump.
But that's proving difficult too, as the hiring of high-salaried employees has slowed considerably. And even if you do find a job posting, there's a good chance it could be fake.
Ultimately, you're left working with colleagues who might not be working at all or are secretly on vacation. You and your boss probably don't trust each other, and you don't have work friends to commiserate with.
Oh, and don't forget the overarching fear of your job being replaced by AI at a moment's notice.
Like I said, work has gotten really weird.
A quick recap of the top news from over the weekend:
The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Jordan Parker Erb, editor, in New York. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Grace Lett, associate editor, in Chicago. Annie Smith, associate producer, in London. Amanda Yen, fellow, in New York.