Moral Math: A Conversation with Charlie Trotter

What if you’re not burned out on the work itself, but on the conditions surrounding it?In the final episode of Season 1, Jess talks with designer and consultant Charlie Trotter about leaving a senior leadership role after years of carrying responsibility without enough authority to protect the people he managed.Charlie believed he was finished with design consulting. He experimented with building an apparel business, endured a financially difficult year, and eventually returned to freelance design out of necessity. What surprised him was that he still enjoyed the work—when he could do it with greater autonomy, clearer boundaries, fewer organizational distractions, and more control over how his skills were used.Their conversation explores leadership, burnout, independent work, the changing technology industry, and the capabilities that remain after a job title disappears. Charlie’s story isn’t a formula for reinvention. It is a reminder that the next workable step might be a contract, a small client, a return to an earlier skill, or a new configuration of abilities you already possess.Deprecated Human will return in January 2027 with Season 2 and a new format. After spending Season 1 investigating what is happening to workers, the next season will focus on applying what we learned: testing possibilities, exploring new directions, and creating opportunities that are not dependent on one employer, one title, or one predetermined path.Podcast Guest: Charlie Trotter has spent the last 20+ years in Design & UX consulting, both in delivery and director roles, and has worked with clients across a wide variety of industries. He is currently working as a freelance UX and graphic designer for a couple of small agencies, and spends his free time either dabbling in content creation, or hosting a monthly Art Club at his local library.Connect with Charlie:https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlietrotter www.thisischarlietrotter.netwww.tiktok.com/@sanity_farmsPodcast Host: Jess LowryJessica Lowry is the founder and Sociotechnical Systems Designer at ⁠⁠ENID Studio⁠⁠, a collective of practitioners who help changing businesses redesign how people, work, and technology fit together. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience in research, design, and strategy, she uses participatory methods to improve services, operations, and governance while helping organizations adopt AI responsibly.Connect with Jess: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jess Lowry LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Help Continue the InvestigationBecome a member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠DeprecatedHumanPodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠Each edition connects the personal stories shared on the podcast with the larger forces changing how we work. This isn’t another hustle-culture newsletter about optimizing yourself for a broken system.Become a SponsorPartnership can go beyond conventional advertising. Sponsors can support independent research, public podcast episodes, community programming, exclusive member experiences, useful resources, and offers that provide tangible value to members.Learn more: ⁠https://deprecatedhuman.life⁠Share Your Story If you have experienced prolonged unemployment, involuntary retirement, or the disappearance of the work you once did, message me if you are interested in joining me as a guest.⁠Share your story⁠ 

What happens when a difficult job search becomes an opportunity to earn a living in a new way?After more than 13 years in digital marketing—and nine years working with agencies—Sarah Magana had built a career spanning social media, SEO, web design, account management, performance marketing, and client services. She had advanced into executive leadership, managing teams and helping agencies strengthen the relationships that keep clients from leaving.Then a restructuring eliminated her position.Sarah had already discovered that the job market was no longer responding to her experience as it once had. But shortly after her layoff, a referral brought her first independent client. That opportunity led to another and eventually to The Last Light Collective, where Sarah now works as a fractional CMO and fractional VP of Client Services.In this episode, Sarah and Jess discuss:Why experienced candidates are struggling to stand out in AI-mediated hiringHow fractional work allows businesses to access senior expertise without creating a full-time roleWhy referrals depend on making your professional value clear and recognizableHow LinkedIn can help people understand what you know and when to think of youWhy AI-generated writing is making companies—and candidates—sound increasingly alikeWhat must remain human for a brand to feel authenticThe identity shift that follows the loss of a senior titleHow Sarah is redefining success around autonomy, family, energy, and meaningful client relationshipsThis is not an argument that everyone should start a business. It explores another way experienced professionals can package their capabilities, generate income, and keep moving forward when traditional employment becomes difficult to access.Sarah’s story offers a practical reminder: a job can disappear while the need for your expertise remains.Podcast Guest: Sarah Magana is a 2x award-winning executive-level client services and marketing leader, with over 13 years of experience scaling businesses and teams. She now owns Last Light Collective, a fractional marketing consulting company, to advise businesses and agencies on how to grow profitably. Her areas of expertise include marketing strategy and agency client retention. Connect with Sarah:thelastlightcollective.comlinkedin.com/in/sarahjanemaganaPodcast Host: Jess LowryJessica Lowry is the founder and Sociotechnical Systems Designer at ⁠⁠ENID Studio⁠⁠, a collective of practitioners who help changing businesses redesign how people, work, and technology fit together. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience in research, design, and strategy, she uses participatory methods to improve services, operations, and governance while helping organizations adopt AI responsibly.Austin Women in Technology (AWT) mentor. Jess is also a founding member of ⁠⁠Referral Reef⁠⁠, a community of consultants who trade warm referrals, provide support, and get paid to do it.Connect with Jess: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jess Lowry LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Help Continue the InvestigationBecome a member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠DeprecatedHumanPodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠Each edition connects the personal stories shared on the podcast with the larger forces changing how we work. This isn’t another hustle-culture newsletter about optimizing yourself for a broken system.Become a SponsorPartnership can go beyond conventional advertising. Sponsors can support independent research, public podcast episodes, community programming, exclusive member experiences, useful resources, and offers that provide tangible value to members.Learn more: ⁠https://deprecatedhuman.life⁠Share Your Story If you have experienced prolonged unemployment, involuntary retirement, or the disappearance of the work you once did, message me if you are interested in joining me as a guest.⁠Share your story⁠ 

What happens when valuable work loses institutional funding—but the people who need it haven't disappeared?After working together at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Anna Ackermann and Nithima Ducrocq saw successful digital-development programs disrupted by funding cuts despite continued demand. Rather than treating the work as finished, they used what they learned to create She Shapes Digital, an initiative that helps women turn ideas about responsible technology into tangible projects.Their conversation explores:Why confidence often develops through action rather than preparationHow a small project can create experience, relationships, and career optionalityWhy another credential may not provide the feedback that real-world experimentation canHow losing a prestigious title or employer can disrupt professional identityWhy entrepreneurship does not have to mean venture capital, enormous financial risk or working 60 hours a weekHow community makes it safer to begin before an idea feels perfectThey also examine responsible technology: the recognition that technology is not neutral and that every product creates consequences beyond its intended function. Many technology workers are asked to build within goals and business models they did not choose. An independent project can provide an opportunity to reconsider which problems deserve attention, who should participate in defining them, and what success should mean.Podcast Guests: Nithima Ducrocq is an impact tech founder and consultant, and co-founder of She Shapes Digital. She has spent over 10 years working across startups, NGOs and global organisations including UNDP, WFP and MSF. She has founded two ventures, including a women's health platform that reached 100,000+ users, and has worked as a digital innovation consultant across Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. Through She Shapes Digital, she helps women turn their ideas for a better tech future into real projects.Anna Ackermann has a background in digital rights and advocacy. Soon, she wanted to develop solutions for the problems she studied and entered the innovation ecosystem at UnternehmerTUM, Europe's leading start-up hub, where she worked on social entrepreneurship and early-stage venture building. At the United Nations she then guided 30+ teams and 1000+ individuals through innovation programmes and women-focused workshops, before founding She Shapes Digital. Upcoming Creator Studio:  https://maven.com/she-shapes-digital/from-idea-to-impact-studioFollow She Shapes Digital on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/she-shapes-digital/She Shapes Digital Website:  https://www.sheshapesdigital.com/Not sure if the cohort is for you? Check out this 1-hour free Idea Clinic: https://maven.com/she-shapes-digital/o/3a7c5aPodcast Host: Jess LowryJessica Lowry is the founder and Sociotechnical Systems Designer at ⁠⁠ENID Studio⁠⁠, a collective of practitioners who help changing businesses redesign how people, work, and technology fit together. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience in research, design, and strategy, she uses participatory methods to improve services, operations, and governance while helping organizations adopt AI responsibly.Connect with Jess: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jess Lowry LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Help Continue the InvestigationBecome a member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠DeprecatedHumanPodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠Become a SponsorPartnership can go beyond conventional advertising. Sponsors can support independent research, public podcast episodes, community programming, exclusive member experiences, useful resources, and offers that provide tangible value to members.Learn more: ⁠https://deprecatedhuman.life⁠Share Your Story If you have experienced prolonged unemployment, involuntary retirement, or the disappearance of the work you once did, message me if you are interested in joining me as a guest.⁠Share your story⁠ 

What happens when technology changes faster than people and organizations can absorb it?In this episode, Jess speaks with educator, facilitator, and operations expert Sam Barrow about what organizations misunderstand when they introduce new technology.Sam explains why telling employees to “experiment with AI” is not a strategy. Without shared goals, practical training, reliable sources, and clear guardrails, new tools can produce duplicated work, inconsistent information, and more capable individual contributors who are less effective as a team.Their conversation also challenges the idea that a job is simply a collection of tasks waiting to be automated. Human work includes judgment, empathy, cultural understanding, risk assessment, and the ability to recognize what another person needs—even when they cannot articulate it themselves.After Sam’s department was eliminated in 2023, she applied for hundreds of jobs while teaching, consulting, and working with individual clients. She is now building an income stream around helping people solve practical problems: learning workplace software, digitizing business processes, developing operating procedures, and gaining confidence with unfamiliar technology.Her experience offers job seekers an important alternative to chasing every new tool or waiting for an employer to recognize their value. Sometimes the better question is not, “Which job can I apply for?” but, “Who has a problem I already know how to help solve?”This episode explores why tools will keep changing—but the people who help others learn, adapt, and apply them well will remain essential.Podcast Guest: Sam BarrowSam Barrow is an educator and operations business expert with over 20 years of experience delivering individualized training for adults from all walks of life. She works with nonprofits and small businesses to find the right mix of process, people, and technology to meet the organization's needs. Her work helps individuals and organizations make complicated systems easier to understand, learn, and use.Interested in learning with Sam? Sam is offering listeners a 10% discount on their first three individual skills training sessions.Booking Link: https://calendly.com/sbarrowroyer/skills-training Promo Code: HUMANFIRSTPodcast Host: Jess LowryJessica Lowry is the founder and Sociotechnical Systems Designer at ⁠⁠ENID Studio⁠⁠, a collective of practitioners who help changing businesses redesign how people, work, and technology fit together. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience in research, design, and strategy, she uses participatory methods to improve services, operations, and governance while helping organizations adopt AI responsibly.Austin Women in Technology (AWT) mentor. Jess is also a founding member of ⁠⁠Referral Reef⁠⁠, a community of consultants who trade warm referrals, provide support, and get paid to do it.Connect with Jess: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jess Lowry LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Help Continue the InvestigationBecome a member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠DeprecatedHumanPodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠Each edition connects the personal stories shared on the podcast with the larger forces changing how we work. This isn’t another hustle-culture newsletter about optimizing yourself for a broken system.Become a SponsorPartnership can go beyond conventional advertising. Sponsors can support independent research, public podcast episodes, community programming, exclusive member experiences, useful resources, and offers that provide tangible value to members.Learn more: ⁠https://deprecatedhuman.life⁠Share Your Story If you have experienced prolonged unemployment, involuntary retirement, or the disappearance of the work you once did, message me if you are interested in joining me as a guest.⁠Share your story⁠ 

What happens when decades of experience, continuous learning, and more than 900 job applications produce only 13 callbacks?In this episode of Deprecated Human, Jess speaks with multidisciplinary designer, developer, and educator Nick Schroeder about how dramatically the path to paid work has changed, and why slowing down our thinking is a human superpower.Earlier in Nick’s career, opportunities frequently emerged through relationships. He could speak with someone about a problem, demonstrate what he understood, and help shape a role around the value he could provide. Their conversation examines why a low response rate is no longer meaningful evidence of someone’s ability or employability. They discuss the limitations of automated hiring, the pressure facing new graduates and international students, and why securing income may require looking beyond traditional employment.Nick’s career began in fine art before moving through graphic design, web development, user experience, automotive, and digital marketing. Today, he works independently with small businesses and mentors graduate students preparing to enter an unstable labor market.Jess and Nick also explore what design contributes beyond visual execution: understanding behavior, interpreting complexity, and asking whether technology should be created—not merely whether it can be. Drawing on Daniel Kahneman’s distinction between fast and slow thinking, they consider how AI accelerates pattern recognition while increasing the importance of human judgment, context, and meaning-making.The episode offers a practical invitation to job seekers: look beneath your previous title, identify the problems people trust you to solve, and consider more than one route to turn those capabilities into income. A job is one way to be paid for your experience. It is not the only one.Podcast Guest: Nick SchroederNick has been designing meaningful, memorable experiences for 20 years—on the web and on the ground. He cares about humanity- centered design (HCD+), sustainability, and privacy. Years in commercial design across the public and private sectors taught him many things. Now he's applying my experience to help students and small businesses owned by friends, friends of friends, and family.Connect with Nick: ⁠Nick Schroeder on LinkedIn⁠  ⁠Check out Nick’s work: Design Portfolio: https://njschro.github.io Podcast Host: Jess LowryJessica Lowry is the founder and Sociotechnical Systems Designer at ENID Studio, a collective of practitioners who help changing businesses redesign how people, work, and technology fit together. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience in research, design, and strategy, she uses participatory methods to improve services, operations, and governance while helping organizations adopt AI responsibly.Austin Women in Technology (AWT) mentor. Jess is also a founding member of Referral Reef, a community of consultants who trade warm referrals, provide support, and get paid to do it.Connect with Jess: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Jess Lowry LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠Continue the InvestigationBecome a member at ⁠⁠DeprecatedHumanPodcast.com⁠⁠Deprecated Human investigates how layoffs, AI, hiring technology, and changing workplace systems are redefining expertise, security, and human value.⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on LinkedIn⁠⁠Each edition connects the personal stories shared on the podcast with the larger forces changing how we work. This isn’t another hustle-culture newsletter about optimizing yourself for a broken system.Become a SponsorPartnership can go beyond conventional advertising. Sponsors can support independent research, public podcast episodes, community programming, exclusive member experiences, useful resources, and offers that provide tangible value to members.

What happens when your abilities extend far beyond the job title employers use to define you?Mariel Sanchez began her career in psychology before moving into technology as a research assistant at Meta Reality Labs. She went on to become a UX researcher, helping teams understand people, identify unmet needs, and make better decisions.After being laid off, Mariel spent more than nine months trying to return to the profession she had worked hard to build. She submitted approximately 60 applications a month, completed intensive interview processes, and used her savings while DoorDashing to pay her bills. Eventually, she decided to say a temporary goodbye to UX research and give an executive assistant role a genuine chance.Her honest LinkedIn post about that decision resonated with hundreds of people worldwide.In this episode, Mariel and Jess discuss the enormous unpaid effort required to search for work, the emotional consequences of rejection without feedback, and a hiring system optimized for familiar titles, linear careers, and exact previous experience.Mariel also reflects on what happens when we separate our abilities from our professional identities. The skills she developed through research—recognizing problems, finding gaps, organizing complexity and improving how people experience systems—can create value far beyond the technology industry.Beyond Titles is a conversation about surviving prolonged unemployment, questioning the promise of the linear career, and recognizing that leaving a profession does not mean leaving your capabilities behind.Podcast Guest: Mariel Sanchez Mariel Sanchez is a UX Researcher in the greater Seattle Area with over 6 years of experience, and her passion for research has allowed her to work on a variety of topics. From academic research touching on substance use in Latinx youth to body tracking in the virtual world. Today, however, she learns to fight the instinct to ask questions and find answers where there may not be any yet. Navigating a 9-month layoff, the impact of AI on her career, and an environment full of opinions on what the next few years will look like, she sits in the unknown where uncertainty, as it turns out, has its own kind of momentum.Connect with Mariel: ⁠Mariel Sanchez on LinkedIn⁠  ⁠Check out Mariel’s work: UX Research Portfolio: https://www.marielsr.com/Post that led to 100s of outreach: https://lnkd.in/p/gHJdHPscPodcast Host: Jess LowryJessica Lowry is the founder and Sociotechnical Systems Designer at ⁠ENID Studio⁠, a collective of practitioners who help changing businesses redesign how people, work, and technology fit together. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience in research, design, and strategy, she uses participatory methods to improve services, operations, and governance while helping organizations adopt AI responsibly.Austin Women in Technology (AWT) mentor. Jess is also a founding member of ⁠Referral Reef⁠, a community of consultants who trade warm referrals, provide support, and get paid to do it.Connect with Jess: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jess Lowry LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Help Continue the InvestigationBecome a member at ⁠⁠⁠DeprecatedHumanPodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠Each edition connects the personal stories shared on the podcast with the larger forces changing how we work. This isn’t another hustle-culture newsletter about optimizing yourself for a broken system.Become a SponsorPartnership can go beyond conventional advertising. Sponsors can support independent research, public podcast episodes, community programming, exclusive member experiences, useful resources, and offers that provide tangible value to members.Learn more: https://deprecatedhuman.lifeShare Your Story If you have experienced prolonged unemployment, involuntary retirement, or the disappearance of the work you once did, message me if you are interested in joining me as a guest.Share your story 

What happens when the career you built can still provide an income but no longer reflects what you want your work to contribute?Andrew Baek is a Bay Area writer and filmmaker whose career has spanned educational technology, digital media, and nearly five years producing video at Uber. After becoming a father and then experiencing a layoff, Andrew began reconsidering how he defines success, which principles should guide his work, and where his creative abilities could be most useful.In this episode, Andrew and Jess discuss the difficulty of changing direction when employers continue to define candidates by their previous titles. Andrew describes feeling caught between returning to the work the market already recognizes and pursuing his growing interests in writing, researching political economy, and worker organizing.Their conversation explores the pressure to remain marketable, the exhaustion that can make working independently feel impossible, and the division between earning a living and doing work that provides a sense of purpose. They also consider how automated hiring systems reinforce outdated assumptions about linear careers at a time when more people are combining employment, contract work, independent projects and multiple sources of income.Andrew shares how his involvement with the Democratic Socialists of America and the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee has helped him move from private concern toward collective participation. He also reflects on how his experience in filmmaking and visual communication might eventually support political education, labor organizing and other forms of mission-driven work.Collective Purpose is a conversation about becoming a beginner again, redefining professional success and finding ways to bring our abilities, responsibilities and principles into closer alignment.Podcast Guest: Andrew BaekAndrew Baek is a writer and filmmaker based in the Bay Area, and a volunteer organizer for East Bay DSA and the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee.Connect with Andrew: Andrew Baek on LinkedIn⁠  Check out Andrew’s latest work: Film portfolio www.andrewbaek.comArticles www.moosebaek.comPodcast Host: Jess LowryJessica Lowry is the founder and Sociotechnical Systems Designer at ⁠⁠ENID Studio⁠⁠, a collective of practitioners who help changing businesses redesign how people, work, and technology fit together. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience in research, design, and strategy, she uses participatory methods to improve services, operations, and governance while helping organizations adopt AI responsibly.Austin Women in Technology (AWT) mentor. Jess is also a founding member of ⁠⁠Referral Reef⁠⁠, a community of consultants who trade warm referrals, provide support, and get paid to do it.Connect with Jess: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jess Lowry LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Help Continue the InvestigationBecome a member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠DeprecatedHumanPodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠Each edition connects the personal stories shared on the podcast with the larger forces changing how we work. This isn’t another hustle-culture newsletter about optimizing yourself for a broken system.Become a SponsorPartnership can go beyond conventional advertising. Sponsors can support independent research, public podcast episodes, community programming, exclusive member experiences, useful resources, and offers that provide tangible value to members.Learn more: ⁠https://deprecatedhuman.life⁠Share Your Story If you have experienced prolonged unemployment, involuntary retirement, or the disappearance of the work you once did, message me if you are interested in joining me as a guest.⁠Share your story⁠ 

What happens when the career you spent decades building is no longer the future you want, but the business waiting on the other side is not yet able to provide the security you need?In this episode, Lauren and Jess discuss the changing value of consulting, the personal cost of pursuing the corporate ladder, and what happens when someone accustomed to solving complex problems for global organizations must build every part of a small business herself. While still consulting, Lauren and her husband began building a family-owned trades business. Lauren’s 2025 layoff gave her the opportunity to focus exclusively on scaling her small business, but having an alternative path did not make the transition simple.Their conversation explores the realities hidden beneath polished entrepreneurship stories: generating demand, managing cash flow, making payroll, operating ethically, learning to sell, and accepting that greater control over your work does not necessarily produce greater ease. Lauren also reflects on how the transition has changed her family’s relationship with money, work and success—and why the systems that once appeared fixed have proven more malleable than she believed. This is not a story about confidently leaving a corporate career to follow a dream. It is an honest account of living between employment and entrepreneurship, transferring hard-earned capabilities into an entirely different kind of business and continuing forward before the eventual outcome is clear.For Lauren, right now, the way out is through.Podcast Guest: Lauren BlairLauren is an entrepreneur and small business owner living in Los Angeles. Her professional career spans more than 25 years in strategy, design, and technology, taking her from digital producer during the dot-com era to account director in digital marketing and, eventually, senior manager in Big Four technology consulting.Connect with Lauren: Lauren Blair on LinkedIn⁠  Looking for cleaning services in the LA area? Check out: www.thisisdreamclean.comwww.proformwindowcleaning.comPodcast Host: Jess LowryJessica Lowry is the founder and Sociotechnical Systems Designer at ⁠⁠ENID Studio⁠⁠, a collective of practitioners who help changing businesses redesign how people, work, and technology fit together. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience in research, design, and strategy, she uses participatory methods to improve services, operations, and governance while helping organizations adopt AI responsibly.Austin Women in Technology (AWT) mentor. Jess is also a founding member of ⁠⁠Referral Reef⁠⁠, a community of consultants who trade warm referrals, provide support, and get paid to do it.Connect with Jess: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jess Lowry LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Help Continue the InvestigationBecome a member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠DeprecatedHumanPodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠Each edition connects the personal stories shared on the podcast with the larger forces changing how we work. This isn’t another hustle-culture newsletter about optimizing yourself for a broken system.Become a SponsorPartnership can go beyond conventional advertising. Sponsors can support independent research, public podcast episodes, community programming, exclusive member experiences, useful resources, and offers that provide tangible value to members.Learn more: ⁠https://deprecatedhuman.life⁠Share Your Story If you have experienced prolonged unemployment, involuntary retirement, or the disappearance of the work you once did, message me if you are interested in joining me as a guest.⁠Share your story⁠ 

What happens when hiring systems are designed to recognize one kind of candidate?After leaving her role as Director of Strategy and Analytics at Kickstarter, Laurie Stark applied to more than 100 jobs. She used AI to polish her cover letters, prepare for interview questions, and tried to package her nonlinear career into something hiring systems could easily categorize. It wasn’t working—and the person she was presenting to employers wasn’t authentic. So Laurie used her background in strategy, analytics, design, media, and paid acquisition to build Role Call, a subscription job-matching service that searches more than 17,000 company websites for relevant opportunities. Unlike job platforms built around selling services to employers, Role Call works directly for its paying customers: job seekers. The service is now approaching 100 customers.Role Call is a job-matching platform for mid-level and senior knowledge workers in the United States. It scans the websites of over 18,000 companies and matches those jobs to job seekers based on a comprehensive candidate profile that goes beyond job titles and a simple list of skills. When there's a potential match, the seeker is notified, usually within a few hours of the job being posted.Laurie joins Jess to discuss:How hiring systems reward candidates whose careers are easiest to categorizeWhy major job platforms are designed around the needs of employersGhost jobs, misleading posting dates, and the emotional cost of applyingWhy multidisciplinary careers can be difficult to explain but valuable when building something newUsing AI to build a product without surrendering human judgmentThe less glamorous realities of becoming a solopreneurWhy slow, customer-supported growth can be better than venture capitalHow employed workers can preserve their options before a layoff happensThis is a conversation about finding work, creating work, and recognizing the value of experience that a machine can’t replicate or understand. Interested in trying Role Call? Get 50% off your first month! Check out: https://rolecall.careers Use promo code: DEPRECATEDPodcast Guest: Laurie StarkLaurie has spent more than 10 years working in tech, including recent stints at Kickstarter and Google. In 2026, she launched Role Call, a job-matching platform, as a solo founder. She lives in Los Angeles with her two cats.Connect with Laurie: Laurie Stark on LinkedIn  Need better job leads? Check out Role Call: https://rolecall.careersPodcast Host: Jess LowryJessica Lowry is the founder and Sociotechnical Systems Designer at ⁠⁠ENID Studio⁠⁠, helping businesses redesign how people, work, and technology fit together. Applying experience in research, design, and strategy, she uses participatory methods to improve services and operations and help organizations adopt AI responsibly.Austin Women in Technology (AWT) mentor. Jess is also a founding member of ⁠⁠Referral Reef⁠⁠, a community of consultants who trade warm referrals, provide support, and get paid to do it.Connect with Jess: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jess Lowry LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Help Continue the InvestigationBecome a member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠DeprecatedHumanPodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠Each edition connects the personal stories shared on the podcast with the larger forces changing how we work. This isn’t another hustle-culture newsletter about optimizing yourself for a broken system.Become a SponsorPartnership can go beyond conventional advertising. Sponsors can support independent research, public podcast episodes, community programming, exclusive member experiences, useful resources, and offers that provide tangible value to members.Learn more: ⁠https://deprecatedhuman.life⁠Share Your Story If you have experienced prolonged unemployment, involuntary retirement, or the disappearance of the work you once did, message me if you are interested in joining me as a guest.⁠Share your story⁠ 

What happens when you learn that your job is ending before you know what comes next?After nine years as Program Director for Research at MIT Sloan Management Review, Allison Ryder learned that the publication would be winding down—even though its work remains respected, valuable, and successful. With seven months of notice, Allison is navigating an unusual in-between: continuing to do meaningful work, helping her colleagues close an important chapter and searching for her next opportunity at the same time.In this episode, Allison and Jess discuss the illusion of institutional stability, the emotional reality of an unforeseen layoff, and the pressure to project confidence while still processing a loss. They also examine how applicant-tracking systems and AI reward exact titles and keywords, often overlooking multidisciplinary experience and transferable skills.Their conversation explores why professional relationships matter, how networking can help us evaluate opportunities rather than simply pursue referrals, and what it means to separate our identity from the organization that employs us.An unknown future is not necessarily a dangerous future. It is simply a future that has not taken shape yet.Podcast Guest: Allison Ryder Allison connects people, ideas, and organizations and builds the programs that turn those connections into something real. She’s led AI research programs at MIT Sloan Management Review and produces the popular artificial intelligence podcast Me, Myself, and AI. She’s now figuring out her next chapter: what kind of work she wants to do, where she can have the most impact, and how to translate a career that has never fit neatly into one box into the next opportunity.Connect with Allison: Allison Ryder on LinkedIn  Website: https://www.unmarketedproducts.com/aboutPodcast Host: Jess LowryJessica Lowry is the Founder and Socio-technical Systems Designer at ENID Studio, a collective of practitioners that enable organizations to redesign work, services, and governance for an AI-enabled future through participatory design and human-centered digital transformation.She is also a member of Effective Immediately, a community for people leaving, or thinking about leaving, corporate life to build something of their own.  Members get honest feedback, business fundamentals, and access to people a few steps ahead while they validate their idea, land first customers, and build the foundation.Connect with Jess: ⁠⁠Jess Lowry LinkedIn⁠⁠Join Jess at ⁠Effective Immediately ⁠Continue the InvestigationBecome a member at DeprecatedHumanPodcast.comDeprecated Human investigates how layoffs, AI, hiring technology, and changing workplace systems are redefining expertise, security, and human value.Membership takes the conversation beyond the podcast. Connect with listeners navigating similar changes, access practical resources, and participate in a community built around mutual support—not professional performance. Your membership also helps keep the podcast independent and the broader investigation going.⁠⁠Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on LinkedInEach edition connects the personal stories shared on the podcast with the larger forces changing how we work. Subscribers receive:Research summaries and links to original sourcesKey insights from podcast conversationsEmerging signals affecting work and employmentPractical recommendations for individuals and organizationsMonthly reports connecting findings from across the investigationThis isn’t another hustle-culture newsletter about optimizing yourself for a broken system. It is an ongoing research project examining how work, expertise, and human value are changing—and what we can do about it.