Big tech wants to prepare you 🫵 for AI

Today is a special day: It’s Salary Transparent Street’s second birthday! 🎂 Here’s to two years (and many more) of asking total strangers the most uncomfortable question in the name of financial transparency. 🤝

P.S. Big thanks to those of you who came to our birthday party on Sunday to celebrate with us! It was such a pleasure getting to spend time with you and seeing the STS community IRL. 💚

 1   WFH cashiers from the Philippines are popping up around NYC 🛜

Sansan Chicken is a Japanese fried chicken joint in NYC. There’s nothing particularly unusual about it…except that they’ve hired cashiers from the Philippines who use Zoom to assist with customers’ orders.  

Um…why is Sansan doing this? “Put yourself in the restaurateur’s shoes,” founder Brett Goldstein told Fortune. “Minimum wage is going up. Rent is going up. Either they’re going to have to increase the cost of the food, which you can only do to an extent…or you can cut costs.” 

And one of the biggest costs for restaurants? Labor, which accounts for about 36% of their total expenses. That’s why hiring virtual employees from the Philippines—who charge just 10% of what they’d pay IRL workers—is a tempting alternative. 

But it’s a model ripe for exploitation. The virtual employees are paid $3 an hour (meanwhile, NYC’s minimum wage is $16). There’s also concern that if the practice goes mainstream, it could eliminate minimum-wage jobs within the community. 

The bottom line: Ordering from someone via Zoom versus IRL just doesn’t have the same vibe. As one Sansan Chicken customer put it: “Human interaction is way better than video.” 

 2   Virginia’s governor vetoes state’s paid family and medical leave 🗯️

Virginia’s governor, Glenn Youngkin, is on (the worst) vetoing roll. Last month, he vetoed pay transparency legislation that would’ve required companies to disclose pay in job postings and prevented them from asking for your salary history. 

He’s at it again, this time blocking a bill for a paid family and medical leave program starting in 2026. SB 373 would’ve given workers up to 12 weeks of paid leave to… 

• ➜ Deal with a medical condition 

• ➜ Care for a sick family member

• ➜ Adjust to caring for a new child

His reasoning? A “one-size-fits-all solution…removes the incentive for the private sector to provide [paid family and medical leave] benefits.” But the privatization of healthcare hasn’t been serving Americans: Not only is it more expensive than non-profit or government care, but it also tends to be of lower quality. 

If you live in Virginia, you can fight back. Here are two ways to do just that: 

1. Contact Governor Glenn Youngkin’s office and voice your concerns. 

2. Vote in the upcoming Virginia governor elections in 2025.

 3   Big tech wants to prepare you for the AI boom 🤖

Big Tech wants to help you 🫵 prepare for AI. Accenture, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and other tech giants are joining Cisco to train 100 million technology workers to mitigate AI’s professional impact, per HR Drive. 

Here’s the game plan for some of these companies: 

• Cisco will train 25 million people with cybersecurity and digital skills by 2032. 

• Microsoft announced it’ll train 10 million people from underrepresented communities with in-demand digital skills by 2025. 

• IBM wants to equip 30 million people with digital skills and two million in AI by 2030. 

This is great news. Being equipped with AI skills directly translates to better pay: Jobseekers with generative AI skills saw a 50% salary increase—with the average salary starting at $174,000—compared to those without, found Indeed. 

But as they say on Love Island, it’s still early days. It’s unclear how closely these companies will work together, how they’ll structure the curriculum, and most importantly, who will access the training.

News Flash: 🗞️ The fifth episode of The Break Room, our series interviewing professionals on the ins and outs of their careers, just dropped! 

This week, we’re shining a light on Software Engineers. Three seasoned professionals chatted about…

• Compensation (Heads up: The average salary is $105,501)

• If they feel threatened by AI 

• Whether they recommend being self-taught, getting a degree, or going to a boot camp 

…and so much more! 

Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode. 💚

• This $249,000 salary job isn’t in tech…it’s in pest control. 🤯

• Meet the woman earning six figures by working multiple jobs in Arlington, Virginia. 

• Fuel Transport is experimenting with a 35-hour workweek (*without* cutting pay). 

• DoorDash is piloting a benefits savings program for Philly workers. 

• $100,000 sounds like a lot, but…what does it get you in NYC or LA? STS investigates. 

Thanks for being here! Last week, we told you about how employees at McKinsey are being offered up to nine months of pay to quit. We asked: Would you accept that deal? 

66% of you said: Absolutely. 

“If you’re telling me you don’t want me working there, you don’t have to tell me twice,” one of you said.

To that, we say: Amen. 

See you next week!