Source: NYT > Business (paywall)
Shared housing marketed as AI talent incubators reproduces the power asymmetries and abuse dynamics of traditional tech culture, with added isolation—residents live, work, and socialize within the same hierarchy with limited external accountability. The model outsources worker housing and community-building to informal structures that bypass employment law and standard HR frameworks. Founders and investors extract labor and social capital from younger engineers while controlling their living situations. AI's talent shortage is normalizing arrangements that concentrate power rather than distribute opportunity, despite the mythology of democratized access.