Deprecated Human
What happens when human value is quietly redefined?
Deprecated Human is an independent podcast, research project, and growing community investigating how changes in work, technology, and hiring are affecting the people living through them.
Partner with Deprecated Human
Why this exists
Something is changing in the way we value people at work.
Layoffs. Long-term unemployment. AI-assisted hiring. Algorithmic screening. Career reinvention. The erosion of traditional career paths. Experienced professionals struggling to get through an initial screening process.
There are plenty of explanations for what’s happening.
There is considerably less investigation into what it feels like to live through it—and what the evidence actually tells us.
Deprecated Human combines lived experience, conversations with people navigating the change, expert perspectives, and research to understand what’s happening beneath the headlines.
Not another future-of-work prediction. An investigation of the present.
Latest investigation
Episode 22 · October 13, 2026 · 51 min
Referable Expertise: A Conversation with Sarah Magana
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.
Episode 21
Build Differently: A Conversation with Anna Ackermann and Nithima DucrocqWhat 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.
Episode 20
Learning Forward: A Conversation with Sam BarrowWhat 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.
Episode 19
Thinking Slow: A Conversation with Nick SchroederWhat happens when decades of experience, continuous learning, and more than 900 job applications produce only 13 callbacks?
What we’re investigating
The questions we’re asking
- 01Why are experienced professionals struggling to get through hiring systems?
- 02What happens when AI becomes part of how human capability is evaluated?
- 03What does a career look like when the traditional ladder disappears?
- 04How are people creating income outside conventional employment?
- 05What happens to professional identity after a layoff?
- 06Which parts of work should we automate — and which require human judgment?
- 07What do organizations lose when experience and institutional knowledge disappear?
- 08What are people building when the existing system stops working for them?
Participatory research
The investigation is being shaped by the people living it.
The people experiencing this aren’t just the subjects of the investigation. They’re helping lead it.
Listener experiences, interviews, surveys, conversations, research, and contradictions help determine what Deprecated Human investigates next.
That means the project can follow emerging questions rather than beginning with a predetermined answer.
Membership
Don’t navigate this alone.
Deprecated Human is building a community for experienced professionals trying to understand what comes next. Membership helps support the independent investigation while creating a place to go deeper.
Membership is evolving alongside the community. Early members will help shape what it becomes.Become a member
- Members can receive things such as
- Exclusive conversations and content
- Deeper research findings
- Member discussions and events
- Practical resources
- Early access to new investigations
- Opportunities to participate in research
- Offers and experiences from carefully selected partners
For partners
Help us investigate what comes next.
Deprecated Human works with organizations whose products, services, expertise, or missions can genuinely help the people we’re reaching.
Partnership 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.
In return, partners have an opportunity to build an authentic relationship with a highly specific community of experienced professionals—not simply purchase impressions.
Audience
Who we’re reaching
- 79%
- of measured podcast audience is 35–59
- Podcast analytics, trailing 90 days
- 69%
- female
- Podcast analytics, trailing 90 days
- 90%
- U.S.-based
- Podcast analytics, trailing 90 days
- 56,638
- LinkedIn members reached
- LinkedIn analytics, trailing 90 days
- 95,531
- LinkedIn impressions
- LinkedIn analytics, trailing 90 days
Our audience includes experienced professionals, consultants, leaders, independent workers, job seekers, career changers, and people navigating the intersection of work and technology.
Partnership philosophy
Trust matters.
Partners don’t buy access to members or their data.
They don’t determine research findings or editorial conclusions.
And we aren’t interested in promoting products simply because someone is willing to pay for exposure.
We work with organizations when there is a credible reason to believe the relationship can create value for the people participating in this community.
Editorial independence remains with Deprecated Human.
About the host
Jess Lowry
Jess Lowry is a sociotechnical researcher, systems strategy leader, and founder of ENID Studio.
For more than 20 years, her work has explored the relationship between people, technology, organizations, and the systems in which work happens.
After experiencing the disruption reshaping the technology industry firsthand—and watching increasingly experienced professionals struggle to navigate a changing job market—she created Deprecated Human to investigate what was happening.
Her work has always focused on the space between systems and people—and what happens when that relationship breaks down.
Newsletter
Follow the investigation between episodes.
The podcast captures the conversations. The newsletter follows the evidence. Each week, Jess examines emerging research, patterns from the interviews, listener experiences, and questions that deserve deeper investigation.
Read the newsletter on LinkedInThe quiet disappearance of the mid-career role
What the last three quarters of hiring data suggest about where experienced work is going.
Read on LinkedIn
When the screening system becomes the employer
Evidence on how much of an early hiring decision is now made before a person is involved.
Read on LinkedIn
Identity after the layoff
Patterns from listener interviews about how professional selfhood rebuilds — or doesn't.
Read on LinkedIn