When Patrick Ciriello lost his job and couldn't find work for nearly a year, his family's foundation crumbled.
"You hear about people who hit rock bottom," Ciriello told the Guardian. "Well, I was there."
For most of his career, the 60-year-old with a master's degree in information management designed software systems for banks, universities and pharmaceutical companies. But a series of economic shocks — the dotcom crash, the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid pandemic — cost him jobs, sometimes forcing him to dip into his savings and retirement funds. Each time, he eventually found another role.
That changed at the start of 2023. After losing a job building industrial printer heads, Ciriello sent out hundreds of applications for IT support roles, customer service positions and even a deli counter job at a local supermarket. He didn't get a single offer.
Even before losing his job, Ciriello, his wife, their 20-year-old son and their cat had been living in motels in northern Vermont for a year, an expense the state covered because they were experiencing financial hardship. When Vermont ended this funding at the close of 2023, Ciriello's family had to move out. For about four months, they slept in a Toyota Highlander. They often parked overnight in Walmart lots and spent their days in libraries and McDonald's with free wifi so he could submit job applications.
"I was practically getting 1,000 job alerts a day on my email," he said.
Then, in March 2024, Ciriello got what he calls a "cryptic" message on LinkedIn, advertising a job as a "content writer." He initially assumed it was a scam. He replied anyway.
Only after he started the job did he realize what it actually involved: training artificial intelligence models.
His first AI training job was with a contracting firm that hires workers to train Google's AI products, including its Gemini model. He made $21 an hour, working 40-hour weeks, to review AI responses and identify errors so engineers could refine how the systems behaved. After about a year, he and his colleagues were let go during a mass layoff in January 2025.
Now he has another AI training role through a staffing firm, where he has evaluated AI model responses for Meta since August 2025.
Ciriello works about 40 hours a week earning $20 an hour — far less than he made earlier in his IT career. The income covers rent, car payments, insurance, utilities and food for him and his family, but little else. His earnings are low enough that he qualifies for Medicaid and SNAP benefits.
"I don't think I'll ever be retiring," he told the Guardian.
Multiple job losses and medical crises over the years have left Ciriello and his family with no savings. What little remains from his paychecks goes toward creating a financial safety net for his son, who is disabled. His wife provides full-time care for him, making Ciriello the household's sole breadwinner.
"More than likely, what I'm doing will not exist a year from now," he said. "So I'm betting on myself."
He has been developing a coaching practice aimed at helping neurodivergent clients navigate professional and personal challenges, and an online course on how to job hunt.