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The Lonely Office

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Rating
★★★★★
4.8
from
164 reviews
This podcast has
160 episodes
Language
English
Explicit
No
Date created
2023/02/22
Latest episode
2026/09/29
Average duration
33 min.
Release period
18 days

Description

Welcome to The Lonely Office, an podcast about making sense of the increasingly blurry line between work and life, brought to you by Glassdoor. We tackle real workplace stories from anonymous firsthand accounts—job ghosting, the truth behind unlimited PTO, nightmare bosses—and share insider advice on layoffs, severance, negotiations, and career moves. From candidates vaping in interviews to employees fired over free speech, we cover the wild reality of modern jobs. Whether you’re growing your career or simply a jobseeker hunting for an edge, you don’t have to navigate it alone. TLO is hosted by Matt Sunbulli (serial tech entrepreneur, Founder @ Fishbowl and First Draft AI), Aaron Calafato (Storyteller, Narrative Designer & Content Strategist), and Leah Ova (content creator and advertising executive), with special appearances from industry thought leaders and economists.

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Check latest episodes from The Lonely Office podcast


AI Made You a Manager. Where’s Your Raise? Plus, Meta’s Hidden Humans
2026/09/29
A BCG survey found that 47% of workers surveyed spend more time managing and directing AI than doing the work itself. If AI just made you a manager, where’s your raise? Matt and Aaron unpack how AI agents are changing jobs, adding responsibility and creating decision fatigue. What does managing a team of agents actually involve, and who benefits from the extra productivity? Plus, the hidden human labor behind Meta’s Muse assistant, the allegations of hiring discrimination facing Workday, and what Aaron learned from sending out 300 job applications. Who’s accountable when AI does the screening and humans can’t get an interview?
Are You Trusting AI With Your Finances Without Knowing It?
2026/09/22
AI may already be inside the software handling your receipts, taxes, and finances. Aaron and Matt dive deeper into a recent profile episode and unpack what happens when accountants become the human guardrails for increasingly powerful systems, and whether privacy, trust, and professional expertise can survive the next wave of automation.
Anthropic Researcher’s Bombshell, AI’s Big Promises, and Your Job Search Journey
2026/09/12
An Anthropic researcher’s bombshell warning reignites the debate over AI’s future. But for workers months into a job search, the stakes already feel personal. Matt Sunbulli and Aaron Calafato connect the headlines to the job search journey, exploring AI’s big promises, white collar job security, and a hiring process that can feel increasingly impersonal. They discuss Wipro’s claim that AI productivity gains led to redeployment rather than layoffs, how working with AI agents could help job seekers demonstrate their value, and why “just reskill” doesn’t answer every concern. If AI was supposed to help workers do more, when do they get to share in the benefits?
Rogue AI Agents and the Hiring Systems Rejecting Workers
2026/09/05
What happens when AI agents break the rules, communicate behind the scenes and act faster than humans can supervise them? Aaron Calafato and Matt Sunbulli examine what a startling OpenAI experiment could mean for the workplace. They also unpack the new NBER working paper Time Travel on Professional Profiles from Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom and researchers at Stanford and Revelio Labs. After analyzing monthly snapshots of 29.4 million U.S. LinkedIn profiles, the researchers found that nearly one in five users had retroactively edited a previous job title or description, with AI-related additions surging after ChatGPT’s release. Plus, the rise of automated hiring, California’s proposed No Robo Bosses Act and Nissan’s plan to retrain workers whose jobs are being automated. Is AI creating a better workplace, or removing the humans who make it work? Reference: The Senator Sanders Reaction
Is Your Job Safe? Meta Goes AI-Native, New Labor Data, and How AI Can Help Workers Go Solo
2026/08/29
What happens when the job market is growing, but not for you? Matt and Aaron examine two competing visions of the future of work: Meta’s turbulent experiment with AI-native teams and new federal projections showing where jobs are expected to grow and disappear over the next decade. They unpack AI-driven job displacement, shrinking salaries, the struggle to reenter the workforce, and why even employed workers feel increasingly vulnerable. This isn’t just a conversation about economic data. It’s a worker-first look at what the headlines miss—and how people can use AI as a tool to adapt, build, and regain some control over what comes next.
Modern Accountant: Trust in the Age of AI
2026/07/21
What happens when businesses invite AI into the very workflows that define how they operate? And if AI can organize your finances, research tax law, and prepare a return in minutes, what becomes the human job? In this episode of Inside Job, Matt and Aaron open with a conversation about AI agents moving deeper into the workplace, what businesses may gain from that transition, and what they risk when they hand over their data, intellectual property, and operational knowledge. Then, Matt talks with CPA, professor, and firm owner Lori Hauck about how accounting has evolved from shoeboxes full of receipts to cloud software and generative AI, why trust remains the profession’s greatest asset, and how accountants are becoming less like number crunchers and more like trusted advisors. As AI transforms one of the world’s oldest professions, this episode asks a bigger question: When technology handles more of the work, what becomes uniquely human?
AI at Work: Are We Getting Smarter or Losing Our Skills?
2026/07/14
Before Inside Job’s upcoming profile with Lori, a tax prep accountant working with high-net-worth clients, Aaron and Matt sit down to unpack the bigger question behind the story: what is AI really doing to the way we work? From entrepreneurs pushing AI tools to their limits, to employees constrained by company systems, to younger workers learning through models instead of mentors, this conversation explores the strange middle ground we are living in right now. AI can feel magical one minute and frustrating the next. It can save hours of work, but it can also make us wonder which skills we are quietly giving up.
What a Director of Robotic Surgery Says Robots Actually Change | Inside Jobs Reacts
2026/07/07
What happens when the future of surgery starts to feel less like science fiction and more like a cockpit? In this Inside Job reaction episode, Matt and Aaron revisit their profile of Dr. Alex Fondaw, M.D., and bring in Dr. Alisa Coker, M.D., Director of Robotic Surgery and Education at Dell Medical School, to unpack how robotic surgery is changing the operating room. Dr. Coker explains why surgical robots are not exactly new, how the da Vinci system has evolved over more than two decades, and what it actually feels like for a surgeon to sit at the console and operate with robotic arms. She also gets into the tension between open, laparoscopic, and robotic surgery, the training challenges facing the next generation of surgeons, and why the human surgeon is still very much in control. It is a conversation about technology, trust, patient care, and professional identity at a moment when AI and robotics are reshaping the way people work. For surgeons, the question may not be whether the machines are coming. They are already here. The bigger question is how humans learn to work with them.
Robotic Surgeon: The Doctor at the Console in the Age of AI
2026/06/26
What happens when one of the world’s oldest professions begins learning entirely new tools? Today, Matt talks with robotic surgeon Dr. Alex Fondaw to explore how surgery is quietly transforming in the age of artificial intelligence. But this conversation is about more than medical technology. It’s about what happens when tools evolve faster than training, when human expertise becomes harder to teach, and why the future of work may depend less on replacement and more on how professionals adapt alongside increasingly intelligent machines. Contact us if you have a story to share, whether it’s your current role, your job search, feedback on a particular episode, or ideas for future conversations, we want to hear from you. You can contribute anonymously or join us as a featured guest. *Inside Job is a podcast about work told by the people who actually do it. Hosted by ⁠⁠Matt Sunbulli⁠⁠ Engineered & Edited by Joe Deshano Executive Produced by⁠⁠ Aaron Calafato ⁠⁠
AI Took the Tasks. What Happens to the Worker Now? | Inside Job Reacts
2026/06/19
Inside Jobs Reacts: Host ⁠Matt Sunbulli⁠ and Executive Producer⁠ Aaron Calafato⁠ unpack the emotional, ethical, and economic questions emerging from the worker stories behind today’s rapidly changing AI economy — and the headlines reshaping modern work in real time. This episode, after profiling two workers caught inside the new AI economy, Matt and Aaron come back together to unpack what the shows last two profile episodes reveal about work, automation, and the growing uncertainty surrounding the future of employment. One worker made nearly $70,000 a year training AI models while still in college. Another spent nearly two decades inside the hidden world of AI data annotation. Together, their stories expose the largely invisible human labor helping build today’s artificial intelligence systems — and the unsettling reality that many of those same workers may now be vulnerable to disruption themselves. In this episode: The hidden human workforce behind AI training Why general AI annotation work is disappearing Microsoft buyouts, layoffs, and the larger anxiety surrounding AI automation The growing fragility facing both young workers and seasoned professionals Whether AI is truly “assisting” workers or quietly replacing tasks altogether Why the modern economy feels productive and unstable at the same time
The Humans Behind Your AI Chatbot
2026/06/12
In this episode, Matt Sunbulli (Host) steps inside the hidden world of AI work through two different stories. First, we meet Krista, a longtime AI data worker who has spent more than a decade doing the invisible labor behind recommendation systems, chatbots, generative AI, facial recognition, and data labeling. From her living room in Michigan, Krista explains what it really means to chase tasks across platforms, weigh pay rates against ethics, and live with the instability of work that most people never see. Then we meet Isaiah, a Northwestern student who stumbled into a $50-an-hour job training AI. What began as a vague recruiter message turned into rent money, long hours, and a front-row seat to how quickly AI models learn. For Isaiah, AI wasn’t just a headline or a threat. It was a job. Together, their stories reveal the human workforce behind artificial intelligence: the data workers, AI trainers, taskers, reviewers, and invisible laborers teaching machines how to talk, reason, see, and respond. *Inside Job is a podcast about work told by the people who actually do it. The show is Hosted by Matt Sunbulli, Executive Produced by Aaron Calafato and is a proud member of the YAP Media Network.
This is Inside Job
2026/06/09
Host Matt Sunbulli and Executive Producer Aaron Calafato introduce this new podcast series. Reach us at: https://www.insidejobpodcast.com/
Best of TLO | When the Job Market Gets Strange
2026/03/13
The team digs through the archives of The Lonely Office and notices a pattern: even as work keeps changing, human nature doesn’t. From AI-driven layoffs to the strange new reality of job searching, Aaron, Matt, Leah, and Ken revisit some of the show’s most revealing conversations about meaning, work, and what might come next. Important Note from the TLO team: Hey TLO listeners, for those who enjoyed our bonus series Ask a Recruiter, that conversation is still going. This spring, find AAR live on Glassdoor's LinkedIn and YouTube, where hiring managers, career coaches, and talent leaders give you real talk on the job market - and ask your questions in real time. To be notified, follow us on LinkedIn: ⁠www.linkedin.com/company/glassdoor Also, 50 years working at a 7/11, bro gets an email
Is Having a Corporate Job Embarrassing?
2026/02/07
Are you embarrassed to work for your company? In this episode of The Lonely Office, we revisit a story about loud quitting, corporate misalignment, and the tension between survival and integrity in today’s workplace. As ESG debates, layoffs, and corporate reputation shape the 2026 work landscape, we explore how employees decide where their moral line is — and what it means when a job starts to feel like a liability. Hosts: Matt Sunbulli ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunbulli/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.firstdraft.vc⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Aaron Calafato ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Listen to Aaron's 7 Minute Stories Podcast ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Leah Ova ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Leah on TikTok ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Editorial: Matt Sunbulli Brooks Borden Ken Wendt Senior Audio Engineer: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ken Wendt ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Research: Matt Sunbulli Zaid Safe Aaron Calafato
Why Workplace Satire Hurts So Good
2026/01/31
Why does workplace satire hit so hard? And why does corporate language feel… strangely terrifying? In this episode of The Lonely Office, we talk with Henry Marken, Director of Social Media/Content Creator at Wunderfan and viral creator known for blending sports fandom, comedy, and office culture. We unpack how corporate culture trains people to wear masks, and why comedy becomes a kind of survival mechanism. Along the way, we explore what sports pain teaches us about work, how AI is reshaping careers, and why authenticity feels harder inside big organizations. Special Guest: Henry Marken Hosts: Matt Sunbulli ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunbulli/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.firstdraft.vc⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Aaron Calafato ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Listen to Aaron's 7 Minute Stories Podcast ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Leah Ova ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Leah on TikTok ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Editorial: Matt Sunbulli Brooks Borden Ken Wendt Senior Audio Engineer: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ken Wendt ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Research: Matt Sunbulli Zaid Safe Aaron Calafato

Podcast reviews

Read The Lonely Office podcast reviews


4.8 out of 5
164 reviews
★☆☆☆☆
C-sweet1 2026/06/16
What Happened?
I really miss the old The Lonely Office format which was a balanced discussion with Leah, Aaron and Matt. They had great chemistry, experience and sto...
★★★★★
MikeyW1981 2026/03/05
Great storytelling!
The one co-host Aaron Calafato, his storytelling skills take this pod up another level. So many boring career pods, I almost didn’t listen when I foun...
★★★★★
Basman D 2025/10/22
Great discussions on some really timely topics
Awesome Matt and team. Insight packed cast!
★★★★★
Sarah Olsick_17 2025/10/22
Thoughtful and Timely
Loved this episode! Matt’s insights on how AI has quietly become part of our daily lives—while we still hesitate to talk about it—really hit home. Sma...
★★★★★
dreiverG 2025/10/16
A great conversation
There were a number of really insightful and helpful sound bites. It was a fun conversation.
★★★★★
Doggfatherrr 2025/08/16
Bring back JT O’Donnell
I was a moderate fan of the show, but now a superfan. I’m unemployed and she was fantastic guest! Please launch that concept ASAP! Give that woman a p...
★★★★★
Millennial2002 2025/07/17
Leah is awesome
Love the female perspective here. She’s so authentic and relatable and I love the dynamic she brings to each podcast. I feel I’m chatting with a frie...
★★★★★
Love the female host! 2025/07/14
Great Perspective, Love the female host!
Really appreciate the topics these 3 dive into each week about both soft and hard skills in the workplace. It’s often topics that are glossed over in ...
★★★★☆
LS6 2025/06/05
Entertaining and Informative
I enjoy the show, but just got triggered by the remark, “Do 60 year olds use AI?” The answer is, “YES!!!!”
★★★★★
DougLaC 2025/05/01
No reruns
Truly love the show, keep it coming. I especially enjoy the candid disclosure about corporate life, awesome for my own sentiments to be validated and ...
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