Mick Johnson has spent 15 years fixing things other people couldn't figure out. It started with a Nintendo.
Growing up in Minnesota, Mick took apart the console, replaced something, and put it back together. He didn't know it then, but that moment set the course of his career — from IT admin in the Midwest to the halls of some of San Francisco's most recognizable tech companies. Now, he's teaching AI.
"I used to apply my technical expertise by helping end users and customers," Mick says. "Now I'm helping train an AI model in the same topics I'd be talking through with those people. I never really thought I'd be doing that.
After spending years working in IT for a small agricultural business in Minnesota, Mick made the move to San Francisco to join Cisco Meraki, a tech startup.
From there, he moved to a cybersecurity company where he managed networking, office buildouts, and identity and access management — the kind of deep, hands-on IT work that comes only from years at the front lines. He even built an open AI connector while there, an early signal of where his interests were heading.
When a reduction in force ended his role, Mick found himself navigating a job market that wasn't exactly welcoming. He applied to around 50 positions before getting a meaningful response. "Sometimes you get an interview and then you get ghosted," he says. "The job market is not amazing right now. It is pretty tough."
A different kind of interview
Then he came across Mercor on LinkedIn. The Mercor interview was different. Mick sat down for a conversation with an AI agent that scanned his resume and asked him questions that were specific and tailored to the role and Mick’s own expertise.
"It was dynamically asking me questions about my resume and how it pertained to what they were looking for," he said. He heard back within a couple of months and started working shortly after.
Putting 15 years to work
As an expert with Mercor, Mick contributes his knowledge of computer information systems to help train AI models — answering the kinds of questions that IT professionals, especially those early in their careers, actually need answered.
"As someone who was in IT 15 years ago, I did not have AI to ask these questions to," he says. "I'd want to make sure that junior CIS admins asking AI about IT or computer information systems are getting accurate, authentic answers."
There's something meaningful about that framing. For most of his career, Mick was the person people turned to when they were stuck. Now he's encoding that same expertise into a system that can help the next generation of IT professionals before they even know who to call.
He also discovered something about AI that surprised him. "I always thought they just scraped data from books and social media," he admits. "I didn't know they used real people with domain expertise to train these models." That realization changed how he thinks about AI as a tool. When answers come from practitioners who've actually worked in a field, they carry a different kind of weight — closer to asking a doctor your medical question than Googling symptoms.
The freedom to tinker again
Beyond the work itself, Mercor gave Mick something he hadn't had in years: time.
At his previous job, his schedule was driven by the needs of a global company. "My typical day was Zoom, Slack, communication, and it would be perpetual," he says. "At Mercor, I check what needs to be done, complete it, and move on. I don't need to schedule a Zoom call. It's almost been liberating."
Now, his mornings look different. He pours a coffee, pets his cats, and heads outside — usually to surf, sometimes to cycle, occasionally to swim in the bay. Getting out of the water without a meeting to rush home for has been its own kind of gift.
"Since leaving my last job, I actually get to linger a little bit longer and just enjoy the beach," he says. "Which is nice."
And the tinkering has returned. With more time at home, Mick has been building out a home automation system using Raspberry Pis — controlling lights, doors, and blinds. Does he need any of it? Not really. But that's not the point. "You do it not because you need it, but because you want to see if you can do it."
That impulse is the same one that drew him to IT in the first place. Working with Mercor, it turns out, fits that same instinct. There's a problem to solve, a body of knowledge to organize, and a system to make smarter.
"I like solving problems," Mick says. "When I see something that could be more efficient, more automated, I have to figure out how to fix it."
He's still doing exactly that. Just now, the system he's improving is a little bigger.
Mercor connects AI companies with domain experts like Mick who teach AI models what they can't learn from data alone.
If you have deep expertise in your field, find opportunities on Mercor.