January 31, 2026
Skynet Wants Its Money Back
CollectWise (YC F24) Is Hiring
AI debt collectors hiring for big pay—comments erupt: dystopia vs “just pay”
TLDR: YC-backed CollectWise is hiring to train voice AI that collects debts, claiming double human success at lower cost. Comments split between dystopia alarms and ‘pay your bills’ pragmatists, roasting the GPT-5 line and debating ethics, compliance, and whether respectful robocalls are better than aggressive humans.
CollectWise, a Y Combinator-backed startup, says its voice AI already beats human debt collectors by 2X and is hiring an “AI Agent Engineer” at $150k–$200k plus equity to push toward $10M revenue. The internet lit up. Team Efficiency vs. Dystopia became the main cage match: one camp cheers fewer aggressive phone calls and cheaper recovery; the other hears “robocollector” and sees a future where a bot politely nags you at dinner forever.
Commenters roasted the listing’s “experience with GPT-5,” quipping, “Did they time-travel?” Others side-eyed “compliance-safe phrasing” and “containment rates,” reading it as optimize keeping you on the line. Supporters clap back: if an AI follows the law and treats people with respect, isn’t that better than a commission-driven human? Salary discourse exploded too: “Getting paid six figures to teach a robot to say ‘pretty please pay’” vs. “It’s hard engineering—voice, prompts, integrations.” Memes flew: Skynet Collections Dept., A/B testing guilt vs. gratitude, and mock scripts like, “Press 1 to cry, press 2 to pay.”
Underneath the jokes, real worries surfaced—bias, language barriers, legal pitfalls, and what “respectful” really means. Fans call it inevitable. Critics call it grim. Everyone clicked. Also: tiny team, big claims, and a $35B market flex.
Key Points
- •CollectWise, a YC-backed startup, is hiring an AI Agent Engineer to build and optimize prompting and conversation logic for voice AI agents.
- •The company targets the $35B U.S. debt collection market and claims its AI agents outperform human collectors by 2x at lower cost.
- •CollectWise reached a $1M annualized run rate with a three-person team and aims for $10M within the next year.
- •Responsibilities include end-to-end prompting strategy, testing frameworks (A/B, regression), client-specific configurations, tooling, and integrations.
- •Qualifications include 2+ years in voice AI/prompt engineering, back-end experience (e.g., Node.js), AWS and SQL skills; compensation is $150k–$200k salary plus 0.25%–1% equity.