Jun 30, 2025 4 min read

Vol. 1, No. 7: Post-Career?

Welcome to Soft Labor, the namesake publication of Soft Labor, a strategic consultancy for organizations, designers, and the culture industry led by Sarah Hromack-Chan. Soft Labor is a publication about creative labor—what it is, what it looks like, and how it has and will continue to change. Did someone…

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Jun 23, 2025 4 min read

Introducing The Soft Labor Questionnaire: Hilary Eden

We’re introducing a new feature, The Soft Labor Questionnaire, which is simply that: A brief series of questions we’ve asked comrades in the field to answer about their own working experiences.…

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Jun 16, 2025 5 min read

Vol. 1, No. 6: A Nepo Baby (and a reader's response to AI)

Dear Soft Labor, I work as a partner in a major architecture firm, a job I ultimately got through nepotism as my father is the firm’s (well-known) founder. I’m writing mostly out of guilt.…

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Jun 9, 2025 5 min read

Vol. 1, No. 5: Fashionably Humiliated

Dear Soft Labor, I work as an entry-level gallerist in New York City. As one might imagine, there is a major disparity in pay between my position and those of, say, the gallery’s directors and partners. Everyone I work with seems to be independently wealthy, as expressed through stunning wardrobes.…

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Jun 2, 2025 4 min read

Vol. 1, No. 4: Overlooked

Dear Soft Labor, I have been working as an administrator for a mid-sized cultural nonprofit for about a decade—long enough that I’m embedded into the fabric of the place.…

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May 27, 2025 4 min read

Vol. 1, No. 3: Tapped Out

Dear Soft Labor, I run a small . . . let’s just call it a creative agency and am therefore a relentless self-marketer by necessity.…

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May 15, 2025 5 min read

Vol. 1, No. 2: AI Anxiety Attack

Dear Soft Labor, I’m in my mid-twenties and work in a mid-sized commercial design agency—everything about the entire enterprise is pretty mid, to be honest.…

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May 1, 2025 6 min read

Vol. 1, No. 1: Feeling Triggered

Dear Soft Labor,  I am a recent Ivy League graduate and work in a major museum in a major city as an assistant to a globally-regarded curator who is shockingly abusive toward the museum’s entire staff.…

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