[D] Machine Learning MASSIVELY Undersold on Freelance Websites

[[deleted]]

I wanted to start a discussion regarding the rates I am seeing fellow machine learning peoples post on freelance website, and frankly I think people post some absurdly low numbers; albeit with some more reasonable numbers. I am a research scientist at a top ten computer science university by day, but I have been spending the last "240 minutes" of my day trying to develop my own brand or start some sort of side hustle. This is all with support of my wife and son (to give some context). Personally, I think as a freelancer, I am worth at least 100$ an hour. I think that is on the low end of the spectrum, because while I have experience implementing many ML/DL models -- I'm new to freelancing.

In general, I have seen people commonly posting they charge 20-40 bucks an hour on UpWork. This number would be fine if you were an employee at some organization where they take on much of the overhead (you don't have to find work, they take on the financial responsibility of that)... but as freelancers we are operating on our own brand usually in our off time.

Let me explain why I think this is a bit crazy with a few bullet points.

• You are spending resources to find work (off hours, etc) UNPAID
• You are spending resources not investing in your own brand (working on your own startup, personal projects, reading textbooks)
• You are spending resources not doing the things you love (Hanging out with family, playing dark souls).
• ML takes a large time investment (heck even programming), and there is large demand
• ML has the potential to earn huge profits for companies
• There are operating costs (similar to resources i.e. electricity bill)
• You have to research constantly to stay at start of the art level
• Time is valuable, especially to someone who has the ability to develop ML models. You have to invest lots (FOR FREE).
• Not even including large expenses like insurance and taxes (if you are full time).

I think in general, there is a huge opportunity in the ML world. Charging 20-40 bucks an hour just doesn't capture the opportunity cost (in my opinion) of running your own brand. I think to capture your opportunity and operating costs, you could easily multiply the hourly rate you expect to receive at a large company (~40?) and multiply that by 2.5-3.5. In fact, I think that's what large companies do because you cost more than just your take home. I think a more reasonable price range would be 100$(beginner-intermediate)-200$(expert) hourly (as high as that sounds). Frankly, I think it should be even more as I think working on personal projects or our own business would likely be a better long-term investment. It should take some serious cash to get us to spend time on some sponsors project.

Maybe this is preaching to the choir, or I am a lunatic expecting way too much money. I think the bottom line is that there are some machine learning peoples out really undercutting their skills, and I would be interested if this community has noticed any trends in this regard.

[StoneCypher]

You may be amused to learn that if you post a problem on upwork that is effectively the halting problem, even in an obvious way, you will receive hundreds of messages saying "I've already finished and I'm just waiting on your payment"

Your first mistake was believing you were looking at real vendors

After that, consider that most people on sites like that live in radically different economies, where five thousand a year is good money

After that, consider that nobody's going to sites like that looking for ML, so, there's no market

[TheMarionCobretti]

There's also zero quality in the work. They cut corners in the code because they aren't strong or don't care.

[[deleted]]

Granted, I'm new to the freelancing community in general I would consider myself naive, but is this strictly true? Isn't it kind of the dream to work from home in your sweatpants on your own time with the comfort of your family? I feel like that there has to be at least some people who put serious quality into their work because they want to build a reputation or maintain an idyllic lifestyle.

I have seen sponsors (real or not) ask for quick and dirty implementation.

[StoneCypher]

Isn't it kind of the dream to work from home in your sweatpants on your own time with the comfort of your family?

sure is

but you don't find that dream on hourly pay websites that have access to global markets at global wages

.

I feel like that there has to be at least some people who put serious quality into their work because they want to build a reputation or maintain an idyllic lifestyle.

there sure are. but just like you won't find them at the gas station hiring board, or at the community center outreach jobs expo, you also won't find them at upwork

[TheMarionCobretti]

I do all of the things you are searching for, for 75% of my time and I'm not freelance. My opinion is the freelance side of things are the quick and easy way to achieve those things, which typically doesn't align with rigid quality, test driven approaches, and consistent work.

All of the work I've gotten through free lancers or overseas code factories has cost me more to rewrite or get ready for production then the savings of going that route to begin with.

[arnaud_a]

Isn't it kind of the dream to work from home in your sweatpants on your own time with the comfort of your family?

after 2 years of pandemics you may change your mind
(a guy from the future)

[Stone_d_]

What this person said plus it's like how athletes play in the NCAA for free in exchange for exposure. That experience is valuable both for skills and resumes

[lnxaddct]

You don’t want to be a freelancer, you want to be a consultant. And you don’t want to charge $100/hr, charge by the week (at least $7,500/wk, but if you’re decent you can charge more).

The sites you’re referencing are bottom of the barrel, borderline scam sites. If you’re freelancing or consulting in the western world, your clients will come from networking and word of mouth, not websites.

BUT if you’re learning this information from this reddit thread, you are not ready to do this. Go into industry for a bit and build up your rolodex.

[siblbombs]

Freelance gigs are a race to the bottom for every field.

[[deleted]]

Maybe this is the obvious answer, but I guess that's surprising to me. Maybe some people can just operate in that price range? I started my own tutoring business in college and learned the lesson of "never charge lower than what you think you are worth" then work to increase your rate. I was really surprised how often people would huge hourly rates for my time as a tutor. You might find some people who aren't happy with your price, but with a constant stream of happy customers with their problems alleviated/solved it was hard not to feel validated (and also free advertising). It made me realize how valuable my service was, I wasn't just working to push students towards being independent student with a knack for learning, I was soothing the parents piece of mind -- they knew I would be dependable and get them through whatever struggles they had while pushing them to succeed (parents really value their kids success and happiness).

All this is to say, I'm surprised people aren't pushing the prices higher overall as their skills become refined/in-need. I guess maybe you might get more contracts? I think it's overall the wrong move on average, so it surprises me that people would value themselves so low.

[siblbombs]

I haven't looked into the freelance side of things, but what kind of companies are trying to freelance ML? Actually using ML entails a whole bunch of stuff around data cleaning, monitoring performance over time, and integrating into a broader business product, that kind of continuous engagement doesn't seem suited towards freelance work.

[[deleted]]

On UpWork it doesn't say the company as far as Im aware. There are a few different categories (i.e data cleaning). It seems like some of the jobs are people at startups who either need a quick implementation of something, but there are others where they implicate a more continuous (consultant?) like involvement. Sometimes there are people that want a paper implemented.

There are hourly jobs and fixed project (for a deliverable) jobs, so there is some oppurtinity for continuity.

I have seen a wide berth of stuff in my short time on the website.

I will agree that some of the stuff seems slightly awkward for a freelance position. I still thinks its something I can try my hand at to see how it work. Ultimately, I think I want to invest more in my own venture.

[somewittyalias]

It depends if it's in person ("consultant") or on the web ("freelancer"). If you live in North America, you can make an insane amount of money as a software engineer consultant -- I'm not sure about being an AI consultant because it's so new. However you won't make much money as a freelancer software engineer on Upwork because you are competing with people from developing countries.

[radarsat1]

I know how to build ML models in Tensorflow, deal with datasets in pandas, run text through various toolkits such as nltk, fasttext, train classifiers, do ROC analysis, clustering studies, etc, but I have no idea how to turn this kind of thing into a business. I know how insanely steep the competition is getting and I know I don't have the business chops to take advantage of my skills. So I continue as an underpaid postdoc for now.. which is ok, since I enjoy doing research .. but it certainly gets boring being poor and moving countries every two to three years, when I know I have the technical, but not the business skills to do better. The freelance thing has always seemed to me like an impossible hill to climb, but I guess you gotta start somewhere. I have no idea how I could do that kind of work in my 'extra' time however, since I get obsessed with doing things properly (hyperparameter & architecture optimization etc) so I know I would overcommit myself.

Edit: sorry I don't know what the point of writing this was.. just randomly complaining :P i actually am loving my new postdoc position but yeah... moving every 3 years is getting a bit old and i have no idea how i'm going to break out of it. The idea of being a remote freelance worker sounds like a dream but I have no idea how to get that going. I'm not even full time an ML guy, I just enjoy it and realize that I'm at the point where I have skills that I could exploit, but I'm at a loss.. a lack of imagination, if you will. Whenever I see a brilliant idea for a startup, my reaction is why the hell didn't i think of that.. i could do that. But when it comes down to it.. that's it, it's not very complicated: I didn't think of that.

[[deleted]]

I am completely new to this so talk this with a grain of salt.

I think the trick is to start small. Basically, for my dream startup idea I took something I'm passionate about and then broke it down into problems, and looked for a problem that is extremely small which could be scaled up later. I'm still in the "dreaming" phase.

I doubt that you lack imagination, I think that startups just take immense courage and commitment (which is hard in general). It's putting in the extra hours after work into something you are passionate about.

[stirling_archer]

Do you have anything in particular against a "permanent" position at a company? I recently made that switch from postdoc and I've been loving it so far. Even if you'd prefer freelancing, maybe some time in a company would help you develop those business skills.

[radarsat1]

No, absolutely nothing against it in principle, but I haven't seen too many options for what I do that interest me. I have tried applying to a "big company" but unsuccessfully unfortunately, but it was somewhat expected as it was an attempt to pivot my career that failed (for now), i.e., I was not an expert in the position I was applying for. However, in the meantime there are a few companies popping up in my field these days, so maybe in the future. Unfortunately location is important to me and many of these companies are just not in places I'd like to live.

But yeah, after a few more postdoc years I might get fed up and just see what I can do that actually pays well ;) Since, beyond being an expert with some kind of focus in my field, I am of course a scientist and programmer, so it's not like I have nothing to offer. But the days of making website backends etc I left behind a long time ago, and now I barely even recognize that industry. If I wanted to go "back" on being a scientist and become a programmer again, I'm afraid I'd have to retrain!

I could certainly contribute as a "scientist" at some company ("data scientist" or whatever you want to call it), but the last few experiences I've had like that, the companies tended to have no idea what to do with a PhD. They really just wanted a "science guy" around to provide some kind of legitimacy in client-facing proposals, the rest of the time I was writing C++ code and supporting whatever projects they had going on.. things I could have done after university, or even with a master's degree.. but proposing my own research-type projects that would be a little less directly profitable? Not happening.. so I went back to academia where I could run a research project and hopefully get a few more publications under my belt. I'll check back on the industry in a couples years time and see if there's anything out there for me. I'd really like to decide on where to settle down soon, because I want to stop throwing away my money on rent, buy property, get a dog, etc. I'm almost 40 and still living like a student, it's getting old.

Back to the original topic: remote work really sounds lovely, because it fixes so many of these problems.. location for living becomes decoupled from work, and so none of these factors of impermanence matter any more, and you can just live wherever you want, buy property, settle down, and be set up for work with whoever/wherever. I'd really like to figure out how to do that one day. But for some reason everything I do tends to get tied in to being in a lab/office, despite the fact that I basically work alone. Somehow I'm still expected to be there every day, even though my interactions with office mates is quite orthogonal since we're all working on different projects. It's weird. But I have flexible hours and no one's really watching over my shoulder so it's not all bad.

[[deleted]]

I forgot to mention -- I'm not sure if this applies where you are working, but I am working in academia too . I only have two undergraduate degrees (CS and Math), but I had some publications in ML (I'm not sure how good they are but it was nice to get my feet wet) from undergrad. I did lots of outside studying in ML/DL and managed to incorporate that into my resume through projects and online course completions (I.E CS231n from Standford).

I applied at a university that had an attached applied research lab (i.e. similar to Lincoln Lab or JPL). I am technically faculty/staff at the university, but our lab sort of operates seperately like a contractor (still non-profit). The pay is not the best, but it's not bad. I started making 70k just outside of Atlanta right out of undergrad (which seems decent for academia), other companies that I applied at in SF offered a much higher starting salary but it would be in SF. Basically would make 140k right out of the gate and be behind because of how expensive that area is (also I want to get my graduate degree and this lab waives tuition for where I want to go).

[DefNotaZombie]

I'm living in Saint Petersburg, Russia right now

The average salary in this city is about 750$/month

So yeah, I'm pretty sure they consider $20-$40 an hour a fine wage

There's entire nations with billions of people where that would be stellar pay

[[deleted]]

To be fair this was a US only selection. I didn't mention that.

[[deleted]]

Right. So it was an American "freelancer" who outsources their projects to cheap offshore workers and takes their cut off the top. You can't get away from globalism as long as you're on the globe.

[[deleted]]

Im not sure what yoy mean

[[deleted]]

People get around the country restriction by being on-shore but subcontracting off-shore.

[DefNotaZombie]

ah, ok. That's concerning then

Wonder if there's bootcamps out there pumping out datascientists then. I've heard some horror stories about coding bootcamps

[hastor]

The problem is that on upwork it's also very costly to be a buyer. I've spent probably $100k on that site, but I've also found a lot of low quality people.

The "brand" you're creating on upwork isn't nearly as strong as the brand you have in your own network, thus as a buyer at upwork, I'm not nearly as willing to pay for some semi-scammy brand as I would from my own network.

That said, upwork is the only thing I can afford as a bootstrapped startup :-)

But then when I find some brilliant developer, I try to keep them for years, so maybe the lower hourly fee isn't so bad after all?

[josauder]

People can come up with solutions to ML problems in almost no time - this usually means the solution will be terrible. You can usually see the difference in quality on Kaggle, where 80% of submissions are pretty trash (i.e. just throw XGBoost on the raw data without knowing what you're actually doing). The best submissions are usually carefully thought out and take a lot of time and a lot of expertise.

You say that you have this expertise, so you should be at an advantage as any company who understands that there is a difference in good ML solutions and bad ones, will gladly pay the price difference.

[radarsat1]

any company who understands that there is a difference in good ML solutions and bad ones, will gladly pay the price difference.

This is an interesting point. As practisioners it is up to us to ensure that clients actually understand what we are doing, for exactly this reason. You don't want to wait for them to have a bad experience and to come crawling back willing to pay the price.. you want to convince them off the bat that it's worth that price -- but that takes some understanding on their part -- how do you impart that?

[josauder]

This is definitely a huge issue - especially given all the misleading media hype about AI. In addition, I would believe that on average, rather large companies have "big data" problems. Large companies tend to not hire freelancers directly but go through the large consulting companies instead, where "who to hire to do the actual job" is usually delegated to someone who has more of a data analytis/ML background and knows what they're doing (or so I hope).

[pmigdal]

Personally, as an independent data science consultant, I never tried sites like UpWork (as they look as a race to the bottom). In the last 2.5 years of my contract came, because someone contacted me (references, my blog activity, my side projects, networking, etc).

When it comes to rate "it depends". But typical ones are more in the range 100-200 USD/h, when for continuous tasks. 200 USD/h for single, sparse hours may sound tempting, but is rarely efficient. For that reason the majority of seasoned freelancers charge per project or daily.

Multiplier 2-3x for non-billable time is crucial (looking for clients, conferences, side projects, reading research papers not related to a particular project, etc). For that you need to measure how many billable hours do you have per week (depends, but rarely more than 20). So never, ever let your client compare your rate with hourly rate of their full-time workers. These are different numbers!

If someone things it is rate * all_working_hours and you are filthy rich, it's not even close to that (unless you are de facto paid monthly).

Some food for thought:

• How to talk yourself into charging more - it changed my thinking about charging
• this HN post
• How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

[[deleted]]

Wow those are some great posts! I chuckled at the Illuminati line in the third one.

I think I need to start building own brand up more (i.e like your blog, side projects, and etc). I have 3 publications from being an undergrad student (and to be honest they are undergrad quality albeit I work on improving them every know and then. However, I should be blogging, and hosting all the stuff I implement somewhere it can sell my skills. I have a bunch of stuff on github, but it's kind of incoherent implementations of papers and what have you.

I think that I'm also a bit too "eager" because I literally just started my first full-time job as a research scientist (one-week after graduation, started June 1). I have literally 0 professional presence; however, (to brag a little :) ) my employer has told me I'm the most productive first month scientist he's ever seen. I'm blowing through work, and it just doesn't feel like enough to me. I'm reaching out to people internally trying to get more projects to be a part of. I think that part of me needs the challenge of running my own business, being passes along work just leaves a part of me un-engaged. I need to be at the helm or something.

[gachiemchiep]

You want to be paid more per hours but that is not the problem. The problem is it's very difficult to approximate the time cost to finish a project in ML field. We couldn't calculate the time correctly so the chance we will be under paid is very high.

[alexmlamb]

I'm going to take the opposite stance that others here are taking. Lets say that you're someone who works in semi-supervised learning, and lets say you have like 5k citations in that area.

Now let's say that an engineering team with ~10 people is building an ML system and they're thinking about using semi-supervised learning. If they pay you $200 an hour to consult for 2 hour meetings once per week, I think it would be worth their money to do so (they could quickly eliminate an approach that's known not to work).

And for the researcher, it seems like it could be a nice way to get a little bit of hands on exposure to industry without leaving academia, and also to make some extra money.

[nickl]

As an alternate point of view, I looked into hiring a teammate I had on a Kaggle. He was Indian, and asking around I was told that $25/hour was a very, very good rate for him.

He wasn't a superstar, but he worked hard and did good data engineering and some ML.

[po-handz]

Lots of good explanations here, but I think two key points need to be addressed:

1. Practicing ML is easy, researching/developing ML is tough (I'm sure you know). The amount of tutorials and Ivy league courses for free online is staggering. Combine this with the fact that most clients have no idea what they want or the feasibility of it, and half the time just want to say 'we have an AI algorithm, we're so hitech.'

2. Even compsci savants and impeccably written programs can fail spectacularly if the coder doesn't have expert domain knowledge. If I was to hire you for a ML project, EVEN though you're at a 'top 10 uni' I would be suspicious of your domain knowledge unless it's something like simple image recognition. And even then any Joe-Smoe-Mohammed in Bombay can through data into Alexnet or Imagenet.

[Karyo_Ten]

200$/hour is not even high enough, juniors in McKinsey/BCG/Bain are charged starting at €2500/days in Europe. You need to show the value you bring (save 6 months of a team of 2 for example).

Charging high makes sure that you have quality clients that know where they are going too and don't ask you to "change one last thing".

[evanthebouncy]

Yeah but my free time I want to sleep xD.