
Ask HN: How does one find contract work in data science/analytics? - duado
My wife is looking for work in data science, on a contract basis in the $50-100&#x2F;hr range. She has a PhD in biology with a data-analysis approach and has worked in the industry for two years. Are there good sites to look for work that aren’t polluted with spam?
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jinfiesto
I don't know what country you're in, but if it's the US, my advice would be to
just start a company, throw up a decent looking website and start pounding the
pavement. Most of the freelance sites encourage commodified race to the bottom
behavior on your labor. Also, 50-100 is too low if you're in the US. If she
wants to hit parity with what she would make in the industry working a "real
job", she needs to charge closer to 200. (Assuming a target wage of ~150k)

Don't charge hourly, charge weekly or daily (if a week is too large of a
unit). It will save you a lot of headaches and free you/her from time tracking
at an annoyingly granular level. It also discourages clients from
micromanaging your billing (which they definitely will do when you essentially
turn in time sheets.)

When she's selling, the goal is to anchor your estimated price to the value of
the project (you have to understand the client's business well enough to do
this.) The idea is to frame your cost as a fraction of the total value. The
rest of the sale is demonstrating you're low risk and that you can deliver.
Typically you do this through social proof, or through a small starter project
that demonstrates ROI.

~~~
duado
Hit the pavement how? How does one find people with data analysis needs?

~~~
jinfiesto
There's no magic here. I too am an engineer, and find sales work yucky. If you
want to make more than 5$ an hour on upwork and you're not about working a
"real job" sales work is going to be an unfortunate fact of life.

Given that a contract is probably worth 50k+ to your wife, traditional sales
approaches are probably a good fit. Unless she wants to do data-set building,
I would assume that her target businesses are sophisticated enough to be
keeping data. So start there, make a list of businesses that fit the profile,
find contacts (put them in a spreadsheet) and start calling or emailing. No
magic, just a grind and a lot of rejection.

In terms of a longer-term strategy, she might pursue some sort of content
strategy and start funnelling traffic to her website that way. Some % of that
will convert to leads and some % of those will convert to clients. Once you
get that pipeline set up, you can spend infinite time optimizing whatever
parts of that pipeline. I assume though, that in the short-term, she needs
work now and not x months from now. "Traditional sales" are likely a better
fit in that case.

She might also consider joining a referral network like BNI if there's a local
chapter(s) that look like there are enough members that fit your target
profile.

And as the other commenter mentioned, your first port of call should be
friends and family. Don't harangue them for a sale, just let them know your
shingle is out. Presumably some % of them want you to succeed and you'll
probably get a lead or two kicked your way in fairly short order.

~~~
duado
But hasn’t someone solved this inefficiency? Hasn’t someone created a
marketplace for buyers and sellers of PhD-level data analysis to find each
other?

~~~
jinfiesto
You don't want to participate in such a market even if it exists. Your wife is
a human being and a professional, not a faucet. Participating in an
undifferentiated labor market commodifies her and turns her into the latter
rather than the former.

In those types of market places, the primary way for participants to
differentiate themselves is price. It's not like you can exercise a lot of
control over how any given platform is going to let you market. A bunch of
people competing on price without being able to effectively differentiate in
any other way is going to have predictable and unpleasant results.

So yeah, doing sales work sucks. But it doesn't suck as bad as the
alternatives.

If you/your wife go down the road of trying to source hourly contracts from
such markets, you're setting her up for a working situation that's almost
strictly shittier than working a "real job." It's basically impossible to rack
up 40 billable hours a week on a consistent basis. 25-30 is much more
realistic. If she's charging 50/hr, that'll work out to about $58,000 gross a
year assuming 75% utilization and that none of her clients ever flake out.
Nevermind that the work is more precarious than a "real job", doesn't have
insurance or other benefits, and you get slammed with self employment taxes.
Also, you/she don't even get to count on a paycheck at any particular
interval. If you provide net 30 (I don't recommend, but it's fairly standard,)
you have to have enough of a financial buffer to deal with clients cutting you
all of your invoices at once instead of as you bill them. Enjoy praying for
the mailman to come before the bank closes so you can pay rent.

Finally, I assume your wife didn't spend 6-10 years of her life grinding out a
PhD so she can make 58k a year in the most precarious possible way. Get off of
this freelancer mentality, start a business, deliver real value, and get her
the income and respect she deserves. If you/she bill yourself out like a
commodity, people and businesses are going to treat you like one.

------
stared
I am a data science freelancer/consultant (background story and motivation:
[http://p.migdal.pl/2015/12/14/sci-to-data-
sci.html](http://p.migdal.pl/2015/12/14/sci-to-data-sci.html)). But in my
case, it's purely recommendations and people contacting me (it takes some time
to build it, though). Freelancer websites look like a race to the bottom.

Some links I gathered:
[https://pinboard.in/u:pmigdal/t:freelancing](https://pinboard.in/u:pmigdal/t:freelancing).
Plus, price negotiation is super important (way more than for regular jobs). I
recommend "Ten Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer"
[https://medium.freecodecamp.org/ten-rules-for-
negotiating-a-...](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/ten-rules-for-negotiating-
a-job-offer-ee17cccbdab6#.rhwj57ckp).

Look at [https://brainpool.ai/](https://brainpool.ai/) (they offered some good
contracts). In general leveraging one's PhD and credentials is a good
strategy.

~~~
rasikjain
Piotr, Thanks for the info. I find some of the informative links in your
pinboard link. Bookmarked them.

------
nazca
(Is she doing biology-specific work? or more general analytics? My response
below is for the later. I know nothing about the life science industry, but I
have employed several people with similar phds.)

I run a data science/analytics team at a large us-based tech company, so I'm
on the buy-side of this. The bulk of contract work in the industry is run
through staffing companies that market themselves as 'consulting' companies.

As a hiring manager, it's just too much of a hassle for me to individually
source a good contractor. These staffing companies provide some level of
screening & sourcing to make it easier for me.

However, if she really wants to try to contract directly... I would recommend
searching linkedin for ~directors of analytics and data science at companies
in the area/industry she's focused on. and then just ping them directly. I
would guess the response rate would be in the 5-10% range, and then only a
small fraction will convert to an actual contract.

Someone else mentioned it, but don't do this on an hourly basis. Daily or
monthly.

------
pella
Wait for the "April 2019" thread:

"Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2019)"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19281832](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19281832)

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wizzerking
I also forgot, that there are on Linkedin.com Remote Jobs in Artificial
Intelligence and Data Science
[https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8613673/](https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8613673/)

On KDNuggets.com others post articles that teach and get their name out there,
so Hitting the pavement is not about going to companies , unless you want to.

------
wizzerking
There are some work on upwork.com, but in many cases you have to be careful.
If you provide too much info then you never get paid

~~~
markoman
Too much of what info?

