
Ask HN: Viability of selling expertise in languages for academic purposes - latexr
I have a friend that is currently doing her Master’s thesis and will need to use R for statistical work. She has no programming experience and little R experience. I’m not a professional programmer but do it for fun, for open-source or personal needs. I have some experience with the likes of ruby, bash, html, css, javascript, and processing.<p>Since her deadline is looming I’ve decided to learn R to help her. I figured it’d be easier for me, due to my programming background. So far, that seems about right. I can quickly find newbish mistakes and help with understanding the documentation of the commands she needs.<p>This got me thinking. What if I learn languages used in academic circles (R and LaTeX come to mind) and then sell my expertise? I’m thinking of academics that need sections of their work done in those tools but have little time or skill. They might prefer spending both on the rest of their study, hiring me to help with the technical bit.<p>Is this a viable idea? I’ve read (from patio11?) students and teachers are the worst consumers&#x2F;clients, as they never want to spend money. Perhaps researchers are a bit different in that regard.<p>I’m mostly interested in the LaTeX &#x2F; other languages part of the question. I haven’t enjoyed R much and it’s clear programming experience is not enough if the client doesn’t have a grasp of the statistic behind the models.<p>Is anyone having success doing this, freelancer or not? Is it worthwhile? Any tips to get started (including languages I might not know about)?
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Davidbrcz
Learning how to use the fundamental tools of your field is part of the job,
whatever field you are in.

It is generous of you to help her with R (which is not used in all fields).
Latex is mandatory for any scientist in STEM, she won't escape it. Moreover,
Latex is not at all like programing, content and Latex instructions are mixed.
It may help to think about it like an empowered HTML/CSS for scientific
writing.

I think your idea is doomed for several reasons:

\- Becoming an expert to the point you can sell your skills to scientists will
take you a lot of time

\- Money is going thin in labs, it is unlikely that anyone has a budget line
for this kind of thing

\- As a scientist, I would be very suspicious of someone contacting me for
this kind of work. I would suspect an attempt to steal ideas and/or work.

\- There are (were?) people in the labs to help scientists: research
associate.

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itamarst
Might want to go find some scientists and ask them.

