

The $30/hr Data Scientist - danso
http://www.john-foreman.com/blog/the-30hr-data-scientist

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dmicah
There are graduate students doing what a data scientist does for $10-15 an
hour.

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davmre
Grad students are compensated in other ways: training, prestige, independence,
etc. Almost everyone in a respectable CS PhD program could have gotten a
$100k/yr tech job instead. The fact that they turned this down in favor of a
$30k grad school stipend indicates that they value the intangible rewards of
grad school at at least $70k/yr, i.e., way more than the monetary
compensation. You certainly couldn't hire a grad student on the free market
for $30k/yr without providing equivalent intangibles.

~~~
pXMzR2A
> Grad students are compensated in other ways: training, prestige,
> independence, etc.

A grad assistant is usually not perceived as an employer by most universities,
US and abroad. As such, from the university's perspective (which you took in
your comment), one cannot say that they are being compensated, at all.

Assuming that you do understand that a graduate assistant (in this case, e.g.
a research assistant who is also a student) is actually an employee of the
university,

\- The training they receive (courses et al) is what we call unpaid training.
They do not receive salary for the hours they spend receiving training, which
is a requirement for them to do their job (research assistant) efficiently and
successfully.

\- Would you accept payment in prestige if you were in, say, Google or Apple?
A graduate school has much less prestige (hence the need for "internships").

\- Independence does not exist for a grad assistant, whose not only livelihood
but also school registration depends on her/his relationship with her/his
"mentor" (i.e. boss / advisor to boss) and other department members. Not only
job security but also school security depends on maintaining "good
relationships" with these people. (As a student, on the other hand, s/he is
expected to produce and engage in independent thought.) Additionally, this
particular kind of employee cannot switch jobs easily since most jobs will not
provide benefits for external education.

\- No or lower-end benefits etc.

You can very easily hire a grad student on a "free market"[1] for even $15k/yr
if they are [made to be] desperate enough. Most already are.

[1] Please read Adam Smith to understand how a "free market" actually
operates. It's not what you think it is.

~~~
swatow
You're the one who doesn't understand the free market.

Grad students tend to be intelligent capable people (from privileged
backgrounds too!). Therefore we don't expect grad students to be desparate,
because we infer that they ahve a lot of other options.

The only sense in which grad students are desperate, is that they really want
the other advantages that being a grad student confers, most of all the
education and experience, and the degree they get at the end. And this was
precisely the point of the post you replied to: graduate students are getting
non-monetary compensation.

If you disagree, I challenge you to find one testimonial from a grad student
whose story is that they were so desperate for money, that they had no choice
but to enroll in grad school to make ends meet.

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Klockan
Someone gets paid less than me for the same job: "Beware, no way he can charge
that little and still do a good job!".

Someone gets paid more than me for the same job: "He must be spending more
time on politics than actually working, I would earn as much if it weren't for
my high standards!".

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therobot24
Easy rule of thumb is to double the hourly rate to get a rough estimate of the
yearly salary, so $30/hr ~ $60k a year. If a company where to hire an
undergrad stats major they might pay $60k as a starting salary. Since the post
is about freelance work they may have had someone in HR basically extrapolate
this salary to ~$30/hr. Of course short term freelance work is going to work
on a different pay scale, but there are plenty of examples where companies
either try to get away with it or just plain don't understand the difference.

~~~
lgas
The "double the hourly rate" rule works from the employee's perspective -- $30
hr x ~2000 hrs worked in a year = $60k, but not from the employers, because
the fully loaded cost of an employee with a $60k salary is probably over
$100k.

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duckingtest
So Western centric. Now imagine you're a brilliant 2x year old guy in Ukraine,
Belarus or Vietnam. That $30/hour would put you in the upper 1% of income in
your country.

~~~
namidark
Genuinely curious about this - why do developers who are from those country
not charge more?

Why is their work deemed $30/hr where as a Western counterpart could get away
with charging $90? Same goes for people in India as well - if they are
genuinely good at what they do why do they not charge a higher rate?

~~~
duckingtest
Because customers aren't usually capable of assessing the technical
capabilities. All they see is self-confidence, personal charm (English and
accent is very important in this category) and past experience. So what
happens is that a guy with these qualities, along with enough technical
knowledge to asses the skills, resells the work of cheap foreign developers
for enormous profit, probably as a consulting company. People with powerful
personalities can get out of that, but those introverted or with some form of
Asperger's won't. I know of several instances like that personally. They just
accept that they're worth $20k/year as a fact, even though if they were more
assertive and extraverted that could eventually turn into $200k.

If they try to start out on their own, they start with low confidence, which
means low prices. Which leads to people thinking they aren't capable of
anything complicated, so they get only shitty jobs. Which reinforces their low
confidence in their skills and they don't try much.

Steve Jobs of the world will always earn more than Wozniaks.

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technologia
Gov't data scientists who are on the GS scale can certainly be paid that

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thearn4
yep, $30/hr is roughly the salary of a GS-12-01, which is what fresh-out PhDs
are usually hired in at in federal service:

[http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-
leave/salaries-...](http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-
leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/15Tables/html/GS_h.aspx)

~~~
therobot24
This table seems to be just base pay. The addition of locality pay can also
help move that number a bit.

~~~
cossatot
Federal benefits (esp. healthcare) are also quite nice.

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Mikeb85
If the job is just to sort some data and make some visualisations of said
data, $30/hour (or about 60K/year) seems about right.

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IndianAstronaut
The MOOCians are coming. This is why I focused on other predictive modeling
areas instead of just basic ML algos as well as more engineering intensive
activities.

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tls
Reminds me a job I had early on in life working under several intelligent
people but unknowningly replacing 3.

Out of the 3 the 1st pushed me and encouraged me to move on when we debated
who should stay, the 2nd was a surprise because I asked her why she was
training me but sadly it was then I learned of her animosity toward me and her
30 years on payroll.

Which brings me to the last person I was replacing - the data scientist, the
man that verfied my numbers and surely was verifying a lot of other things.

so having the guilt of the first two I happened to have a situation outside of
my control land in my lap, I left the company immediately, positive they kept
him onboard for atleast another 6 months to a year.

great experience nonetheless.

tldr: cost reduction hire, had to be vetted 1st - split before my conscience
weighed too heavy.

