My wife is looking for work in data science, on a contract basis in the $50-100/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?
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)<p>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.)<p>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.
I am a data science freelancer/consultant (background story and motivation: <a href="http://p.migdal.pl/2015/12/14/sci-to-data-sci.html" rel="nofollow">http://p.migdal.pl/2015/12/14/sci-to-data-sci.html</a>). 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.<p>Some links I gathered: <a href="https://pinboard.in/u:pmigdal/t:freelancing" rel="nofollow">https://pinboard.in/u:pmigdal/t:freelancing</a>. Plus, price negotiation is super important (way more than for regular jobs). I recommend "Ten Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer" <a href="https://medium.freecodecamp.org/ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-job-offer-ee17cccbdab6#.rhwj57ckp" rel="nofollow">https://medium.freecodecamp.org/ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-...</a>.<p>Look at <a href="https://brainpool.ai/" rel="nofollow">https://brainpool.ai/</a> (they offered some good contracts). In general leveraging one's PhD and credentials is a good strategy.
(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.)<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Someone else mentioned it, but don't do this on an hourly basis. Daily or monthly.
Wait for the "April 2019" thread:<p>"Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2019)"<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19281832" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19281832</a>
I also forgot, that there are on Linkedin.com
Remote Jobs in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8613673/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8613673/</a><p>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.