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Wow, it's nice to see my post on the top page of Hacker News. Note that I wrote this post back in February 2020 and there are a couple of things that I would l

Wow, it's nice to see my post on the top page of Hacker News. Note that I wrote this post back in February 2020 and there are a couple of things that I would like to add: - Due to high demand, I increased my rate to $250/hour + some fixed monthly fee in April. I didn't drop any single client :) - I'm seeing very little impact from the coronavirus. I have a client base spanning between Japan and the US in a little-impacted industry (education). Don't put all your eggs in one basket. - I would strongly encourage everyone who's considering making a leap to read "The Win Without Pitching Manifesto" https://www.winwithoutpitching.com/the-manifesto/ https://www.winwithoutpitching.com/the-manifesto/ - Due to a sheer volume of my incoming emails I can't answer all of them, but do let me know if you are interested in working with me!

trott 6y ago
Thanks for sharing your experiences! I did well in Kaggle's highest-prized competition[1], so I wondered if I should explore this kind of consulting myself. The competition I was in was effectively limited to US residents though, but as a "remote" freelancer you compete world-wide, potentially with people willing to work for far less. Are there reasons your clients prefer US-based freelancers enough to justify the gap in pay? [1] Top 1% (5th/518), #1 result in California: https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/news/2018/07/09/news-release-st-announces-winners-15m-prize-competition https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/news/2018/07/09/n...
- mhagiwara 6y ago
  If your clients are choosing you based on where you are and how your rate compares with other freelancers, I think you have wrong clients.
  - robbintt 6y ago
    They were referring to other externalities like work that requires security clearance.
m3at 6y ago
Thanks for sharing! As you work between Japan and the US, I'm curious about the rate difference. Are you able to charge the same?
- mhagiwara 6y ago
  Yes. I basically charge the same rate in USD no matter where my client is.
  - m3at 6y ago
    Good to know, thank you.
breezest 6y ago
Thanks for sharing! How often will the clients find you again to do the follow-up work, e.g. new software feature requests, for the previous projects? If you refuse the requests, will this undermine the business relationship?
- mhagiwara 6y ago
  This has never happened to me (yet).
nu2ycombinator 6y ago
I am experienced software engineer. I want to start learning AI, do you recommend any articles books, and order in which I need to proceed.
mhdhn 6y ago
I don’t get what “NLP/ML for Asian language processing and language education” work is. Can someone explain a bit more. What kinds of companies do this, what kind of businesses?
- oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
  I may be wrong but I think an obvious example is Google search.
- polm23 6y ago
  An example of "language education" is Duolingo, where the author used to be an employee. "NLP/ML for Asian language processing" covers anything that has text in CJK/other languages. I work with Japanese and lots of things taken for granted in NLP pipelines require entirely different approaches specifically for Japanese. For example, there's no spaces, so word tokenization is actually a complicated issue.
dennisgorelik 6y ago
Do you have an example of a practical problem that your AI consulting solves?

trott 6y ago

Thanks for sharing your experiences! I did well in Kaggle's highest-prized competition[1], so I wondered if I should explore this kind of consulting myself. The competition I was in was effectively limited to US residents though, but as a "remote" freelancer you compete world-wide, potentially with people willing to work for far less. Are there reasons your clients prefer US-based freelancers enough to justify the gap in pay? [1] Top 1% (5th/518), #1 result in California: https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/news/2018/07/09/news-release-st-announces-winners-15m-prize-competition https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/news/2018/07/09/n...

mhagiwara 6y ago
If your clients are choosing you based on where you are and how your rate compares with other freelancers, I think you have wrong clients.
- robbintt 6y ago
  They were referring to other externalities like work that requires security clearance.

m3at 6y ago

Thanks for sharing! As you work between Japan and the US, I'm curious about the rate difference. Are you able to charge the same?

mhagiwara 6y ago
Yes. I basically charge the same rate in USD no matter where my client is.
- m3at 6y ago
  Good to know, thank you.

breezest 6y ago

Thanks for sharing! How often will the clients find you again to do the follow-up work, e.g. new software feature requests, for the previous projects? If you refuse the requests, will this undermine the business relationship?

mhagiwara 6y ago
This has never happened to me (yet).

nu2ycombinator 6y ago

I am experienced software engineer. I want to start learning AI, do you recommend any articles books, and order in which I need to proceed.

mhdhn 6y ago

I don’t get what “NLP/ML for Asian language processing and language education” work is. Can someone explain a bit more. What kinds of companies do this, what kind of businesses?

oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
I may be wrong but I think an obvious example is Google search.
polm23 6y ago
An example of "language education" is Duolingo, where the author used to be an employee. "NLP/ML for Asian language processing" covers anything that has text in CJK/other languages. I work with Japanese and lots of things taken for granted in NLP pipelines require entirely different approaches specifically for Japanese. For example, there's no spaces, so word tokenization is actually a complicated issue.

dennisgorelik 6y ago

Do you have an example of a practical problem that your AI consulting solves?