A better use of that would be to hire a consultant for a couple weeks a year to tweak (or determine, at first) your models. We did this at a market research company I worked at, an oldschool stats guy would come in once a year for a review and tune-up.

I do 'data science' for smaller businesses that would not have the resources, or really the need for a full-time in-house analytics person like me. But, one client does about 8 to 10 hours a week, another does some projects periodically, and I just added a third that I think will end up being something like a day a week.

From my perspective it spreads my risk and from their perspective it means they get access to higher-end analytical help in a more flexible package that meets their needs. Their trade-off is higher rates per hour and my trade-off is a little more variance in income.

Good point. No reason to bring someone in-house before you even know what your needs are.

Moreover, the things they would work on may not really change often enough for an in-house person to ever be worth it.

We don't have this kind of money. And I think lots of small startups face a similar problem. I hope someone would "Productize" this kind of thing (even as a niche consultancy which can serve several smaller businesses)

50k remote from continental Europe