I'm a machine learning specialist tackling interesting/complex problems of a certain worth. There is definitely an "applying the ML hammer to every single nail/problem" thing going as well.
Example: say a company with 1B in revenue and 500M in costs: being able to give them 10% efficiency or 5% increase in revenue through optimization is a 50M value prop to them. So to spend 5M to achieve those extra $s is entirely worth it.
Of course doing things that result in that optimization are nontrivial as well, but that's what people pay me for. :)
The 15-20hrs a week thing is often a client constraint, because I'd ask for data and what not and would have to wait for them to provide me with what I ask for, or that their data has issues and I need to understand how to sanitize it.
Example: say a company with 1B in revenue and 500M in costs: being able to give them 10% efficiency or 5% increase in revenue through optimization is a 50M value prop to them. So to spend 5M to achieve those extra $s is entirely worth it.
Of course doing things that result in that optimization are nontrivial as well, but that's what people pay me for. :)
The 15-20hrs a week thing is often a client constraint, because I'd ask for data and what not and would have to wait for them to provide me with what I ask for, or that their data has issues and I need to understand how to sanitize it.