For Wilhelm S., Outlier is a tasty side dish

After completing a master’s degree last August in industrial design and mechanical engineering, Wilhelm S.’s career was ready for liftoff. The 26-year-old had chosen this hybrid program specifically to combine his technical and artistic interests. And as if his academic credentials weren't enough, he had also pursued a childhood dream by working his way up to head chef at a Mexican restaurant in his hometown of Gothenburg, Sweden — having spent two gap years exploring everything from Italian to French to Scandinavian vegan cuisine along the way.

However, Wilhelm found the demands of the kitchen too much to handle while searching for a full-time job in his field of study, so he quit the chef position to focus on finding a long-term position aligned with his degree. “I would love to work for a company that does design jobs for clients, something project based,” he says. “That's the ideal situation. But hiring is quite slow in my field right now.”

Just five days after he hung up his chef's apron, he stumbled on a social media ad for Outlier. “The timing was impeccable,” he says, “though at first I thought, ‘this sounds too good to be true — to work 100% remote and from anywhere. There has to be a catch.’” In Sweden, where office work is still very much the norm, the idea of a fully remote position seemed almost suspicious.

After some online research and knocking out a few projects, Wilhelm quickly realized that his work on Outlier wasn't just legit — it offered competitive pay rates compared to local jobs and allowed him to level up his job hunt. “I try to work between 20 and 30 hours a week. You can work for a few hours on Outlier, then when you need a break, open up a tab and look up jobs on LinkedIn. It's the perfect side gig.”

When he first started poking around on Outlier, Wilhelm worried that every project would require top-tier coding skills. Despite his engineering background, coding wasn't his strength. He was pleasantly surprised to find that something as simple as speaking Swedish, his native tongue, was in similarly high demand. In the months since he joined, he has also brought along several friends, regardless of their academic background.

“People hear ‘AI training’ and assume they have to know how to code,” he says. The first person he introduced to the platform was his best friend's girlfriend, who holds a master's in PR and communication. “Her background isn't technical, it's more in creative writing. She started doing Outlier tasks and really enjoyed the language-based projects. You don't necessarily have to know all of the technical details behind it. You just have to be able to think creatively and figure out ways to trick the model into making errors.”

Although navigating a difficult job market isn't much fun, contributing to Outlier has served as the perfect stopgap for the intellectually curious Wilhelm. “I wish I had found it earlier when I was still studying,” he says. “It would have been a game changer.”