Survey: How AI Boosts the Productivity and Earnings of Top Tech Freelancers

Last year Andrew Neely noticed that his gig writing freelance SEO articles and emails for a marketing firm was drying up.

At that point, ChatGPT was six months into its stratospheric rise to 100M weekly active users. Neely suspected he was one of the first victims of the white collar workers’ greatest fear: being replaced by AI.

Then Neely was accidentally cc’d on an email from the content manager at the marketing firm confirming his worst suspicions. The manager was asking someone else to take the article written by ChatGPT, which wasn’t very good, and make it better.

Neely confronted the manager. She said they were using AI as a cost-cutting exercise. Not long after that, the manager left the firm as well. 

Whether we like it or not, this story will become increasingly common for freelancers with entry-level skills: Those writing SEO or basic HTML code are definitely in trouble. A paper from a Harvard Business School researcher found a 21% decrease in the number of freelance job postings for automation-prone jobs after the rollout of ChatGPT.

According to our latest research, highly-skilled freelancers are thriving right now.

But there’s another angle to this story. According to our latest research, highly-skilled freelancers are thriving right now.

We surveyed 214 builders in the A.Team network between December 2023 and January 2024. These are engineers, developers, product managers, designers, data scientists, and marketers that have gone through a rigorous vetting process that places them amongst the top 2% in their respective fields. Many are ex-FAANG. Nearly half have already built a generative AI solution for a startup or enterprise.

They are, in other words, the top tier of freelance workers, and for them, the emergence of Generative AI presents a massive opportunity. This, then, is the counter-narrative—one in which the AI-augmented freelancers improve their productivity, and increase their capacity for learning and innovation. 

Key Findings

In a survey of 214 highly-skilled tech workers in the A.Team network:

• 80% said Generative AI increases their earning potential
• 91% said that having Generative AI skills made them more attractive to future employers.
• 92% said using Generative AI tools has increased their productivity.
• 68% said that Generative AI makes them more likely to pursue an independent career working for multiple companies.
• 86% said that every knowledge worker needs to learn how to use Generative AI in order to stay relevant.
• 16% have already increased their hourly rate to reflect their Generative AI skills.

We're seeing massive adoption of Gen AI amongst the most highly-skilled freelancers

Amongst this cohort, adoption is strong. Freelancers are embracing this new technology and upskilling more than twice as fast as the rest of the workforce. Fifty-four percent of our respondents said they used Generative AI either multiple times a day or constantly. Forty-five percent reported saving six or more hours per week, giving back nearly an entire work day. The vast majority of the highly-skilled product builders in our network anticipate using Generative AI more in the year ahead.

The wonderful thing about Generative AI models is that you can discover new use cases daily. We asked our respondents for their top use cases where Generative AI made them more productive: the answers range from hard coding tasks to soft skills—everything from test generation and code refactoring to marketing and launching a product.

In terms of which AI tools they are using, the frontrunner is no surprise: ChatGPT, by a long shot. It will be interesting to track whether these numbers change as Google and Meta roll out more advanced models, like Google’s new Gemini model.

In contrast to coding languages of the past, generative AI is a “learn on the fly” technology — no boot camps or degrees required. The most common way to learn about Generative AI, according to our research, is trial and error (85%), followed by YouTube (51%).

Generative AI boosts productivity across many use cases 

As Wharton Professor Ethan Mollick has noted, the wonderful thing about Generative AI models is that you can discover new use cases every day. Every time we use it, we have the potential to discover something new that not even the engineers at OpenAI know about, which is what makes it mysterious—almost magical.

At its core, though, Generative AI is a huge productivity booster on a vast array of essential software development processes, including code review, CI/CD, and debugging.

Productivity gains enable freelancers to reinvest their time in the things they really care about

The question follows: how do they reinvest the time saved with AI? Taking on additional projects was the obvious answer, but even more respondents said strategic thinking and upskilling.

This has the potential to create a virtuous cycle in which Gen AI saves you time, which you then reinvest in getting better at Gen AI.

This is the personal ROI of AI for freelancers, the real promise of what Generative AI can do for us. It gives us time in the week for things we want to work on but never seem to have time for.

Now entering: the golden age of freelancing

There’s no doubt that the threat of AI replacing jobs is real, and requires serious investments in rethinking everything from reskilling, to education, to the nature of jobs and the work week itself. And without a doubt, it poses a serious risk to many freelancers whose jobs focus on easily automatable tasks: writing formulaic SEO articles, data analysis, and basic graphic design.

Conversely, however, there appears to be a huge upside for the most highly-skilled independent workers. We may be entering an era in which the most highly skilled independent workers leverage this new technology to grow—personally and professionally.

We recently conducted a different survey of 1,000 knowledge workers to learn more about how they’re feeling about work after so many layoffs in tech and the emergence of Generative AI. Sixty-seven percent said the emergence of generative AI technologies has made freelance work more attractive.

The dream of the cushy big tech job has burst.

The dream of the cushy big tech job has burst. Workers want autonomy. Our findings indicate that highly skilled knowledge workers want more control over their work than traditional employment offers.

New models like fractional work have created a container for these changing priorities. And for those with these new skills, Generative AI can act as a mechanism for leveling up.

“Working fractionally is more interesting than corporate work because you can work on that one highest impact problem that each company has at several companies,” Alex Whedon, an AI expert in the A.Team network, explained. “I personally got bored at each company I worked at prior because I'd solve the one problem I thought was most important and then be uninterested in the remaining problems. Today, I am far more interested in my work 10 months later because I am still working on that one high-impact problem."

Ninety-one percent of respondents believe that having Generative AI experience will make them more attractive to future employers.

But it’s not automatic. Independent workers must cultivate these new capabilities. Our survey respondents confirmed this, with 86% saying that every knowledge worker needs to learn how to use Generative AI to remain relevant.

One thing is clear in the age of the $900,000 AI job: and that is the personal ROI of AI. Having these skills makes freelancers more productive, more attractive to clients, and increases their earning potential. Already, 16% of those surveyed have increased their hourly rate to reflect their Generative AI skills.

Call it the rise of the AI-augmented freelancer. It starts with widespread adoption among freelancers, ahead of the curve of the rest of the workforce. It’s sustained by the undeniable productivity gains. And it sketches out a future in which AI opens up space to learn, earn more, and innovate. 

Methodology

We surveyed 214 builders in the A.Team network between December 2023 and January 2024 using SurveyMonkey. Respondents identified as engineers, developers, product managers, designers, and marketers. They represent the globe in terms of location, with higher representation in North America, Europe, and Israel. 67% are Millennials and 26% are Gen X. 65% reported having an intermediate, advanced, or expert level familiarity with Generative AI.