I had a poor experience with Erdos Miller. I'm willing to take the repetitional
hit because I think it's important that people go in with eyes open.
I was approached by the CEO of Erdos Miller to do some data science work on anomaly detection/failure prediction, and signal recovery down mud pipes in drill holes.
Over a period of two weeks we signed an NDA, and discussed the problems. I laid out several approaches to solving the anomaly detection/failure prediction problem, including specific algorithms to use (or not!). This is my bread and butter work, with hard won experience.
On Friday the 31st I had a call and a new fairly vanilla anomaly detection problem was discussed, which he (The CEO) wanted to go ahead with immediately. He was asking about explicit approaches to solving this, which I discussed. We agreed to start next week - He confirmed that we were unequivocally going ahead, rates were discussed without pushback. I sent a rate card after the conversation.
On Monday I emailed to sort out logistics for data access, billing, etc. He promptly replied that he was taking the project in house. Now I've seen this post listing exactly the problems I had laid out solutions to.
Erdos Miller went back on an explicit agreement they made on the very next business day, pumped me for hard earned experience, and took a free option on my time (This entire week is un-billable, possibly more). Finally he'll have a leg up on structuring the work for these two roles should he fill them. That leaves a sour taste in my mouth.