What does an in-house AI specialist really cost you?
The salary is less than two thirds of the bill. There are social security contributions, severance pay (TFR), recruiting, tools and the months the person spends learning. Run the numbers on your own company — it takes twenty seconds.
The full bill, on your numbers
Move the three sliders. The comparison updates as you go.
| First year | Employee | MariVision |
|---|---|---|
| Gross salary / annual fee | — | — |
| Social security contributions (INPS, INAIL) | — | — |
| Severance pay (TFR) set aside | — | — |
| Recruiting and selection | — | — |
| Workstation, licenses, AI tools | — | included |
| First-year total | — | — |
Where these numbers are from.
Contributions 32%: the employer’s share of INPS and INAIL, which depending on the collective agreement and job grade ranges from 29% to 33% of gross salary.
Severance pay (TFR): one and a half thirteenths of annual pay, i.e. 7.4%, as set by the Italian Civil Code.
Recruiting 8%: an agency charges 15 to 25% of gross salary, but many SMEs recruit on their own and pay only in time — 8% is a cautious middle ground.
Tools €1,500: workstation, software licenses and AI subscriptions, on an annual basis.
Time recovered: valued at €25 an hour, which is the employer cost of a clerical employee on a gross salary of around €30,000 divided by the hours actually worked, over 46 weeks net of vacation and public holidays.
These are Italian market averages, not your case: your payroll consultant will give you the exact figure, and if they say I’ve overstated it, they’re right.
I work by objective, not by the hour. The fee above is the benchmark for an ongoing collaboration: we agree on what has to work, not on how many hours I put in. The real quote happens in conversation.
Where an employee wins
An employee is there every day. I’m not.
It’s true, and it’s only fair to say it before anything else: a hired person is in the company eight hours a day, absorbs the way you work, answers on the spot, and also does the things nobody had planned for. If the work really is full-time and continuous, hiring is the right choice — and that’s coming from me, who loses a client by saying so.
Then there’s a piece I left out of the calculation above, because it can’t be quantified: an AI specialist you hire also has to be managed. If nobody in the company already knows what to ask of artificial intelligence, you pay that person’s first months while they learn, and you pay them gross.
I don’t work by the hour: I work by objective. We agree on what has to work and by when, not on how many hours it takes me to get there. If something takes me twice as long as planned, that’s my problem. It’s also why it makes no sense to compare the fee with an hourly rate: you’re not buying time, you’re buying a result that didn’t exist before.
What I deliver
Not slide-deck consulting: stuff that runs in production and that you stop doing by hand.
Automation that runs on its own
The repetitive steps that today keep one person busy for half a day: order imports, checks, reports, mailings. Written once, then they just run.
Integrations between your programs
Management software, e-commerce, warehouse, accounting: making them talk to each other instead of retyping data from one window to another.
AI agents on your own material
Assistants that answer customers, prepare quotes, sort requests — trained on your documents, not generic.
Custom software
Management systems, dashboards and web apps built around the way you work, when off-the-shelf software doesn’t get there.
Two companies already doing it
The tech department on subscription
Website, automatic price list imports from suppliers, custom plugins and ongoing support. A fixed monthly arrangement instead of a person on the payroll — and without the cost of a hire.
From catalog to campaign, without a photo set
A B2B app for customers, plugins for registrations and orders, and AI fashion content production that replaces shoots that would cost thousands of euros a season.
Let’s do the math for real
Send me the number you got and a couple of lines on what your company does. I’ll tell you whether it makes sense, even when the answer is no.
First chat is free, no strings attached.
Want to know more about me?
Visit MariVision