by throwaway923857 on 3/17/21, 7:16 PM with 2 comments
After taking a year off mid-career I am considering spending an additional 6 months to learn machine learning before returning to work. I am attracted to ML because I like math and I’m excited by the promise of ML. I also want to shake things up and distinguish myself from other job candidates.
Is it worth the investment to learn ML at this stage in my career? Would 6 months be enough? What would my day-to-day look like: would I actually get to work on choosing and tuning models?
If you are actually working in a ML role or related I would appreciate hearing from you. Thanks!
by rawtxapp on 3/17/21, 7:33 PM
The application of ML is nowhere near as glamorous as it seems (having done ML at FAANG).
That said, it's still a great tool to have and a great thing to understand, who knows maybe you'll end up really liking the process and the data aspect of it. You won't become an expert at it in 6 months, but you can develop a relatively good understanding of it and build a couple practical projects and know what you don't know (essentially what are the different fields within ML, what kind of applications are there, what kind of models would you use in which kind of scenarios, etc).
I highly recommend learning it if you have time. Lots of good information on here and in /r/cscareerquestions and /r/machinelearning as well.