How much time did it take you to actually learn enough to become competent? I've looked at the mathematics needed - after that it seems like figuring out the m

How much time did it take you to actually learn enough to become competent? I've looked at the mathematics needed - after that it seems like figuring out the main 'ideas' and then just picking one of a dozen frameworks in which to become very familiar. But unless I want to 'fake it until I make it', seems like it would take a good year or two, possibly with two semesters of grad school for both math and the machine learning, to really learn it as it wasn't something I learned at all undergrad or previous jobs.