Are you interested in working with data and solving optimization problems? Are you ok with fairly repetitive processes (data cleaning, very similar models with

Are you interested in working with data and solving optimization problems? Are you ok with fairly repetitive processes (data cleaning, very similar models with minor tweaks here and there, etc)? 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.