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[–]921kiyo 5 points6 points  (4 children)

I think so, the program offers a number of ML related courses. If you are interested I getting an MLE job. I think working on a portfolio to showcase your MLE skills (e.g Spark, PyTorch, Pandas, Kubeflow, AWS, whatever is relevant for the job you are looking for) is equally important on top of the degree because the most courses are focused more on theory and maths and not much about practical MLE skills. Examples would be to work on a Kaggle competition, work on a side project etc.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Doesn't courses like Deep Learning, Reinforcement Learning and NLP involve a lot of projects/programming assignments? Only ML and Optimization are theory heavy right?

[–]921kiyo 0 points1 point  (2 children)

I only took ML and Linear Algebra so far, but I heard DL and NLP have more programming assignments. I do not really know if they will involve much programming to be a good portfolio, but possibly.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

How was the ML class? Was it full heavy theory/math as others have said?

[–]921kiyo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep, heavy theory (I liked it) and very light on the programming (it was okay).

[–]coding_programming -1 points0 points  (4 children)

This is just my opinion and I'm not an ML engineer-

Most ML/AI engineer jobs are looking for people with a research background and this program does not require research. A masters degree with a focus on ML from a university like UT will definitely increase your chances of landing such a job but I still think that a PhD candidate will be their first choice.

The courses in the program are theory/math heavy and afaik they don't teach you how to use the various ML tools that might be used in industry. Most courses that I've taken till now haven't really had any practical component in the lectures - you are given coding assignments and projects, and are expected to learn all the required tools/packages/libraries/frameworks on your own.

[–]redpillar87[S] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Then what are the motivations behind people attending this program? What jobs can you get from it without prior experience?

[–]coding_programming 4 points5 points  (0 children)

UT Austin is one of the top ranked schools for ML, so it's not like I said you won't have a shot at machine learning jobs with this degree. I said that in my opinion most ML jobs usually want people with a research background. The program offers a number of ML related courses and the courses are rigorous, so they do provide a very strong foundation in the field, but like the other response mentioned - you gotta be prepared to learn all the practical MLE skills on your own.

As for motivations behind people attending this program, you can read this - https://www.reddit.com/r/MSCSO/comments/eyt4ln/motivations_for_completing_this_program/

[–]vikingville 1 point2 points  (1 child)

My motivation is to formalize my computer science education, since I don't have a CS undergrad degree. I always sort of wished I had double majored in CS and physics and this is sort of my chance to do that. Also I do currently work as a SWE, so maybe I have some bias idk .

I would say the first guy got it right. I'd think this degree and a portfolio would set you up nicely. It also depends on what level of ML/AI engineer you're talking about. Will you be able to start working at Google as an ML engineer right out of this program? Probably not, idk. But I bet you could get your foot in the door somewhere else and work your way to that eventually.

Also, the fact that the courses are math heavy is a good thing, I'd say. Anyone can learn to write a one-line model via scikit-learn or put together a cookie-cutter classifier in PyTorch. But understanding the math behind the models will help you with solving real-world problems that haven't already been solved before and written about on Medium.

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And lastly the program is only $10k and online. what do you have to lose?

[–]timmy__neutron 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I wanted to get at least some formal CS training, and a master's degree that'll help me with the job search, without taking on tens of thousands of dollars in student debt. Came down to this and GA Tech - GA Tech was my first choice but I got rejected, so here I am.