I am curious, how did you transition into ml, nlp. I am thinking of transitioning to ml, as work is getting kind of boring for me, but most job requires at least a master in the relevant field. I am self studying right now, maybe going back for a master, but I felt I lack alot of necessary probability and linear algebra theorems. I can code svm, neural network from nothing. I understand basic markov chain, bayes network, but that is really just scratching the surface. Any recommendations?

I'm in the same boat. I'm no longer interested in the plumbing, much more the type of questions that can be answered with large scale data, and other types of efficiencies that are dormant with 'pure' code.