From Free Lancer to Full-Time: Dalon's Transition to Machine Learning.

1. Why did you take up this program?
I was self-employed when I took up this program. I was working on a finance project, building an analytics dashboard. I had some Python knowledge through projects like these, and I knew that would be useful in learning Machine Learning too. I decided to take up a course because of that. My projects took up most of my time, and I had to travel to Bangalore for the classes, but it was worth it.
2. How did you get into Videoken?
Our CEO Manish Gupta had come to Great lakes for an industry session. After the class, I had reached out to him and asked if he can offer an internship. He put me in touch with the technical guy, and I was hired as an intern for 3 months. While I was working there, they were impressed with the model I had built, which was put in production. They ended up offering me a full-time job, without even conducting an interview. Everything just fell in place.
3. What is your role at Videoken like?
I am building a speech recognising engine using a model called deep-speech. My current role is to improve this model using the current data that we have and customize it. I am also working on punctuation model, which is in the field of Deep learning.
4. What did you like the most about the program?
Professors like PKV and Mukesh Rao are very knowledgeable and really good. That’s what I liked the most about the program – the faculty.
5. Did you consider any other options before enrolling for this course?
There were few programs at that time, and now there are plenty. When I started, there was a program from Manipal. Before I joined this program, I took a short course in Udemy and realized that many things were messed up and needed a better structure. I saw the curriculum and it looked good. So I opted for this program.
6. Did the course help you to do better during your internship?
Yeah of course even if it is deep learning, the base is all stats and ML etc. Just to talk with these technical people, you need to be familiar with the terms they use to understand what they mean.
7. Advice to the aspirants? How to get the most out of the program?
Just attending the lectures will definitely not be enough. They will have to put in some self-study. Self-study is the main thing which actually gets you through the program. Even though the lecturers are good, if you don’t do anything from your end, it will be wasted.
8. What kind of tools do you use now?
*Python is the base language that I work on
* R
* Linux environment for development
*Couple of GPU’s
*Jupyter or Spyder