[StefanWestfal]

I heard good things about Bishop however I am a SE that would like do know more about what the ML team is doing and maybe work on some ML side projects. Would you recommend Bishop here or is it considerer to theoretical for such a case?

[craigching]

Bishop is going to be more theoretical than ISL. It is true that Bishop is taught as an introduction to ML in many universities, but if you want more hands on to start with, ISL is an excellent option. There is another text called "Elements of Statistical Learning" that pairs well with ISL for a more theoretical treatment. I haven't looked at ESL in a long time, the only concern I'd have is if they aren't covering some introductory deep learning topics. Most of ISL, ESL, and Bishop are more traditional machine learning, covering a wide variety of algorithms, so bear that in mind.