[radikalus]

Until the pay is comparable to finance, good luck?

I'd love to work on (arguably) cooler problems, but the combination of lower pay and the constant need to use the "hot new thing" to solve problems doesn't make transitioning look remotely attractive.

Really, the second is the HUGE obstacle: - You don't know anything about aNNs? Sorry, no job. - Nobody uses aNNs anymore, SVMs are all that matters. Sorry, come back after you catch up. - SVMs? Man, we need someone who's got expertise in optimizing RFs and Bayesian Trees. We don't want "black box" machine learning. We need to "understand" the results. Sorry no job. - Decision trees? GTFO man. We're doing rNNs now. - I'm pretty impressed with your data mining knowledge, but we're looking for someone with a background in DLMs and GPs. Sorry, no job. - repeat until vomit/suicide

I kind of wonder about the need for "badass" math skills; I'm not terribly convinced that math wizards are extraordinarily high value relative to people with other types of data analysis skills.