>People who just use library functions without having any understanding of how they work are not going to do as well as the people who actually understand the math.
...who won't do as well as people who understand the business domain and that "good enough" isn't that hard to achieve with some pretty elementary stuff (regression, xgboost).
PhD's have been trying to act as gatekeepers of "Data Science" for the past decade. It's only getting easier for people to apply this stuff. Unless you're doing actual research in these algorithms, there is little need to "understand the math" beyond an undergraduate level.
...who won't do as well as people who understand the business domain and that "good enough" isn't that hard to achieve with some pretty elementary stuff (regression, xgboost).
PhD's have been trying to act as gatekeepers of "Data Science" for the past decade. It's only getting easier for people to apply this stuff. Unless you're doing actual research in these algorithms, there is little need to "understand the math" beyond an undergraduate level.