Great interview. In my experience it's amazing just how many people are talking about "Big Data" and just how exactly none of those are the ones with the necessary PhDs in statistics and algorithms to get anything of any value done.
In my experience there are very few domains within Machine Learning where you don't need to be an expert in the field to yield useful conclusions out of the data.
Even if you have a high-level conceptual understanding of the statistical methods, tuning the parameters to yield something relevant, or much more so, adapting existing algorithms to meet your needs requires some pretty serious dedication to the field.
In my experience there are very few domains within Machine Learning where you don't need to be an expert in the field to yield useful conclusions out of the data.
Even if you have a high-level conceptual understanding of the statistical methods, tuning the parameters to yield something relevant, or much more so, adapting existing algorithms to meet your needs requires some pretty serious dedication to the field.