To everything in this article. Just, yes.

Starting a passionate career is always difficult. For aspiring data-scientists, the cruel reality is if you are waiting for d.s. skills to be spoon-fed to you, whether by MOOC or grad school, you will NEVER break into an entry-level data-science position.

I hear a lot of graduate students in my program talking about their passion for data, but never hear much talk about projects they are doing on the side that inspire them.

As a result, there are quite a few stories of aspiring d.s./grad students forced to take software-engineering internships because “there just aren’t any entry-level data-science positions”.