I think there's still a start-up stigma attached to programmers from financial firms. Unless you have high-frequency trading, algo trading or some other high end signal attached to your name, the assumption is that you are a cookie cutter, untalented programmer.

That's really sad, as the reality of financial programming is that there are lots of very smart, talented programmers working in back office positions. These roles are actually the majority of financial firm development and often require just as much technical knowledge and understanding as the flashy ones.

The flood of recently laid off developers who, unfortunately, are usually in the bottom quartile is further reinforcing this stereotype. Not to mention the push towards outsourcing actual development and pushing good employee developers into management or supervisory roles that was the practice at a majority of financial firms.

So while there are certain reasons that are behind this stigma, as is often the case in these situations, it paints lots of good developers with the same broad brush and actually hurts the start ups themselves as it restricts their pool of candidates.