Is it possible for a non-finance orientated coder to get into the industry? Or does one need to be a math genius as well as a coder?
Hacker news is essentially the dailywtf for traders. Most of the people there have an ax to grind and/or no experience in real markets.
Welcome to the site.
It's a rather diverse industry in terms of the type of developers being sought. People with skills ranged from low level hardware design all the way up to Haskell/Scala are pretty constantly in demand.