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Comment by 31reasons | Hacker News Reader

Is there too much competition to be a trader or anyone can become one ? If so, its seems much better idea to toil away to make millions than toil away at a remote chance to make a million in a startup.

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I think it's quite hard now. Lots of prop firms have closed down, regulation has increased significantly and is only getting worse. There's less easy money to be made. The majority of new traders are farmed from ivy league or top private engineering schools.

I've seen some people join as devs and swap into trading. Ironically in these cases they were terrible devs, but increased their salary several times by becoming traders.

What is a typical path from dev->trader? Should one join a hedge fund as a programmer and then step up the ladder?

A friend of mine works in a trading company. He said all the traders want to become devs, because it is the only skill that they've seen up close that translates outside of the mad-house of trading, and they (the traders) all know eventually their number will be up.

Perhaps, lack of understanding on my side, but what does "their number will be up" mean? From what I've heard, it's most often the case that developers want to move into trading.

I think he means that they're worried about employment after their stint as traders.

Why would they want to work as relatively tiny salaried devs after getting million dollar bonuses, rather than just retire?

You mean "Mad house of trading" = Millions of dollars in bonuses.

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