Software Engineering at a Chicago Prop Trading Firm - Any Advice Would Be Appreciated

I've recently received an offer for a software engineering internship in Chicago for this upcoming summer. I'm a junior economics and computer science major, and had always kind of planned to go into a more traditional finance/consulting role out of college. This being said, prop trading strikes me as a very interesting combination of my fields of study, and the people and office environment at impressed me. I'm not sure if this is the best place to post this, but I have two questions for anyone who can help:

I've read that the prop trading/algo trading space is becoming over saturated and that firms are not seeing the success that they have in previous years. Is is a bad/risky idea to start out at a prop trading firm out of college? (I would assume software devs will have more job security than traders but that might not be the case.) What do you think the outlook of the industry is?

If I decide that I don't like software engineering or proprietary trading in general, how do you think this internship would affect my chances when applying to consulting, financial analyst, or "pure" tech jobs during my senior year? I'm confident that through taking their software and trading training courses and project experience that I will have a lot to talk about in interviews.

Thanks in advance for anyone who can provide insight.

 

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