Electrical Engineering Major - interested in Finance

Figured I'd go ahead and do what the message told me and post an introduction.

I am 23 years old and graduated in 2012 with a B.S. in Elec. Engineering. I kind of fell immediately into the electrical side of the construction industry, and before I knew it was full time with an electrical contractor. I guess growing up if you told me this is what I would be doing, I wouldn't exactly believe you. That being said the pay was pretty good and guaranteed so I jumped on board.

I'm quickly realizing this isn't really what I want to do . That being said, in the meantime, I began to become more interested in the stock market as a side thing. I initially started just trading options, and then started into some low cap stocks. For the most part I have stayed pretty break even, mostly because I feel like I can't dedicate enough time to learning enough to continue building my trading experience. Either way, I like the action. I have always thrived in high-stress environments, and I kind of felt a small passion for learning the finance world on the whole.

Anyway, just giving my story, and perhaps some of you were engineers in the past and have some insight onto why or how you jumped careers. I would love any insights!

Best,

MP

10 Comments
 

Hello, I'm a current engineer thinking about jumping careers as well. Same as you, I'm realizing that this isn't want I want to be doing down the road.

 

A lot of firms are looking for programmers of all types. If you have a good background in the programming realm and would want to go in to that area it can be very lucrative. You won't do any of the analytic type of stuff such as valuing companies and the like, but you will be in finance and you'll get good pay too.

make it hard to spot the general by working like a soldier
 

Thanks for the response!

Do you know what the title of the positions would be called? I.E., Junior Algorithm Programmer (Obviously this is a bit ridiculous sounding, but just trying to show you what I mean haha)

 

That's pretty much exactly what the job title would be. Except I've seen it to be more Junior Algorithmic Programmer instead.

Just from google searching "Trading Programming Jobs" and clicking the resultant indeed search, you can get results such as...

Trading Software Developer Trading Systems Support Specialist Quantitative Software Developer Low-Latentcy HFT Programmer High Frequency Trading Programmer High Frequency Trading Developer

The list could go on and on. But in the end you're all doing the same exact thing pretty much. Writing software that uses an algorithm for HFT.

make it hard to spot the general by working like a soldier
 

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