Career advice for FAANG SWE with an interest in trading
Hello WSO monkeys,
FAANG Sr SWE here stepping out of my usual haunts of Blind / Leetcode / Levels fyi to seek advice from folks on a career path I've always been fascinated by - trading and investing. I have reached a point in my career where I realize that despite many of the SWE amenities you'd find in those infamous "Day in a Life" videos, the SWE career has some major scaling issues. And not just financially, I feel like the subject matter of SWE work is less relevant to my future than work in trading/investing would.
Because ultimately, money is a major driver for us all but its also a fascinating subject itself - far more to me than at this point than honing my understanding of some Java library or batch processing framework thats irrelevant to me outside of work.
What advice would professional traders / investors have for an amateur like myself who has an interest in your field? Not just for the more interesting subject matter (to me), more scalable career, but also one that is relevant to growing wealth. Being a good coder doesn't really help me when looking at my brokerage account.
Some quick context details:
- Coasting at 300k @ 25 hrs a week, next level would require 50 hrs / week but lots of uncertainty around pay bump (350 - 500k). Easy to get screwed here without also getting competing offers. Happy to work 40-50 in a field I'm more interested in.
- Have good savings and so money is less important to me. Am ok with a pay drop if I get to work in a field I am more interested in.
- Realistically whatever I do next would probably involve some coding, which I don't mind.
- Into my 30s at this point.
So if my priorities are becoming a better investor first and money second, some options I see:
- Coast with my easy wlb and just be a hobbyist trader/investor on the side. Currently dabble with testing strategies on Quantconnect while reading various value investing literature
- Join a trading or HF firm as a SWE. Any options in Bay area?
- Join a fintech firm as a SWE
- Other?
Appreciate any thoughts or redirection elsewhere!
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