trade operations to trading desk

yes

Yes, it's happened with kids on this site and off, definitely possible.

It happens, do well at what you do and get to know people. But the one mistake I see ops guys make is being eager from the jump showing they have no interest in what their doing now and being overly aggressive thereby annoying everybody.

just be very good at your job first and then in a year or so look to move on either within your firm or elsewhere. I moved from operations to a trading job and it isnt easy but its doable...i had to switch firms to do it.

Bondarb - did you switch from ops to another BB S&T or an Assistant Trader at a prop firm? Which is easier coming from BB Ops?

i went from ops in the back-office at a BB firm to an assistant at a small hedge fund to an analyst at a BB macro prop desk (back when large banks actually had prop trading groups).

I'm not in trading, this is just for my knowledge......so your an assistant trader before your trader? and if so what responsibilities does an assistant trader have?

assistant trader is a pretty nebulous term..it can mean alot of different things. In my case it meant sitting on the trading desk, keeping the traders positions, making sure all the trades settled properly, ordering lunch, etc etc. I did that for a couple of years and it was a great experience.

so I imagined you learned to trade in the process right?

the opportunity to sit next to some very respected traders and listen/watch them was certainly very helpful. I learned to trade from many different experiences and this was definitely near the top of the list. After two years of doing this and working very hard at it I knew way more about the business then people who worked much more coveted jobs in analyst programs.

Isn't what you explained basically the same role that someone in an analyst program would have?

I pondered exactly the same thing that i often wonder when checking out fresh post.