Trading to swe

I know this is going to sound like a bit of a crazy jump, but I’m going into trading from an Econ background soon. It’s gonna be on a decently quantitative desk that uses some python. I am realizing I wish I just majored in cs and went the swe route. I am wondering, would this be a possible/common jump? How should somebody who has python experience but is not from a cs background and doesn’t have experience in other languages go about this jump?

9 Comments
 

Used to happen all the time with coding bootcamps.  Knew someone that did the exact same thing and ended up at google.  But with tech in a downturn and the junior developer labor market on a downtrend, I would wait it out a bit/don’t leave your day job- if you want to transition, do the education part time and apply.  But I would not quit a perfectly good job to go to school to hope for a tech job right now.

 
anonasdasczx

isn't the job market pretty ok for non-fang

Yes and no.

DoD/Contractors are picking up juniors right now, other companies are shedding slowly/reduction.

Source: I work for a non-FAANG tech company that's still a competitive giant and friends in industry.

 
Most Helpful

Disregard my username. I did this a few years ago. Worked for a few years in trading, though not a very quantitative product tbh. Did as much programming on the job as possible - building tools, automating reports, etc. This made for really good stuff to talk about in SWE interviews. I also spent a significant of time learning on my nights and weekends, and was gonna and go to grad school and job hunt had I not gotten hired. 
 

The classic advice of learning data structures and algorithms is spot on and will be the most frequent interview topic. Also be sure to actually build stuff. Push to GitHub so employers can see you actually enjoy it rather than solely chasing $ / the hot job

 

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