Software support jobs everywhere are waiting to be outsourced. It is good that you are formulating a plan to get out of that line of work - the sooner the better. On the second point you have nailed the corporate life: You need to understand human behaviour and deal with it on a daily basis to survive in large corporations. In most companies and most lines of corporate work it takes about 3 - 5 years of success before you can be considered to move into some type of management and then, another 8 to ten years before you might - and might not - get a senior management slot.
Okay, I am little confused here.. You need to define what kind of "trading" you are looking at. Are you looking to pull the trigger with your $$ or be a sales trade or market maker (all those market making jobs are being automated by ECN's, I know, I used to be one....) Even sales traders are having a harder time due to decimals and ECn competition. That isnt to say you cant make good $$$, but you prob wont at first and will be someones assistant as your try to shmooze clients and get/inherit order flow from your boss. Sales trading is all about stealing buyside orderflow(hedge funds, agency desks, broker dealer desks and mutual.pension funds) Your ability to succeed will eventually be based on your success on getting reps from these firms to allocate some order flow to you. You need to be slick and a good entertainer (wine and dine, etc) It really isnt TRADING per se, you are relaying and monitoring customers orders as per their instructions. It is a totally diff skill set than making your own trades. Now if actualy "trading" is more your thing, try to get into a hedge fund if you know someone (very hard to do, but you might have family or alumni contacts). If not, try to get into one of these earlier mentioned training perograms like First New YorK Securities. They are hard to get into, but if you hve a good resume you might. If you cant do that, I would try to learn trading on the side b/4 you leap in b/c as someone earlier said you have a 2-3 year learning curve ahead of you..
Couple of things you have to ask yourself, are you willing to take a pay-cut for the first couple of years, at levels that may seem severe. Let's say you make, say 100k now as an Sr. Associate or new VP, you will make 60-70k as a new analyst, and, no, you won't get an associate position on the "business side" (unless you happen to know the head of the desk well). However, if you do well, in 2 years your pkg will be 225-250, or more. Figure 95k all in for the first year on the other side. Sales trading is getting tougher and tougher to get into, since there have been a lot of layoffs in S&T as direct access technologies is making a lot of the sales staff redundant. Prime Brokerage is growing, but it depends on what you want to do in PB, sales? risk? Since PB is very hot, a lot of ex-corp finances people (say, Internet M&A) are trying to get in. Keep in mind that moving to anywhere other than IT, your experience not be taken seriously, unless you can compensate with advanced degree (a PhD helps). I spent 12 years on the street, first in IT (8 years), then moved to risk analytics, did politics, ran a group, etc, etc. But the key advice is that if you want to do it, do it *early* in your career, if you are already 37 with 2 kids, making the jump to a job with 60% pay just makes life that much harder to swallow. Trading (what I am doing now), well, that's completely different. But since you said you support *research*, making the move directly to trading maybe a bit tough. Good luck.
How about a Financial Analyst position. Hell the first year or two are hard. Don't be suprise if you work 12 to 14 hours shifts monday to saturday. The salary is ok. start at 50k to 70k depending of where you apply. But the bonus are amazing . If you work hard enough you can pull a mid six figure salary EZ. Think about it. "Plan your trade, then trade your plan"
hope its working out for you, because you couldn't have said a more true statement. what really roils me are the standard brogkerage manager comments: "why couldn't they succeed with $5,000, $15,000, $25,000 account. Humpph, they must not be good at all." all these firms never ask the logical question: "why shouldn't someone be able to turn a profit and succeed even at a small level on a $5,000, $15,000, $25,000 account size?" ----- you couldn't be more right!
excellent comments are you trading retail or through a prop relationship? (pm me if you would) I would recommend keeping your money in your own account and seriously not joining one of those (robber) prop shops.... they all have a lot of good spin but don't share any of the risk in using their advice or trading styles.... pretty soon everyone's got their hand out, even charging $4 just to issue a paper check, which is so absurd its hard to even comprehend, other than just one more stab from their internal departments... pretty soon, everyone's expecting you to pay for their training and not even certify or guarantee some minimal results to justify their outsized fees. Have you heard the $6,000 pitch from DTI lately? stay retail, you'll do far better than joining up, unless you're going to be in an office where you really do have beneficial contact with better traders