This is a tough call, the one thing I can add is to make sure as to what your task will be. This will give you an idea as to what your odds are if you want to start trading. It will most likely be very hard to move into trading. Depending on what your goals are and what makes you 'happy' (after all you will be spending 75% of your day working) you should make a choice. Just to give you an example, guy graduated out here from a highly regarded school (netherlands) with 9 A's, and 10 A-'s and his dream is to be a busdriver. I will most likely beat him silly if I ever meet him, but you have to admire his drive to achieve 'happiness' by doing what he likes most, driving a bus.
If you want to work 8 hours per day and get paid for 6 figures in ten years. Find another job. If you want to have a dream, if you want 7 figures in ten years, go for it.
Just get a feel of the industry, this is good choice since your background is IT. (I don't think you can switch from IT to trader) You don't need to be MBA or PhD in financial engineering to be a good trader, all you need is to show a great trading record to get a trader job.
Anyone else refreshed to hear about someone actually getting a HF position after so many posts asking how people can get them? Congrats Demo!
The key to your first job out of college is how much you "learn and grow" in the next 2/3 years. Make a plan - learn the other roles that interest you - be curious - be helpful. 3 years from now you want to be able to walk into a job interview and blow the principal at a competing Hedge Fund away with "how much you know" and "how much you did" with your first job. Don't focus on the money right now - if you accomplish your plan - it will be follow you. Best to you, Dan BSEE Lehigh 1984
Congrats on the job. Don't worry about money right now. Concentrate on doing your job well and the rewards will come. In IT, remember that if you find that you're not continuously learning it may be time to move on -- that's not to say you won't see any routine, even boring work, but if you enjoy learning then that should be one of the things you get out of the job.
Nope, we don't book trades as techops, or settle/square em out, that's ops' job (which I guess is the equivalent of tradeops). We write scripts that automatically generate rec reports. We also do the software that the ops group uses to book the trades, as well as manage the software that the traders use for risk management. Any support we do for the traders are technology related. Ex: If they're having a problem with the software, they come to us, if trades aren't reconciled correctly, and it's due to a file missing (that's supposed to come from the counterparty), we track down the file. If a trade that isn't ours gets booked for us, ops are the ones to track that down. They also use our system to book trades into the database. Also, anything that needs a change in the database (such as allocations) is our responsibility, since we're the only ones with database access. This means that I will learn their risk system, and pretty much everything else. If I'm going to be working on the software they use for risk management, then I'd obviously have to know how it works.