I hate to say it, but unless you have an ivy league education and are being offered a salaried position, chances are that your prop shop will churn and burn you over time. I've seen people earn short term gains in these places, but I've never seen consistently profitable traders who can prove their profitability. You need to make sure that your trading manger isn't a wall street Charlatan. You need to ensure that he will actually LISTEN to your challenges and share his insight. Ask your 'trading manager' if he and his 'team' are profitable... Ask to see a PnL report. If he starts with excuses then run for the hills. I had a manager who promised me mentoring, critique, review etc.. I kept a thorough journal and he never once asked to review it with me. I would try to run strategies by him and his response to me was to join him in a chat room and discuss my strategies there... I went into the chat room once or twice. It was like a f***** casino. Beware of these prop shops. They make their money on your desk fees, your software fees, and commissions on the shares that you trade. Your trading manager makes his money by recruiting people like us. By all means try it, but give yourself a mental stop-loss. My stop was $20k or 2 years, whatever came first. I lost 17k in about 18 months and I quit. I now work on programming systematic strategies. Discretionary trading was not for me and neither was the BS prop shop. good luck!