Finance SW dev is not as sexy as you think. Also you haven't pinpointed what exactly you have in mind. Do you want to do derivatives development? HFT development? Industry has shrunk since crisis, you are probably better off in your current position. There is stuff that uses your skills like ML and Data Science. You can hop on the band wagon but I can't guarantee that those bubbles won't burst.
You want to work for a P/L desk? Then focus on delivering P/L. Your competition is not the PhD's who can code, but the selftaught guys in their 20's that are already positive and look for a way to step up their game. If you learn to code, hit the jackpot and get a position, you will be the guy who codes stuff for the P/L guys instead of trade your own book. https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...e-for-trading-jobs.300720/page-7#post-4295884
I'm not the reddit poster. But his type of thinking is pretty rampant in quantitative trading/investment. In a former life(long time ago), I worked with colleagues who has PhD, multiple masters from top Ivy School who knows math, physics, compsci, and finance pretty well. Though not implicitly spoken, this was the prevalent thinking. Maybe not as obnoxious as the reddit poster came across as. There's some grain of truth in it. Finding true alpha is nontrivial. But there are many roads to Roman.
So looks like you are in the wrong field then. If you are really not into the money but really for the passion for the market and the numbers, then sure give trading a try to see if the grass is greener on this side but you need to be prepared that 1) money aint it cuz you WILL be making losses and the losses could be big and you are never guaranteed that you could ever become profitable although I wish you the best and hope that's not the case with you and 2) trading could be just as boring as your current software projects or even more boring. The market is dynamic and can be exciting but the nitty gritty grinding of trading can be boring as well. If you think the daily grind of the software development is boring, the daily grind of trading is even worse. Forget about all the Hollywood depiction of trading like in "Trading Places", "The Big Short", even in "Margin Call". These are ALL not true of trading. There is a saying that says "you really need to know yourself very very well before you go into trading otherwise Wall Street is a VERY EXPENSIVE way to find out." and it is very very very true.
I'm not saying money is no factor. I'm not going to take a step down in pay while simultaneously moving to a very high cost of living area such that I'd be worse off. I have a family to support. I'm far from one of those get rich quick kids that just graduated from college. To be clear, I have absolutely no interest in trading as a job. There's many types of things a developer can do in a retail setting related to trading, but those aren't of interest to me. Sure I could work on derivative models (I do), but I lack the data sets, computing power, and time to do anything more than just reinvent the wheel or pick up scraps that better capitalized firms can't justify spending resources to pick up. I'm interested in working on improving the state of the art, not rebuilding pieces from scratch. However, there's plenty of fascinating areas to explore that simply aren't available to the retailer. For example, optimizing and exploiting exchange interfaces, reverse engineering quote and trade behaviors of your competitors, identifying edge cases where it seems your competitors (or your own firm's) models break down and taking advantage of (or correcting) them. These are a few items that I'm positive well capitalized firms employ, but are outside the scope of what a retailer can do in part due to fixed costs, execution costs, lack of complete exchange data, or even just not having enough capital to make these incremental improvements worth spending time on. This stuff interests the hell out of me. That is not to say I'm not interested in working on derivative models (I am), but lets be honest, unless I'm working with an already established group and have access to the tools, data sets, and computing power, it's just reinventing the wheel. It takes years to build up even a a set of basic tools to do anything worthwhile. The goal post moves faster than I can reach it working solo. When I was younger, I liked building things from scratch, partially as a personal development/education project. I don't have that interest anymore. I want to get things done, not waste time doing what others have done far better because they had the time, resources, and people with which to do it well. I get that a lot of traders see trading as a solo endeavor and I guess if you're staring at charts, there's really no need to collaborate, but there's a whole larger world out there and what has my interest isn't realistic or worthwhile to do solo. The types of items I'm interested in require a team and they require people who can actually solve problems that they can't just google. This is where actual intelligence comes in to play vs being able to white board binary search or in place sort algorithms. It requires a broad and deep understanding of technology as well as knowledge of the markets. This is the types of work I'm talking about. I would rather continue to work on mind numbing software than stare at charts all day as a trader. 1) I've been working on strategies off and on for 15 years. I didn't have the capital to do the types of trading I wanted to do live until somewhat recently, but I am profitable. I also realize that could change. Having said that, I do not want to trade as a job. Again, the types of things I'm interested in are not for the solo/retail trader. 2) I don't watch movies much. I watched The Big Short about 2 months ago and haven't seen the others you mentioned. I tried watching Wolf of Wall Street a couple days ago and got bored and didn't finish it. I'd consider a Hollywood portrayal of trading about as accurate as the movie "Hackers".
"Which one of you guys made this reddit post" It wasn't me because if I were annoyed by what I'm reading on reddit I would not go through the trouble of especially creating an account to vent my frustration.
I disagree with JSOP's assessment about ALL Hollywood portrayals of trading. "Morning Call" was compelling, and did share similarities with what Goldman Sachs pulled in the '08 meltdown. That one is worth a look. "Wolf of Wall Street" was surely an over-exaggeration of the real-life events that occurred at Stratton-Oakmont, but hey, if Hollywood just depicted the true ongoings at these firms at the time, they would certainly lead to very boring films. While the portrayals may not be real, the stories, events and mechanics behind some of them are.
Documentary aside, Hollywood fictional movies/TV's portrayal of trading is just not accurate. That's all I am saying.