
Ask HN: Will I get locked in a single company going into finance? - sail
I&#x27;m looking for a job in finance as a software engineer in high-frequency trading or trading execution in general.<p>Will accepting a job from one firm make it impossible to work at another in the future?<p>In other words, will I end up learning &quot;trade secrets&quot; or general secret-sauce type of things that make me non-transferable, locking me into a specific company for something like the next 2 years?<p>I don&#x27;t have a very clear idea of what&#x27;s involved. I&#x27;m not sure if I should be going into finance to begin with.<p>Any tips or hard-earned wisdom would be greatly appreciated.
======
smc-
What time frame are you comfortable with? It sounds to me like you're looking
at a 1-2 year span to get your feet wet. There is so much to learn,
particularly if you are coming from a non-finance background, I would urge you
to consider committing to it for a longer span. Which would mean that you
would have greater flexibility and desirability on the other side, should you
choose to leave. Otherwise I would urge you to avoid the space..

There are plenty of bankers, traders, and other sell-side guys that move
around. But don't use that as a template for what you're looking to get into.

To answer your question, will there be restrictive covenants, yes - especially
if you are going into buy-side HFT with proprietary in-house algos.

