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Confused about a career path in HFT or Web.

I have had the privilege of getting into a Software Developer role straight out of college into an HFT firm. It's been 1 and a half years here. I feel career paths are very different within HFT and any Web based company. Here, my day to day job involves writing low latency stuff and also optimizing existing code. But it always feels like I'm working on basic stuff using simple DS and simple algos. Just that the code writing speed also matters as we want to test the strategy live ASAP. The growth isn't much here so I'd probably switch. My concern also increases because I don't know if I can grow well in this role/ path. My idea of a web based firm is that as a junior, I'd do the same simple stuff. But as I grow in a role, I'd start working on scaling systems efficiently. I think I would like to explore this and see how I like it. But also, I like working in finance, pricing the markets, market making with the right strategies. So maybe I also want to be a Quant researcher or a trader. I know I'm young and probably overthinking this, you all must have too. I want to try to provide as much value as I can to any firm as I feel at the end of the day, my compensation would anyways be tied to it. I just want to see how others would navigate this. I'd probably like to get a masters degree soon. So, I'm also trying to figure out if I should do a masters in some quant field or a standard computer science degree. So much confusion! Thanks for any help!

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Pls Help me in getting clarity about my career/life

- I recently given my final year exams of B.tech (cse) in June 2024. - Currently working remotely as fullstack engineer intern from last 4 months (25k stipend p.m), will get final decision about PPO in August. - after working I don't really like the culture of the company and I am also not seeing any growth in this company, so I have made my mind to not work at here any more. - at the same time I am feeling that I have lost my interest in programming , I don't know why but the idea of growing as a software developer in career i.e sde1->sde2....tech lead -> CTO is not exciting to me right now. - I come from very humble background, I am the first graduate in my family, I have done B.Tech by taking education loan of (4.95lakh), I have no senior whom I can talk to about my situation and who can genuinely guide me . - my family financial condition is very poor, I have 2 siblings who need money for their education as well, I need money to eliminate the daily unnecessary financial worries/disputes in my family. - I enrolled into Btech in 2020 by seeing all the high packages people are getting right after college , so I thought the career prospects are good after doing Btech in cse , apart from this I always had this thought of doing my own venture sometime in future and I thought business knowledge can be gained easily than the techincal knowledge so let's first gain the hard to acquire knowledge i.e technical (programming) because in today's age every business is a tech first business. - I had initial plan of getting a high paying job (1lakh/month) ,improve my family financial situation, save money in order to invest in my ventures and create secondary sources of income and then leave my job - but now I have realised that I had started out with a wrong goal in the first place ,(my assumption was that once I get a high paying job as sde I will only work for 9-5 and rest of the time will be spend on side hustles(investing,real estate,ventures etc)) - this is not the reality in my current understanding, as due to competition I need to spend all my time and energy on one thing in order to get success. - the idea of spending all my time and energy to become a good sde looks limiting to me as in future it will only open doors to sde roles and I will not get roles where I can contribute to the business side (which I am interested in) - my loan repayment will start from from next year June. - I want roles where I can contribute directly to the business side of company, roles that give me the real insights about the market (i.e business analyst, data analyst, consultant, P.M etc) - when I think of leaving what I am currently doing and prepare for such roles I got horrified by the idea of starting from scratch , and not getting the new job role timely before my loan repayment starts . What should I do pls guide me as a mentor/big brother 🙏🏻 . . . .