[_asummers]

Trading firms have many positions available other than the HFT algorithms. There are teams that support those to enable desks (read: startups) to get off the ground quickly (like YC!), analysis teams for doing research for future strategies, accounting, shared service teams, as well as governance teams like risk, compliance, treasury. Depending on the team you're on, your job may be drastically different. I find myself in a role focusing on devops, developer tooling, and team automation, but others on my team focus on data ingestion, financial models on top of the data, UI development for end users. If you're a skilled programmer, there will be a role for you in a sufficiently large firm.