kgao-

What algorithmic trading strategies did you or your firm employ? Were you working in that domain during 2008? Why did you leave?

ETA: it can be hard to get back in to finance after dicking around in startups for 5+ years, because the startup game involves a lot of job hops and the rest of your world looks at your job-hoppy CV and thinks you're a sociopath.

Are you saying that you wish that you were able to rejoin the finance industry? In your estimation, what are the key criteria for entering that industry as a programmer?

In retrospect, which of your careers has been the most rewarding (using whatever definition of rewarding that you prefer)?

Thanks for the answers so far. I have a few more before I resign myself to an afternoon of filing income taxes.

As a quant programmer, were you implementing your own strategies or those of others? If the latter, were the "traders" (I don't know if this term makes sense as applied to the quant world) your coworkers or your superiors? How much autonomy were you given to implement what you wanted to implement?

I'm a programmer at a company where programming is a first-class role and not a cost center, but the work itself is unstimulating. I wonder what the tradeoffs are in finance.