Worth shifting from banking to programming career?

Don't do it. The ageism is heavy in this industry, and you will not get paid the sort of money you are making as a newbie programmer. Second, you will always be on the treadmill of learning new technologies - the whole industry becomes unrecognizable, even to someone who has been in it, every decade or so. That's a very high rate of change to keep up with for someone who has family and interests outside of work.

The lower rungs are populated by naive youngsters coming off college campuses; middle rungs by bored, political players who see the writing on the wall and are trying to schmooze their way into management, or idealists who retain their naivete but will soon realise that they are unemployable. You rarely see people aged 50+ working as programmers (unless they are willing to take massive pay cuts), and for good reason: they have been driven out.

I think it's a hard sell for where you're currently at career-wise.

If you're interested in it you could approach it from a hobbyist perspective just for the joy of programming. You might find that somewhat useful later when you're the only VP over the quant department that can code or something like that. Even that is reaching.

Tech pays significantly better than most fields. Banking is not one of them.

To put it in finance terms, EV and ROI in banking is much higher than coding imho. (Matching banking comp at middle of bell curve, you have to go to the right tail of tech curve).

Tech however has better EV in autonomy and intrinsic motivation (for me, very subjective I know) and much higher optionality in comp in the long run.

The typical example is a guy who codes for fun and don't mind taking a below market comp for a few years but is smart to choose to join a pre-IPO unicorn startup and make his comp on the backend. (150K for 3 years there a million dollar payday via employee options).

My personal example is after leaving a high frequency trading firm, I worked on automated market neutral option trading on my own retail account as a side hustle and built it up enough where my trading income exceeds my W-2 income consistently.

But don't think you should go for it if money is a primary motivation, if so the money payoff from the optionality if it comes, you won't be able to wait for during the years of theta bleed.

Rather pursue a finance role at a tech company than start coding yourself. You may find that as someone who understands programming, an eventual CFO position at a startup is a good fit.

Also, from a hedge against disruption perspective, your experience in your current industry would likely be of more value to a new business making inroads against traditional banking than some future programming ability.

p.s. I say this as an engineer in fintech.

> increase my odds of landing a c-suite position over time

If you are in banking and your goal is the C-suite, and that is at all realistic given where you arr now, programming is probably a costly distraction.

Why would you give up one of the most enviable positions in corporate America for the slimmest chance to make anything close to what you earn now? You'd be flushing your job security down the drain to join the ranks of an incredibly competitive field, and likely end up getting hired by a Fortune 500 company who's more interested in seeing you write a linked list than hearing about how passionate you are on the subject.

I'm sorry if that came off raw or dismissive, but you kinda missed the boat here by a decade. Defi is cool, but if you're in banking then you should be well aware that crypto is a side-pot, and a relatively small one at that.

My advice? Keep your job, just start programming on the weekends and see how it makes you feel. If you're any good at it, you'll be able to apply those skills to your current job so you can waste less time and spend more time studying programming. Sounds like a win-win-win situation to me.

Unless you're immensely talented with insane energy levels and plenty of free time it would take you 3 to 5 years to get to similar comp levels as a dev.

Keep in mind that established and talented engineers prepare for 3 to 12 months to pass interviews at FAANG and hedge funds.

Around 5 years ago I shifted from ibanking to tech, I was in my forties, middle management. Everyone thought I was crazy.

Took one year off to deep dive into programming and analytics, same year my first kid was born.

Already had previous programming experience as a quant. Quant experience plus data and ai tailwinds were huge contributors go get into where I am today. Headwinds: I’m based in Southern Europe, relocation not an option for family.

I’m at clevel in a Fortune 500. Not planning to move up as risk of eroding tech skills is high. I’m not programming anymore but working at engineering management and leadership.

If your plan to shift career do it by connecting the dots between what you do today and how can you bring value to tech thru your combined experience.

Why shift career and not just learn programming in your spare time? Just spend a few hours a week learning the basics and make some small things you like. For many people programming is not all that enjoyable and it requires a certain mindset. Reading what you wrote I would do this and not think about a career: just fiddle around and if you turn out to be a wonder, maybe you will see opportunities around you. I am in banking automation and there is a lot to do; most of it I probably have no clue about.

If you are a talent or/and love it, you can always move.

Im in a very similar position to you in age, career, & industry. I moved from a career in banking to a tech consultancy company (into a non technical but senior role) and have just started a part time Masters Degree in Software Development to learn to program. I agree with the pros and cons you mentioned. Another couple of pros in my mind are; 1. Gaining the skills to build my own digital products and services in my own time (to scratch an entrepreneurial itch), 2. Given enough practice, I think it'll be easier for me to contract as a programmer in future rather than with my current skillset, meaning I can look to work less (e.g. 6 months on, 6 months off etc.) which is something else I'd like to do. 3. I just generally enjoy the technology and building things.

Most senior level developers, lead developers or architects.

Will never make $250k. At most $120K. $160-180K is doable. But that is many years of experience.

$450k FANG salaries is silicon valley based. Highly competitive, and rare.

You can move to management without being an engineer first. Tech has lots of internal functions, just like other businesses.

You can try this experiment:

Go to Google or Facebook careers page and see if any of the listed positions match what you're doing at your current co. Then cross-reference that positions with comp levels at levels.fyi

If it's all good, contact an internal recruiter at these companies and ask what your chances are.