I gave up ~3 years ago. I had to choose between aggressively pursuing low-paying trading jobs or being pursued for high-paying tech jobs. The decision was pretty easy for my family and me. As we'd say in the industry, I went were the edge was. I'd recommend doing the same -- the security, stress level, work/life balance, work environment, and transferability of skills is much better in tech than trading.

Put concisely: if you can't handle seeing a smaller paycheck next month because a guy on your team pressed the wrong button and lost $50k in 10 seconds then trading is not for you.

If you want to get in I would recommend as much math and programming as possible. A PhD probably isn't necessary, an MS from a top school will do. You'd better be prepared to do programming, math, AND arithmetic in interviews, though. I once had a options trading interview that included ten "please multiply 148 by 72 in your head, we'll wait" questions.