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One advantage people don't often talk about with finance industry jobs is their incredibly lax moonlighting clauses. Most seem to be of the form, "if we don't trade it and our vendors don't make it, knock yourself out."

That is a far cry from the policy I experienced at MSFT. Doing free reviews on my own time of books being published by Microsoft Press on products I was an engineer on required approval from my VP.

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> One advantage people don't often talk about with finance industry jobs is their incredibly lax moonlighting clauses.

Interesting. My first programming job was in a finance company who had a "we own everything you make, here or at home" policy. My manager said most finance companies would rather pay people more than have them working on things outside of work, which I took at face value. Knowing that was how I enjoy learning most, it was a big factor in my leaving.

Maybe it wasn't a trading-focused firm? Most of my friends (and wife) work at firms that are primarily about trading, and it's hard to hire (good) traders if you restrict them from also trading with their own funds on their own time. So, they seem to have the bare minimum policy that satisfies legal regulations about insider information and the contracts they usually have to sign with high-end enterprise vendors.

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