Depending on the area, finance has many opportunities for "consultant" like work where a significant portion of your income can be commissions or performance ba

Depending on the area, finance has many opportunities for "consultant" like work where a significant portion of your income can be commissions or performance based. This is where the real money is and the people I know that are successful in this make multiples more than me and my "big 4" programming job--even at their relatively small firms. When I ask them, their passion tends not to be "finance" so much as "helping people" in various forms. Whether that passion is sincere or not is a separate argument. Personally, that sort of incentive one of the major motivators that's missing from the pure software industry imo. When I worked in derivatives trading as a programmer, I made a good chunk of change finishing projects early, with high quality, etc. At my current position, there's no such obvious incentive. Promotions and solid bonuses could require years of this type of work as a prerequisite and may not even be recognized at all.