Tom Wolfe may be on to something here. At work, I have noticed that a lot of Traders have been showing a quite a bit if interest in the s/w side of the business. One of the sharpest guys I know , a trader, took time off from trading and helped work in the backoffice code development to customize some stuff in one of our trading applications. Other traders seem to be chatting up clients. This is just my first hand anecdotal experience.