How well do skills transfer between sub-fields (specifically those in low-level programming)?

Posted by Ok-Cartographer-5544@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 15 comments

I currently work in web dev, and am interested in the following: {Cybersecurity, Quant, Game Dev, Robotics}. All of these do primarily low-level work. I am very interested in the knowing the details of systems front to back, and would enjoy finding and patching security holes, optimizing trading algorithms, doing optimization for games, etc.

I am currently training to enter one of these fields (Quant), and I am wondering if working a job in another low-level area like Security, or simply doing miscellaneous dev work on low level systems or working with C++ would be beneficial.

Do these skills transfer well, or is a depth in a single field only able to be obtained from working in that specific field for many years? Thanks in advance for the info.