Confused about a career path in HFT or Web.

I have had the privilege of getting into a Software Developer role straight out of college into an HFT firm. It's been 1 and a half years here.

I feel career paths are very different within HFT and any Web based company. Here, my day to day job involves writing low latency stuff and also optimizing existing code. But it always feels like I'm working on basic stuff using simple DS and simple algos. Just that the code writing speed also matters as we want to test the strategy live ASAP. The growth isn't much here so I'd probably switch. My concern also increases because I don't know if I can grow well in this role/ path.

My idea of a web based firm is that as a junior, I'd do the same simple stuff. But as I grow in a role, I'd start working on scaling systems efficiently. I think I would like to explore this and see how I like it.

But also, I like working in finance, pricing the markets, market making with the right strategies. So maybe I also want to be a Quant researcher or a trader.

I know I'm young and probably overthinking this, you all must have too. I want to try to provide as much value as I can to any firm as I feel at the end of the day, my compensation would anyways be tied to it. I just want to see how others would navigate this. I'd probably like to get a masters degree soon. So, I'm also trying to figure out if I should do a masters in some quant field or a standard computer science degree. So much confusion!

Thanks for any help!