Having done EZY, BA short haul & now BA long haul I can honestly say life is immeasurably better now than it ever has been. The key is seniority. It’s an oft quoted saying but you only have to be junior at BA once, after that all the choices you make are your own. Once you get to half way up a seniority list you really start to reap the benefits in terms of lifestyle. Don’t want to work Fridays ever? No problem. Don’t like tours/day trips/4 sector days? No problem. Combine seniority with long haul and life really does start to become pretty good. Seniority is so important to your lifestyle I’d almost rather start on the 320 and race up the list, before moving to a long haul job with some seniority on fleet. But I appreciate not everyone wants to go back to the RHS of a 320.
Everything comes with a trade off and at BA it comes down to money vs lifestyle. You can go and be a short haul skipper but you’ll be working every weekend. Or you can be a long haul FO (or very senior short haul FO) never working weekends and only going places that you want to go. That is why generally there isn’t that much sympathy for people who choose money and then complain about working weekends. They knew what their choice meant for their lifestyle. It’s all very transparent as others have said.