Would I do it again? - Yes
Well, I'm in my second year as a 39 year old airline pilot on regional turboprops having spent 15 years in IT and Project Management so I have as it were seen both sides of the fence.
Working hours - I work around 160-170 duty hours a month of which typically 80 are spent flying. Mostly I work 5 days on and two off. I typically average 1-4 standbys a month and am called out on around a third of them. In IT I worked around 42 hours a week - so about the same, but I would say on the whole the time spent at work was considerably less intense than flying. I did have time to chill out and surf the web, email friends, take an hour or occasionally more for lunch or meet chums for a capuccino for an hour now and again. On the short routes I fly there's very little 'down-time' to eat or enjoy the view.
In IT I worked 8.45-5 or 6pm so my sleep cycles were regular, I went to bed 11-12pm every night and slept till 7am. In flying my roster usually involves three earlies reporting around 6am and working until 2-3pm in a row followed by two or three days late reporting around 1pm and finishing around 10pm. These days can easily get a lot longer if technical issues occur. I find it harder to get the required 8 hrs sleep in this job and feel tired more often.
My weekends with family are much rarer as a pilot, whereas I hade every weekend off in the old job and rarely took work home.
My pay in IT was around £55k pa as a permie in IT, whereas it's around £32k as a year 2 First Officer - less apparently than the Shell tanker drivers! After flight training I spent 18 months in IT as a contractor on a day rate of £440 a day so made around £100k a year for that brief period! My debts/mortgage are now £70k higher, if not more than that.
Despite all this I absolutely love the job and feel immensely privileged to be a pilot. I love the hardware, the flying, the views, the camaraderie of the crew and take great personal pride in doing a good landing or just coping with a new busy airport/bad weather/crosswind etc and trying to hone my skills. Perhaps the most rewarding thing is that you are never as good as you want to be as a pilot, whereas in IT I really felt my learning and personal development plateaued years ago - there was rarely any great satisfaction to be had and I was just bored by it.
I completely love the job and have none of the depressing feeling I used to get on Sunday nights - in short despite it all it's a great career and I'm very happy to have got there in the end.
Desk-pilot