XXX, your advice is generally good on this forum and I couldn't agree more with your latest post. The problem is a lot of people don't think 'smart' and think they can get a job by sitting at their computer sending emails to CPs and asking for advice on pprune. They then eventually give in to it all because they are either too scared of the reality of the fight ahead or they don't want to lose their sales job that brings in $90K a year and they want to keep the BMW.
Away from pprune, a real life example of why this topic frustrates me is the following. About 18 months ago I put a fresh 200 hour pilot in touch with a cattle station manager who was looking for a 206 driver. Sure, there was probably only about 10 hours a week flying - but it was a start when no one was hiring. This particular fellow got the job, then rejected it because it was all too hard. Guess where they are now? Still working at Woolworths waiting for their number to come up in a cadetship. Then I recently see him posting on pprune asking for career advice...
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The problem is some people won't listen to the advice given to them and you see this attitude time and time again on pprune. Another favourite is starting a new thread and saying something like "I know there is a thread running but I don't have time to read through all of the pages".
I'm not entering the 'which career path is right for aviation' debate - that's not the point of this thread. There are a lot of success stories in this game but a lot of failures. You can tell from recent threads who the failures in aviation are going to be.
Even if one pilot wakes up to him/herself because of what they have read through the numerous posts above I'll be happy.