Thanks for taking the time to give such a detailed reply, truckflyer - I appreciate it.
Right now I'm very confused, because I'm getting such conflicting views (and yes, I know to ignore what the schools would tell me - haven't even spoken to any of them yet).
On this thread the overwhelming view is "don't do it, you'll never get a job, even youngsters all struggle for years and years". But that isn't what I see when I look at my friends who have made the transition.
- Friend 1 gave up a software job about 10 years ago (2 years after 9/11) at the age of about 30. Did his training, got the all-important first-time IR pass, and practically walked straight into a job flying A320s for BA based close to home. He is now transitioning to 747.
- Friend 2 also gave up a software job at the same time as friend 1, and at about the same age. Likewise, at the end of his training he walked straight into a job for EasyJet (again, based close to home), and is now a captain.
- Friend 3 left the Navy just a few years ago at the age of about 28 and trained pretty quickly. He went straight into a job flying 737s for Ryanair (yet again, based in the same part of the country). He is now part way through transitioning to BA to fly 747.
- Friend 4 gave up running his own taxi cab business 4 or 5 years ago at a similar age to me. He had to hunt a bit harder, but he wasn't out of work for all that long - he found very interesting work doing calibration flying. And he didn't have to move. I'm seeing this friend for lunch soon, and he has hinted that he could have done better if he were doing it today. Will be interesting to hear more.
By contrast, I don't know anybody who has transitioned from a 'normal' job into flying who has struggled to find work, or who has had to grub around working in the armpit of nowhere for years. And yet on this thread everyone says that the examples above can't happen, or are vanishingly unlikely. But my friends can't all have been extraordinarily lucky!
Could it be that this thread is attracting the people who have indeed struggled and who are altruistically motivated to discourage others from struggling as they have, whereas those who have found work fairly easily (as my friends have) are just getting on with their lives? I don't think any of the friends I mentioned post on pprune, so you're not hearing their success stories.
I really don't know what to think. I can't reconcile the huge discrepancy between the people here and the people I know personally. I don't want to ignore either group. And it isn't just that my friends are telling me what I want to hear; the summaries above are based on the objective facts of what happened to them.
I is confuse!