Listen to Redsnail - she speaks the truth.
Strafer, you say.....
And to all the current pilots who're moaning about their jobs earlier in the thread, why don't you do something else? Then there'd be more jobs for the rest of us.
.........hey Strafer, I can assure you it isn't moaning, merely trying to share experience.
As Redsnail says, the industry has changed so much for the worse over the last ten years, and at an exponential rate in the last five.
You wannabees cannot help but see the job through rose-tinted specs, as the general public do as well. But there's a huge gap between image and reality.
Even with the total dedication and love of flying that one must have to do this job (for decades in my own case), and as a trainer and checker, the realities of how pilots are worked now and the trend for the future will test your love of flying to the limit. And you'll all get older. And sitting with an aeroplane strapped to your arse when you're forty or fifty and the company still treats you like !!!!! isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Yes, we can all tell you about wonderful moments in our careers, but the point is, do these fleeting, ephemeral points in time outway the rest of the cr*p?
Obviously for any given wanabee, a lot depends on what else you think you can do with your life. If it's just some mundane office job (in your eyes), then of course I can see the appeal. But there are also plenty of people in flying quite capable of achieving much more than sitting in an office (as an example) - trouble is, once you've done this job for a while, you're committed - you can't take your skills elsewhere. Bottom line, end of story.
So that's it, see the job for what it actually is, and if that's what you want, fine. But beware of its limitations.