Originally Posted by
ZipZap
You missed my point. I have good friends/family in IB as well.
The point is that while only a small portion of new analysts will become MDs, they all have good salaries ("only $120k" - still more than double the median FAMILY income at age 22), very well defined career paths (analyst->associate->VP->MD), and great exit opportunities even if their first bank does not work out.
Meanwhile pilots looking to get into majors seems to be working at a regional for anywhere between 5-10 years (or more??), while making middling wages and hoping to one day get a call from a major. And, oh yeah, your skills are really not transferable to any other industry.
I went to a school that is just outside of the ones you listed. And the difference in career security was a major reason why I didn't look towards aviation (outside of the USN I mentioned in my initial post) until a program like this came along.
Absolutely. If military aviation hadn't been an option for me, I wouldn't have pursued professional aviation on a full time basis any more than I had upon college graduation, especially if it entailed enduring financial insolvency in my 20 and 30s, stuck under a regional-type compensation model. That's a fact. I gambled some awful putting all my eggs on the Guard/Reserve basket, and it worked out. I've busted my rear for a decade and it hasn't been perfect (divorce, crappy duty locations wrecking the living hell out of my personal life and my family's QOL), but I still acknowledge how lucky I have been to not have to pursue a regional job in order to put food on the table because that's somehow the best I could do for myself and my family.
That would just have been too high of an opportunity cost for my eventual liabilities as a future head of household and one with the desire to attain a retirement lifestyle that requires six figure household income for decades, in order to attain. To each their own. I totally understand the resentment on the part of the regional hung starters who didn't have the luxury of doing the 4 year touch 'n go the regional pay model was designed for in the first place, misplaced anger as it may be.