In my opinion, there are two ways to look at a regional:

1.) How great this year will be
2.) How great your career will be

Personally, I'm not at Piedmont so that my today will be the absolute best it can be. If I was dead set on that, I'd probably be at Republic. I'd be flying a more comfortable airplane on better routes and making more money, all while living in base. Sounds pretty sweet honestly.

I'm here to get to mainline as fast as possible. Upgrade quickly, get some 121 PIC, and get out. If that's through the flow (mine looks like it'll be about 5-6 years total), that's great. If it's sooner, even better. Either way I'm building a great resume and you can't argue with that.

My schedule could be better, my paychecks could be bigger, and my routes could be more interesting. I can deal with that for now. I'm confident I'll spend the lion's share of my career at a company that can provide me those things. I'm also confident that this place won't be able to grow unless they approve upon these things, and soon.

We can all agree that no regional provides the pay and QOL that mainline does. So for me, the decision was between spending more time at a mediocre job (read: regional), or gritting it out a little bit and achieving the end goal of a mainline job as fast as possible.

That doesn't mean I'm not going to fight for the pay we deserve or better schedules. I'd be fine shutting this place down until we get the improvements we deserve. My point is that I'm playing the long game with my career, and that means embracing the suck (for now)