Originally Posted by
hindsight2020
Easy on the condescension, my tactical level job is plenty grown up. My experience as a senior member in said role is valued and my schedules work well for my family needs and circumstances, which is to say they empower me to keep serving, something the service ought not to take for granted.
Direct your "grown up job" nonsense to the regular component who can't seem to retain talent if their life depended on it. It'll be a cold day in hell when I start taking aspersions of vocational cherry-picking from airline pilots, of all people.
Not condescension, I would have stayed operational until the day I retired if I could have. They had to drag me kicking and screaming to staff and every minute of it was what you'd expect. But by the time I was done I realized that somebody has to do it, and you really want that somebody to have a deep operational background.
"Grownup" as in the fun is over and now it's a job.
It's disingenuous to complain that they should just let pilots fly... if they didn't need experienced pilot officers in major leadership positions, they'd do like the army and just use warrants. Army can do that because aviation is very much a sideshow in their world, they don't need or want stick monkeys driving their big picture.