This was great. and a great perspective for me. I'm going to send you a PM, maybe we can talk more about this on the phone if you have time.
There are def upsides of my job.
- I work in a good town and very friendly.
- I have a decent retirement that I can collect 70% of my highest salary at age 52 (14 years). It goes up 3% every year. If I leave now, I get about 33% at 52 until I die.
- I do (most of the time) come home every night. I am (most of the time) well liked and noticed that I'm a hard worker.
- We have some of the coolest toys. UTV, ATV, boat, jetski, other things I can't remember
- I've gone to some very cool trainings
- I've done alot and learned alot.
- Close to home. 30 minutes to get to work, and I get a vehicle to take home so barely put miles on my own car (which can be taken away at any time if they want to for any reason)
- Predictable schedule (more on this in cons)
- lots of sick time and vacation time.
Here are some downsides...
- I am pretty much topped out. Even if I make chief in 10 years, I will be making less than what a captain makes year 1.
- There is A LOT of drama here. I can't imagine aviation having this much. At least according to few buddies who were cops that got back into aviation (who pushed me to get back into)
- The competition for promotion is fierce. It's not seniority based. if you wanna work your way up, you will be fighting people trying to jam you up or make you look bad as they get close to higher ups and in their favor.
- Both careers are dangerous, but I have no idea if I'm going to my last call and get killed.
- People want to kill you and hate you
- People are recording you with cameras, intentionally trying to jam you up
- I am on call 24/7 pretty much. We don't get a work cell phone, or allowance, so my wife MADE me get a 2nd phone, so I can leave the phone I use for work at home when we have family events. I pretty much have to always do something on my day off. On vacation, I bring my work laptop with me because I'm gonna be needed to do something (I do alot of admin stuff, such as training, audits, accreditation, hiring interviews, etc)
- This job causes me to bring work home. Especially the stress, and guess who I vent to. my wife... lol
- I have a set schedule, but it's subject to change at anytime. I guess not really a con because most jobs in life your schedule might change, but it happens based on attitude and politics here. I can be on days for years, and something happens, you go where you don't want to go.
Now these things are things I've just been used to. I've learned to live with it. Like I said, I work for a good agency and the town is great. We get all the toys. I can ride the ATV, UTV, get on the boat with a marine unit, ride the jet ski, patrol.... I mean who wouldn't want to get paid riding a jet ski for work? I'm doing a detail right now, sitting in my car at the beach, watching the scenery and making sure nobody does anything stupid. What a dream. and it's a beautiful beach.
But the negatives add up and you can decide if you were in my shoes.
I do agree with the cessna thing. There are no jobs for a pilot with 400TT unfortunetly, so I might do this tropic airways idea which will introduce me to FLL, 135 operations, scheduled flights and some turbine time (albeit single). It's on of the options. I'm looking at alternatives. I do not want to CFI though.
Even considered getting ATP-CTP along with a biz jet type rating afater I get the hours and use GI Bill to pay for 60% of it.
Thee are many ways to go about this.