[QUOTE=USMCFLYR;467859]I've only been on the corporate side of the game for a little over a year. Prior to that I was on demand charter and that's a world of difference. Hopefully some long time corporate guys can chime in and tell their observations, but here's what I gather from the guys I work with who have been in the game 30 years.

I think turnover of pilots is something that accelerated in the last 10 years. When the hiring boom was hot, people were chasing greener grass out of corporate to the airlines where they thought more money could be made. In response to that, you had guys get hired on with a corp, go get typed on the company dime, then bolt for a gig with an airline, leaving the corporate department holding their hat.

When I was interviewing for my present job, I was talking with 3 departments, all of which specifically wanted a long term employee. Not someone with a 3-5 year expiration date at which point they hoped to get on with FedEx. Like I said, every corporate department's culture is different. Some it's work hard/play hard all around the world. Some are laid back and casual, while always professional. At my place we all have similar interests, we ride motorcycles together, we have each other over for BBQ and on the road we all get along well. What I'm getting at is that because of the nature of the job we all need to get along and when they hire another into the "family" they are really looking for not only a good stick, but someone whose personality fits with the other pilots. Obviously after you go through the trouble of finding someone, you don't want them leaving after a year!

So I gather that in the last 10 years the guys like my boss who have been in this their whole career, saw a period where it was harder than usual to find a long term employee. Now it seems that people are staying parked at good gigs, realizing that not only is there no greener grass out there....there isn't much grass period. The only corporate guys I see getting out presently are guys whose departments have folded thanks to this economy.

The second thing that seems to have changed is that salaries have become somewhat standarized to a larger degree thanks to surveys like Stanton and NBAA. I think before it was much harder to know what the average pay was like for a certain make/model in an are of the country, and for a certain kind of company. Now the data is right there for everyone (including potential hires) to view. Obviously if you interview a guy you like, you've gotta have pay and benefits in line with the average or he's going to walk. Two companies might own the same jet, with the same number of pilots, in the same are of the country, but these surveys show that a corporate department of a construction company might on average pay differently than a corporate flight department for a restaurant chain even though they fly the same aircraft.

I think it has always been true that salary in general is based on the size of aircraft (small, med, large) and number of aircraft flown, not necessarily number of hours flown per year. That seems to have no bearing on pay. I've seen Falcons fly 100 hours a year and 1000 hours a year and the guys make roughly the same pay if the geographic area is the same and the company is similar in size/net worth.

Hopefully someone else with a few decades of comparative experience can chime in. Ten years ago (...do you really want to know this?) I was in college and didn't even have my private license, so I can't honestly say what the situation was then. I just observe the guys I work with and can infer some of what happened since then.

I will say that I have no regrets of going the route I did. (Student-CFI-charter-corporate.) It's rewarding and offers me a great quality of life and I can actually say after all this I do enjoy going to work, even on non flying days like today when I had to go in and do revisions and update UNS's. A couple of guys rode their motorcycles in and were doing their expenses and someone ordered pizza etc. That's the kind of place we are