The reason I feel confident in my views is that I have been around and surveyed my own experiences and those of others.
You serveyed
yourself? Now
that's rhetorical. And somewhat ironic.
I am sure that you could dig up a few pollyanna dreamers who would disagree but I can assure you that they are few and far in between.
I guess I'm one of them, then.
I think it is urgent to get hired by a good company in your 20's.
That's your opinion...and a ridiculous one, at that. But you're certainly entitled to it.
I am not saying that everyone is wrong, but only those who feel strongly against my views...
Need more be said?
And you feel it's too late. That's really sad. You sound a lot to me like what a teenager sounds like when he or she says "when I was young..."
How about an explaination of the discrepancies between these statements...which came from the same paragraph...
My opinion is that unless you get hired by a good company by the time you are 35 the benifits begin to sharply drop off. I think it is urgent to get hired by a good company in your 20's.
Evidently you haven't seen much of the industry, as you seem to have no realistic concept of the way things work. You appear to be suggesting that individuals seek employment with a major airline by the time they're in their early 20's. Seeing as most wont' graduate college until their early 20's, and won't be eligible to start seeking such a position for a good ten years or more afterward, a typical realistic starting range for many majors will be the mid thirties or later.
Folks do start earlier, but folks also start later, and in this day and age, people of all ages at all levels aren't uncommon.
You seem to have appointed yourself the missionary of dragging-people-down-to-your-level, if the first, and lowest order. Why is that? Does it bother you or threaten you that others are content in their place or position, and confident in their future? You haven't even reached a good starting point yet, have dismissed yourself as a failure, and won't be content until everyone bends their knee in abject defference to your martyrdom.
People have the capability of thinking for themselves. If you're just waking up to the realities of the industry after 20 years, then that's too bad for you. To have gone this long with your eyes closed is not only a tragedy of epic proportions (for you), but also nearly criminal. After all, our most basic responsibility is to see and avoid. If you couldn't see your career coming and avoid this disaster you have named your life, then where does that leave you?
You have the utter arrogance to assume that anyone who doesn't match your misguided idea of success is a failure. Anyone not flying for a major airline is a failure. The rest of the industry are mere polyannas, mere flying garbagemen who are unworthy to fill the roll you exhalt...a lesser genre of failed souls who fill the leftover positions that enable you to step-stone your way to the top. In your deluded and skewed viewpoint, the rest of the world around you serves as the fifedom beneath your kingdom. Foolish, saneless serfs who never made the grade and never will. Worse, your view places them all as the foolish or ignorant who will never be able to see what you can see...because you surveyed
yourself.
The final irony to your arrogance is that you don't see yourself as arrogant, nor do you see that your attitude isn't a slight on the rest of the flying society, but only on yourself. It's ugly, it's jaded, it's bitter. Despite your best effort at surveying yourself, it's also far from reality.
Corporate pilots who have more days off, are home more nights, and make very high liveable wages, are fools and failures; they can never match your high standard. Freight pilots, flying for firms not in chapter 11 like most major airlines, bringing in more money per mile, often with as good or better benifits, pay, and lifestyle, will never rate your high exhalted position.
Ag pilots, flying farmers who feed the world and their own families, will never reach your exhalted position. Helicopter pilots, working long tiring hours for little thanks as they pluck survivors from rooftops and bring lifesaving supplies to crowded hospital docks, will certainly never measure up. They couldn't begin to hope to, and probably won't even try.
I won't even start with tanker pilots. We're unworthy.
Of course, you haven't touched on those of us that wear several hats...play prissy bus driver one day, and go get dirty the next. By choice. Peolpe who don't need to justify what we do or what we make, be it high or low, because perhaps we have a different standard of what constitutes success. Some of, myself included, think determining success by one's job description, by one's bottom line, and by the size of one's toys is about as infantile and immature as one can get. It speaks of a great lack of development in your own life...when you spout these things it really isn't a slight on the rest of the world, but on yourself. Translated plainly; your bitching only makes you look bad.
Think about that.
