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-Take home depends a lot on your tax situation. Married with 1 kid and I contribute to FSA for healthcare and childcare, max tsp, BCBS family plan. Around 5k a PP. I've never made less than 200k gross since I certified and I don't work all my OTs but most of them.
-People live all over, but most of them in the surrounding suburbs. There are some very nice areas within 30 minutes with good schools. Property taxes are high however. You can also live out west if you like a little more room or live closer to the city if thats your thing.
-Controllers are pretty good to eachother. Our crew does meal nights and theres a couple hockey teams and groups that do things outside of work. Theres the occasional butting of heads, but that keeps it interesting. I moved from far away so most of my friends here are also my co-workers. The FLMs are good people and really just run the break rotation lately since theres rarely more than one per shift. Upper management is where we have had some issues in the past, but things are improving lately and we are getting some new blood in the seats that matter. Hopefully this trend continues.
-How difficult? That is a tough one. Some people take to it naturally. Some people really have to grind it out. For the most part however if you keep your head down, know your LOAs and book work and appear to be putting in effort, you will get more than a fair shot. The days of washing people out willy nilly are long gone. Don't get me wrong, training here was the most challenging part of my career, but once you figure it out, working traffic here is rewarding and I personally think its a blast. Most of our "failures" in the past few years just decide it isn't for them for whatever reason. I'm not gonna lie. We had some dark days in the recent past and if I was in training I would've considered leaving, but I'm hoping things are on the mend and am trying to get the word out so some people start bidding here again.
-The Chicagoland area is a huge metropolitan area so you can do anything your little heart desires. Plenty of hunters and outdoorsey types as well.
(D CREW!) People on that side of the schedule get together at least twice a week for drinks and there is a hockey team that plays sundays and a bunch of other stuff going on too. So, it sucks not having a normal schedule but we all hang out and stuff on our "weekends" anyway. Average age of controllers depends on the crew. That crew you will end up on is the youngest, with average age in the low to mid 30s and the most senior crew is probably average age of mid 40s. We probably have only 5 people over 50 since most of the retirement wave is done here.
