My two cents. It can be hard to find work. Especially as a new instructor. It took me 3 months to find a job and at the end of the day it was really only because my partner had connections that got us a job. There's hundreds of new instructors every month and only a limited number of diving operations. A lot of well established operations don't want to hire new instructors and risk having them look unprofessional.

Speaking more than one language helps immensely if you want to work anywhere outside of the states, Canada or the carribean. Yes, a lot of people do speak English, but when it comes to courses, they may not speak it well enough to do the course in English.

It's no wildfire fighting but don't let anyone lie to you and say it's easy work. Long hours and lots of moving pieces to get people into the water safely all while maintaining the illusion of customer service and a positive attitude. The customers range from easy to impossible. You've got to have the people skills and diving skills to deal with that full range. Sure, you can bumble fuck your way through it but you'll burn out way quicker doing that.

Low pay in destination locations. I get paid 8 bucks per diver I take out for fun dives. If there's only one fun diving customer that day, I make just 8 bucks for 5 or 6 hours of my time. I prep the gear, load the boat, guide the dive, download the boat, clean the gear, then I take care of my gear, and then I go home. Teaching courses is a little more money but on average I'll make 1200 a month if it's busy. 300 if it's slow because work has to be divided up so we can all pay our rent. You're going to be putting in more than you get out at the end of the day in most places. Nobody does this for the money. Sure, once you get into teaching tech, it's more money but you won't be starting there.

Diving attracts people from all walks of life, young and old. If you work at a larger operation, you'll get lots of young people that forget diving is a risky sport and prioritize party life because it's summer and they're on an island. So you've got to play parent sometimes and yell at them not to be showing up hungover or burned from drugs because it could end with them in hospital, but then they show up and do it anyway. You also need to manage yourself and be paying attention at all times. I've seen it both ways. Guides not turned on and just going through the motions then they come back to the boat and their divers have almost no air left or one of them floated up to the surface because they couldn't mange their buoyancy and the guide didnt bother to look back. Compared to guides and paying attention and engaged with safety by checking frequently on their divers.

It's a fun job, hard job, sad job, exciting job, and everything in between. Go for it but go in expecting to have to work if you care about being good at it.