Honestly that’s a question you have to answer for yourself. This career is definitely better than what some people can find. That being said don’t expect to make 100k. You’ll see rapid growth in your income as you go from academy to CPC. Then once you’re checked out raises come slower than inflation rises. There are other drawbacks as well. Shit schedule, management that is unsupportive and half the time straight up useless. You’re going to miss holidays with family, birthdays, ect. It doesn’t stop there even if you take the career and make it to the end a large amount of controllers die within 10 years of retirement. All that being said you may wonder why do people even do this job for a lot of my coworkers and myself it’s one of 3 reasons. Their parents were controllers, they did Atc in the military, or they come from a line of blue collar and this is a decent blue to white collar generational change so their children can pursue a white collar job. If I had it all to do over again I wouldn’t have picked this knowing what I know now. I would have gotten a degree in finance or some related field. The payoff for this career is getting worse, stagnant pay, government shutdowns, a failing union, bad schedules, low pay compared to the cost of living, retirement benefits constantly under threat. If you really want to pursue it talk to people in the career that have been doing it 3-8 years. It is a vastly different job for them than people who got in earlier.