Pros
- Opportunities for travel and overseas operations. - Good camaraderie and sense of belonging. - Lots of professional development training and funding. - Interesting and diverse work (but not all the time!). - Get paid to keep fit and be outdoors. - As an officer you'll get lots of responsibility at an early stage.
Cons
- You change job every 2 years and with that comes a change in location. It feels like you're always in flux. - The career management is quite opaque and its hard to work out who gets the best jobs and why. - The pay is comparatively low versus what your civilian friends will earn. - In peace-time there's much fewer operations and the job can become repetitive, mainly doing administration or exercises. - Given the below-inflation pay rises and constant reduction in benefits (housing, extra pay on deployment etc) the real salary value is constantly being reduced. - Your family will have to follow you around when you move location every 2 years, making it hard on partners' careers if they can't work remotely.