Is anyone an air traffic controller?

[LoverofGladioli]

My son in his 20s has given up a £70k office job ( which he admittedly hates) to be an air traffic controller. This will obviously be shift work, a big pay cut and presumably a great deal of responsibility. He is married but has no kids and they dont want them. He will burn through his savings propping up his income while he trains.He was also accepted on a pilot training scheme, but has gone for the ATC because he doesn't want to be away from home and his wife so much. Obviously it is his life and he must make his own choices, but as a mum i do worry.
Can anyone come up with any positives?

My understanding is that there is no upper age limit for NATS, unlike Eurocontrol and the Dutch it seems.

My elder son is an ATC at Whiteley and has been in the role for 29 years now
he absolutely loves it and the lifestyle that he can afford.
Salary is well over £100,000.
He lives in Hedge End, roughly 20mins drive away

Once he’s qualified, they will be very comfortable. Prestwick and Swanwick have ATC centres, he could request one of these, or to work at one of the many airport towers. I say he go for it, and you shouldn’t worry about their finances.

I worked at Heathrow for 10yrs up to 2020 and NATS was considered to be a very good employer. Yes, demanding and at times stressful job but huge respect to them all - I had a trial in the training facility and was shockingly bad at it! Good luck to him.

My only concern is that is a seriously stressful and important job! You literally stop planes colliding with each other.

It's a case of stopping them colliding but in.many cases also not wasting airspace/runways.

For example the approach controllers at Heathrow do an amazing job of feeding traffic off the 4 different holds in sequence and sliding them onto the approach at the correct, usually minimum allowable spacing, so as to absolutely maximise runway occupancy in terms of landings per hour...it's an absolute work of art.