alt Hacker News> Compensation is one thing, but the experience for me has been priceless.
Yep. When I got hired on at the fire department I took a $12,000 pay cut. Overtime was abundant so it was easy to make up the loss plus some. But you definitely can't purchase the experience
The firefighters in my small northwest Iowa town don't get paid at all, it's strictly volunteer. Same for our EMTs, which the county is having trouble finding volunteers for.