Hah! I was commuting an hour one way for a 40k + job when I got an e-mail on my MBA college e-mail about a GS 9/11/12 program for 1102's. I looked at the salary, begged for the interview -- rest is history.

Work life balance varies not only from agency, but departments within agencies. Even then, it's further dependent on your supervisor and typically the program office you support. If you have an agency that supports telework, but a supervisor that abhors it it's going to be tough to push for more telework.

Contract Specialist is a great job for someone like me who looked at his hands at a young age, and knew that he was never going to do manual labor. It's glorified data entry some days. Some days it's critical analysis and application of clauses/law, and others it's fighting with much better resourced counterpart teams from large private businesses who will wear you down and use your superiors as leverage to award bad contracts.

For 1102's, early in the career your work life balance will be what you make of it. Like most careers, putting more effort in earlier likely means less work later on. Frankly, I'm not sure what branch chiefs really do in my agency. They seem to have meetings about manpower, and don't really do anything 1102 related. There seems to be a sweet spot where as a Contracting Officer you are more technically sound than you will ever be, and as a branch chief with 3 supervisor reports you probably will never be less responsible and more paid.

There is typically a personal decision on when you move up on whether to go into supervision to get that next grade around GS 13/14, but frankly -- I'm sitting on tech 14 interviews and they're not hard to find if you look. I want to say technically strong and work a part time 1102 Consulting-esque business on the side, so I'm staying tech side as long as possible.

I'm almost ten years in and started as a GS-9, sitting for GS-14 interviews now. If you told me (even with inflation,) that your boy would be making a buck and a quarter thou ten years into my career where I work from home and genuinely am not busy 3 out of 5 days a week I would've never believed it. Given you only need a few business class credits and a generalist degree like an MBA, an 1102 is an easy career to slide into. You are given a pretty short leash the first 3-4 years, and if your program makes you rotate every 18 months or 3 years it feels like starting over again each time which can be stressful (1102's are infamous for internal politics). Idiots will tell you to just clock out and never do an ounce of more work, but if you want to truly be good as an 1102 you're going to spend time on your own researching/thinking of ways to improve your current standard operations -- which imo is a good thing. The sooner you master your craft, the sooner you realize whatever your workload is probably isn't that much and learn to coast. I worked harder at minimum wage jobs than I do now.

There are jobs EVERYWHERE, CONUS/OCONUS, so there is great job security/flexibility in that if you don't like where you're at-- you can move.

You have the ability to climb pretty easily by genuinely just doing your job and being above average in competence. Being in the right place, right program, right time helps (like all other careers,) but genuinely it is a career where you can safely decide if you want to push for those higher positions or are comfortable sitting on an 11/12 for your career.