As someone who has been a field engineer, no amount of money is worth traveling and working 65-70 hours a week. If my old company offered me 200k a year I would still decline.

What you aren't taking into account is the difference between 65-70 hours working near your home vs 65-70 hours working on the road. The latter is far more difficult and time consuming. Finding a hotel, getting there and checked in, finding food, eating fast food over and over ( a lot of times you simply don't have a choice), planning your route to the site and planning parking in a metro, working past your expected times because of site access, constantly working around different time zones and other people's schedules since you're the variable, driving to sites, figuring out how and when to do laundry, etc. 65-70 hours on the road is like 90-100 hours for a normal job that doesn't travel.

I did it for three years. In those three years I went from insanely fit, happy, with a strong friend circle, (150lbs, shredded, 315 bench, 4'4 40) to 130 lbs with high blood pressure, very weak, depressed and destroyed mentality, and the loss of many friends (connections not actually people dying). I consider myself and iron clad fortress when it comes to my resolve and resistance to mental fragility. And yet, that sort of work pushed me to my absolute limits. It took me months to become somewhat normal again. Lastly, transitioning out is difficult. For me specifically, physical interviews were impossible because of the constant travel. I had to build a large nest egg and quit just so I could job search.

So how about I go over your main question and what you can expect to gain from the experience.

​

Is your employer fucking you?: It depends what you're actually doing with the equipment, what your role is, and how much experience you have doing it. That being said you'll have to be more specific as the description you've given could apply to many roles.

On the positive side: You'll gain a ton of good contacts and a robust network. You'll gain priceless life and business experience that allows you to be a force to be reckoned with in any room. You'll also get to see a ton of cool stuff if you have the time. For myself, it was the travel that allowed me to figure out what in the world I wanted to do with my life.