Vantaggi
While base pay looks pretty low, don't discount all the "behind the scenes" money you get on top of that. Fully paid healthcare, money for housing, money for groceries, free legal services, etc. When I left as an E-5 / SSgt, my base pay was only about 32k, but in actuality I banked about 72k. If you are lucky enough to get some overseas places and you can live off-base, you can make money hand-over-foot in some locations/instances.
Svantaggi
The day-to-day tedium sucked the life out of me. From management who were only in that position because they had been around forever (as opposed to being hardworking or intelligent) to supervising fresh-outta-training young guys/girls that get you blamed for all their mistakes. I ultimately just lost faith in the military to take care of it's people long-term.