It can be a lot of hard work and you probably will only be minimally compensated for the hard effort you put in. In the 4 + years of working there they have had a high turnover rate. Also, any improvments that they might do always felt like they were still cutting costs somehow.
I feel like my living circumstances were very lucky in general, allowing me to live comfortably with the benefits that were provided. However, even with yearly pay increases my take home pay never changed too much do to my personal living expenses increasing yearly as well. (Things like health insurance, car loan, and contributing to retirement).