When one gets so-so pay in a high-stress, high-output job, and are treated overall like scum, it is very difficult to retain a good attitude. It is impossible to maintain a positive attitude after about the second or third week (if you're in your 20's!) of 6 and 7 12-hour days per week. At that point, you are physically and mentally exhausted and the bank account is not increased by very much. If you're 50+ you know a bout more about maintaining cash reserves but you must do so because of the parcity of outages per year coupled with the extremely short (compared to the old norm of 3 months) outages of today.
It just ain't a winning proposition for any age.
My worst ever contract, money-wise, was 9 DAYS, and had a 1,300 mile drive each way to get there. The staffing vendor failed to tell me their outage was almost over. I actually lost money on that one.
All in all, rent-a-tech'ing is a hard life.
I don't know why anyone does it. I only did it for 12 years, and 2 years of that was management, and 3 years was engineering.