Well, some of us are in pretty good shape, but not that guy. Haha And yes, we do get paid quite well for climbing. We are actually pretty lucky - a lot of tower companies are just riggers and it's basically just construction, pulling wrenches, nothing technical. We are a small company so we get to work with every aspect of communications from building/maintaining towers and antennas to the radios and networking gear connecting them and customers, including cutting edge tech some days. Every day is an adventure.
And yes, doing these POI shots is tough manually. I always find myself giving too much roll which results in drifting back away from the subject. Some forward pitch might help, but tough to gauge how much. A programmed maneuver would be nice.