Firefighter is one of the last Ambitions professions for me to try out.  I was putting this one off because I had heard that it requires a lot of work on the part of the player.  

I tend not to be a very "hands on" player.  I often prefer to sit back and watch what happens.  You get a lot of really interesting, unpredictable, oddball stuff happening.  (Plus I get a lot of knitting done!  True story: I finish about one pair of hand-knit socks a month just while playing Sims 3.)

The right traits are essential to creating a successful firefighter.  I knew when my Sim was born what his destiny would be, so I raised him right - which let me choose all of his traits.  After doing a bit of research, I went with Athletic, Handy, Brave, Friendly, and Daredevil.

Athletic and Handy are two skills that your firefighter will need to max in order to climb to the top of the career ladder.  I decided to max them while my Sim was still a child and then a teen.  

Unfortunately I think I kinda shot myself in the foot on this one, because once my Sim was ready to become a firefighter, he had no more room for improvement.  If I was going to do it again, I wouldn't be so focused on maxing his skills.

One great thing about this profession is that you have an off-site location (the firehouse) where your Sim can basically live.  The firehouse has beds, showers, a rudimentary kitchen, and even a computer and a television.  It's like a World Adventures "skill-cation," but without the time travel effect.  

This means that you can basically camp your Sim at the firehouse and have them work on their skills every waking minute.  Just ignore the carpool, and set your Sim to working out, repairing the alarms, upgrading the fire truck, and making friends with the other firefighters.

You get graded on your fire alarm calls, so it's important to keep the fire truck and alarms maintained.  Given the choice I would upgrade the fire truck's horsepower before I maintained the alarms.  The faster your fire truck, the quicker you can get to the fire, and the better your overall grade.

Aside from the Happiness Rewards that address needs (like Steel Bladder) the social rewards will be useful here.  Your Sim needs to make friends with all the firefighters, and they need to do it as quickly as possible.  Never Dull and Eye Candy are handy for this!

The first five levels are a bit of a grind.  You wait for the alarm to ring, go to someone's house, and put out the fire.  There are interesting events that tend to happen later on in your career.  (I didn't encounter anything in the first five levels but plain old fires.)  

It's engrossing as a player, though, because there are so many things you can do in order to advance.  As opposed to some professions, where you only have one or two career-related activities.  So whether or not being a firefighter is boring kind of depends on what your definition of "boring" is!