Meal ticket or career?

I took a 2/3 pay cut when I got my first surveying job.  Surveying has never been a meal ticket for me.  My love of the outdoors along with my independent nature makes it the perfect fit.  

Surveying was never a meal ticket for me.  I was looking for a profession that would allow me to be an independent business man without a large initial investment.  

I do not play well with others sometimes, everyone in my family is self-employed too.

I've had my share of meal ticket jobs. Surveying offered a path out of that trench and the promise that if I pushed the envelope on what I was capable of, there was a chance I could reach heights that nobody else but me considered possible. A chance to stick my finger in the eye of people who had disparaged and discouraged me, and pissed me off to push harder. One surveyor, my first real surveying job at an engineering firm, me wet behind the ears, more or less told me I was wasting my time and his. When I passed the licensing exam, one first things I wanted to do was shove that license in his face. Of course I didn't and maybe I owe him a debt of gratitude for making me want to show him and everyone else how wrong they were. 

I dropped out of HS early in 11th grade and was hanging with a, let's just say, questionable crowd.  I spent a few years pumping gas and delivering auto parts until I was offered an entry level Rod Man job when I was 18 and jumped on it because it seemed challenging by the job description given to me.

I took the job and instantly fell in love with the profession.  I faced a lot of challenges along the with people telling me that I can't do this or that and that motivated me to put in the hard work to prove them wrong.

With 10 years of experience, I passed the exam to become licensed at the age of 28.  Getting that license was life changing to me as it opened up a lot of doors.  I went from being told that I couldn't do this or that to becoming the first non-PE to own stock in a company that was over 100 years old.

It was never a meal ticket for me, from day one I saw the potential to advance and strived for it.  I always had a vision of where I wanted to be and chased that dream until I caught it, back in the mid 90's.

Here I am 40 years later in my dream job of directing a survey department that I founded 9 years ago and mentoring a staff of 30+ people.  The personal rewards through achievement are many and the financial rewards have been more than I ever could have expected.  Some of that is luck and happenstance but the rest is my love for the profession.  If the higher power called me home today, I could depart this world knowing that I left my mark, both literally and figuratively.

I look at surveying like owning cattle it just gets into your blood and doesn’t go away. When I started it was just luck after surveying for 7 plus years on private sector side and doing very well at that time as I was progressing in responsibility then surveying geodetic in the usmc and onto other aspects of geomatics like rsi msi cartography and orbits. I made more money in 5 hours than what i was making working 40 hours doing land surveying after all those years away. But I always missed the boundary side. I love history so I think that is a lot of it. Now i am almost halfway back to my old salary in a couple years. One exam behind me and preparing for the next one. It’s frustrating at times but I enjoy it very much.  One it seems no matter how much i read and ask questions it just leads to more reading and more questions so i am sleep deprived but not board at all. Especially when doing boundary work. All the gps project control is not as fun as it was when that first started. But stick me in a boundary i am as tickled as a puppy. I love reading deeds descriptions looking at old plats. Trying to understand the legal aspects of why I think this is right vs that. 

@olemanriver nothing happens overnight but you have to find a balance between ranching and surveying that allows you study time and the time to stop overthinking so you can get a good night of sleep in.

The land surveying profession is loaded with overachievers.  It is extremely difficult to start accepting the reality that one person simply can't keep doing that level of achievement as time passes.

@chris-bouffard I will not argue that. I had an d Gunny in the Marines who use to say I can sleep all I want once i am dead but not getting any sleep is getting me closer to that by the day. I think i know what he meant.  Back then we were at war and i was going 2 to 3 days literally without sleep processing gps data and other data as it came in. Sitting in a tent. I think if i went back i would find all sorts of blunders. Although about 10 years ago a team was overseas and found a few of my old monuments and we looked at the new positions from that time frame and i was surprised how well they checked. All geodetic control. I know i have a ways to go for sure. Lot of things to learn. Last few weeks my study time has been cut short for sure. Doing out of town work in the field and the office work back at hotel at night. Hopefully my crew chiefs heal up soon. And we can find some extra people. My boss is down with a bug. He didn’t make it in this morning. So I juggled what i could and why i have asked some questions here as i will hit the road in the am and the communion with boss will be very limited this week. In no mans land. Literally speaking from a cell or internet standpoint.  I am sure he will get well and read the deeds and say hey did you see this why didn’t you locate that lol. But he has the years in and knowledge. I am trying to get this thing figured out myself so maybe i will get lucky and not miss anything to important. Last week i went down for 4 others to set pins on and look for some additional evidence. Found a couple irons and made a sketch and stood on one leg to send the picture of sketch to boss. He gets it sais well that would have been nice but it didn’t change much so the crews didn’t really miss to much. I was hoping it would have been simple on this one and i could have set pins and everything and saved a trip back. But I only had 4 hrs on site and half of that was getting control and meeting with owner per our contract. My help has never surveyed before so he was helping me tote stuff. And watching my back on traffic as we had no signs it was a last minute job we were texted about as i was wrapping up the others.

@olemanriver I can't pretend to relate to what you did in the USMC but I know that my brother sure can.  He went to basic for the USAF just a few months out of HS and at the age of 17.  He did 29 years before he retired from Homeland Security and was deployed to the tents in the desert sands and other locations more times than I can count.  he was in the air and sand for Desert Storm, Enduring Freedom and countless other operations, as well as places that nobody will ever know about because of security clearances.

After 29 years, he retired as Chief MSGT, he got burner on his re-enlistment with a promised choice of base when he re-upped and came back to NJ to go full time AGR for the rest of his career.  He is now considered 100% disabled because of injuries sustained on the DMZ in Korea and other places that he can't talk about.

It took him three years after retirement to lose his game face and laugh & smile, the game face was his way of military life when it came to leading and it was engrained in him.

I thank you, him and all others, including first responders who collectively take the time to serve and protect.

@chris-bouffard Oh I appreciate that and yes it took me some time to adjust back. And still to this day in certain situations especially if i am truly focuand i need to get things done i can snap back to sgt smuck in a heartbeat. My wife i owe more to than anyone with helping me in those moments. She has the patience and a gift to talk me down to reality. She sais often after our kids are not soldiers marching up a hill .  Sometimes she can look at me and say. You need to go for a walk. She can see it coming before i can. I imagine your brother saw and did way more than I ever did. I was just a surveyor and established control and position items of concern lol. I tell all my crews. Look if i start barking like a mad dog just don’t take it personal and once i am done kick me in the rump. And say you owe us a beer or two. So far i have only lost it with my boss and he kinda knows . What is silly is I can’t stand to not meet a deadline that gets me mad as a hornets nest. Most of the time its so preventable. When its not preventable it doesn’t bother me as bad. Its when this job should have been done in 4 hrs but 3 days later we are milking it waiting on what all truly needs to be done that sets me into sgt smuck mode. Lol. As I worked in the intel field i got to work with all branches. Your brother can probably tell you some good one liners about us jar heads .  We all gave each other a hard time but most of the time it was just good fun. But a lot of Air Force folks think we marines are nuts.  Lol.

Probably like a lot of people I had some ideas of what I liked to do in my 20s, but I also knew what one likes to do and what pays bills isn't always the same thing.  So, when I stumbled into some seasonal survey work I wasn't necessarily looking at it as either a meal ticket or a career.

As I learned more about it and was able to see the combination of STEM work, history, law, art, outdoor office, the genuine usefulness to society, and the possibility of starting a business without needing a million dollar bankroll I thought hey this is pretty cool.

Even after about 8 years I'm never bored at work which isn't something I could say about any other job I've had.