Could you, in good conscience...

I can only say it works for me. I haven't met too many people with the skill set to do this job well. I'm not being conceited, I just know that it takes a special kind of weirdo to get his kicks from doing math, history, and law at the same time he's digging holes in jeans torn up from briars and barbed wire in the heat of summer or cold of winter in the rain or snow or dust. Can I recommend it? Not really. But not because I hate what I do, I just know that money won't be the reason someone finds fulfillment in this career.

I do think the money is getting better. I'm in my thirties too, and all the guys at the conventions and seminars are sporting white hair and liver spots. Supply and demand and circles of life suggest the money will only get better.

As an aside, I have mixed feelings on all of the push for scholarships to surveying programs. It could be I'm too near-sighted, but I just can't figure why you'd need to start some kid off by telling him he won't make enough at this to justify his college expense so let me buy your books. I'm not an advocate of the degree requirement anyway, but that's really not what I'm getting at. What I mean is, if a 2012 high school graduate can't see that the reward for getting through a four year degree once he gets his ticket is worth the investment, then why are we begging him to enter the field? Seems cruel and unusual.

Interesting perspective. I believe in the educational requirement. If every surveyor had to justify a six figure education the fees would go to where they belong and the profession would attract more individuals. As that group of older surveyors moves along, we have the opportunity to increase the requirements in an attempt to reduce the number of bottom-feeders entering our profession.

The supply-demand idea can be broken by the "oh, I guess there are not enough surveyors so we should give more power to the [other profession]"...

other professions could include
Civil Engineers
Attorneys
GIS folks
Landscape Architects
Architects
Lawyers
Fence Installers ([sarcasm]why not, some surveyors rely on their expertise anyhow...[/sarcasm])

That is a danger for sure.

> As I've started to pull my nose back from the grindstone and pay attention to things other than my grinding, I'm noticing...EVERY ENDEAVOR OF SIMILAR DIFFICULTY PAYS WAY BETTER THAN SURVEYING.

Perhaps we should report this inequity to the official authority that sets the compensation for the various profession...oh yeah that would be the practitioners of the profession themselves. We have met the enemy and he is us.

> Could you ever in good conscience recommend this profession to a high school student?

Sure. What I can't do in good conscience is pay an entry level employee with a surveying degree less that I would an entry level employee with a civil engineering degree.

You have received some excellent comments already. I'm sure there will be more.

I can only speak from my own experience. I'm rather adept at office work, wheeling and dealing, and juggling 18 balls or more at the same time. I also enjoy spending part of my time out in the elements. My goal was to have a professional experience while living in Smalltown USA for the perceived benefit of my children during their formative years. I had plenty of opportunities to move to places like Houston, Chicago and Moline, Illinois and make much larger sums of money. The catch was that having that money wouldn't mean much if I couldn't productively spend it where and how I wanted to. By that, I'm referring to my farming and livestock business. That activity merges well with my surveying business to allow a much more satisfying lifestyle than what I think I would have doing only one of those. I've done the three-piece suit and frequent flyer miles type of life. Some may view that as glamorous. It most definitely is not. What works well for one person may seem like a prison sentence to another. Some people, for example, are very closely tied to their family while others are very happy merely sending a Christmas letter to those sharing some DNA. Some people find solace in a laidback lifestyle while others have to get the hamster wheel going full tilt constantly. Some people MUST be their own boss while others cling to being a cog on the big wheel of success. The problem with advising young people to pursue a career in surveying, and for that matter most potential careers, is that young people have not yet finished forming that sense of self that directs them to a proper lifetime pursuit. They must stumble through the turmoils of life first. It is terribly sad to watch a relatively young person become suicidal or at least very unhappy when they realize they have been pursuing an unworkable dream and must convert to something else. One example of this is the number of teachers who leave that profession after one or two years, or even less, working at what they had assumed would be their life's work. Sometimes those young teachers have come from a family where many are teachers and they now feel that they are failures for not living up to the family's reputation. The same can apply to the offspring of a surveyor or engineer or contractor. It's the perceived shame of letting down your family peers.

A few years ago at the old RPLS.com forum we had a feature called Surveyor of the Week. Someone would tell their life story of where they started and how they found their way into the surveying profession and how they had progessed to their current standing. Then they would select someone else for the next week. A compilation of those stories would make for a great read for anyone considering surveying. The stories ranged from having been raised by one or more generations of surveyors/engineers to the bus boy/taxi driver/musician/Gypsy route to a career. Many took the years of experience route while others had gone the academic route.

"EVERY ENDEAVOR OF SIMILAR DIFFICULTY PAYS WAY BETTER THAN SURVEYING."

NAME ONE.

NO, NAME ONE HUNDRED. THAT WOULD BE A SMALL START TO ACTUALLY BACKING UP YOUR STATEMENT.

Caps off. If you feel that you have made a real mistake in your career choice, just own up to it and ask for advice somewhere about moving on to something else. If you view an education as a conveyor belt, get ready to get back on it. It will probably be your only passport out of surveying and into more money.

I really don't know of anyone in my experience (licensed 34 years) who has gone into surveying thinking primarily or even importantly about money, but over time those of us who have stayed the course have done well professionally and financially. Like any profession, it is a calling and not a ticket.

It's as difficult as ever to predict, even a few years in advance, which degrees or professions will be most in financial demand.

And yes, I could in good conscience recommend surveying as a course of study to the right high school senior. They will be few and in high demand, and some will be millionaires.

Scaled, ol' buddy...

I'd recommend this profession to any high school student...that met a few simple requirements.

He or she would have to become bored easily in a classroom.

He or she would have to show an intense aversion to being cooped up in an indoor pen.

He or she would have to feel much more alive with the fresh air in spring. The smell of a plum blossom and the song of a jaybird would be intoxicating to them. The changing of the seasons would have to feel like an almost religious ceremony to them.
He or she would have to be joined with nature at the heart.

He or she would have to have a passion for the path in the woods where there is no path.

He or she would have to have a keen interest in history with particular attention paid to obscure ancient documents locked away in a box, waiting for someone to discover them.

He or she would have to feel as thought the opinions and hunches built over a period of time with every small shred of added evidence were correct; even in the face of contrary beliefs. He or she would have to be headstrong in attitude.

Anyone can learn the math and geometry. You cannot teach a love for the profession.

Granted, as a young man I chased the dollar. Sometimes you have to. All paths led back here to surveying though.

A surveying career is probably comparable to wine. It takes aging to bring it to its full potential. While I will not brag on monetary wealth; I can tell you some months I put more in my IRA than some people make in a year.

With good conscience I'd recommend surveying to any high school student that had the passion and fire for this noble profession.

Being a retired surveyor, I guess I can answer this one.

I don’t go for all the charts which tell young people what they can make as a (fill in the blank). I know surveyors who have done well and retired comfortably. Then there are engineers and geologists who have trouble supporting their family. Just like there are restaurant owners who succeed and those who fail, sometimes multiple times. We have a surveyor friend who has gone out of business three times. Just being a good surveyor will not make you a successful business owner. What I am saying is that some of us can rise above the average (from the charts) and make a really good living as a surveyor!

Is that you? Don’t know. Is that all of the youth of today who may go into surveying? No, but some of the young surveyors will really do well in surveying.

If only you had listed your email, I would send you some info. But you didn’t so I can’t…..

But I can tell you that I would recommend the surveying profession to the right young people. Oh, I was just doing that at the career days at the local high schools.

Yikes, touched a nerve there. You're making quite a few assumptions there my friend.

I don't feel that I made a career choice mistake (in that I do find my work interesting and fulfilling). My education comment was tongue-in-cheek and directed at the ABET cartel, not education in general. I did receive quite a fine education.

Your third from last paragraph hits the nail on the head and perhaps summarizes the whole issue. The elder statesmen of our profession have reiterated this point time and time again, implicitly and explicitly: it's not about the money, if you're worried about the money, get out. We seem to be unique stalwarts among our professional peers in this regard. Doctors and engineers of all sorts seem to be much more openly ambitious about their compensation. Perhaps this has to do with social class origins (I know I was brought up not to think too much about money).

As it happens, I am quite fairly compensated-well toward the upper range for my experience and location. My point is not Waah, Waah, I haven't fallen into a pot of gold and I so deserve it. My point is that our profession will not retain or recruit the best and brightest as long as we are not compensated in step with other professionals. So to summarize: What the hell is going on and why are we still accepting it?

On another note, studies show that aspiration and expectation have not only a correlative, but also causal relationship to compensation and wealth. It's time for surveyors to want more, and yes, to get out if we don't get it.

As a survey manager (and therefore compensation setter) in an engineering organization, do you find that compensation for surveyors is comparable to engineers at 10-30 years out? If it is comparable, is it comparable on an hour for hour basis? (Surveyors, myself included, have been making very good money for years...as long as we were willing to work 80 hours a week and holidays.) And I'll agree that beginning compensation between civils and surveyors (and hell, even doctors in residency) begins comparably, but ends...differently.

To reiterate my response to Zeiss below: I'm not complaining about my personal compensation with regard to the survey industry. I am interested in a real conversation about real change that would make this a more desirable life-long career.

I could whole heartedly recomend surveying as a valid career choice, for the right individual.

There is much more to life than money, but we do have to have it while we are here. It takes a very special type fof individual to become a licensed surveyor. Not everyone that enters this profession will become licensed.

I have been in the surveying profession since April 1995. I cannot picture myself ever doing anything else. Like others have said, it is a calling. I have worked for 3 different firms before starting my own firm in August 2007. It has been a rollar coaster the past 6 years, but I have always billed out much more than I ever made working for someone else. I have a great satisfaction in that I have total control over my work product.

I could go on about my personal satisfaction with my career choice. I am not rich, and I don't have a huge retirement account. I work about 60 hours a week, but I have been blessed to be a part of this great profession. I have projects that aren't my favorite, but I do enjoy what I do for a living.

Holy Cow, I really appreciate your balanced approach to life. Now that's healthy. I strive to be that way myself, and in fact, about 30% of my yearly income comes from non-surveying investment returns and dividends. My goal over the next 5 years is to flip the ratio (30% surveying, 70% other).

Like you, I do love the profession. And as the saying goes, the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. So I wouldn't be critical of our profession if I didn't care. It has provided me with many cherished experiences and a livelihood. But, of course, the profession is us. And we can be much, much better. I would love to know why we're not and help fix that. The profession is currently not very close at all to what it could and should be. I think average salary is a big, important part of that.

Holy Cow

you mentioned Moline, IL............perhaps we know each other from days past in the QCA?

Why didn't you start with something like that rather than posting the "I had to do all this work and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" type of whining post. It was just whining. Admit it. It will be the first step to dealing with the mid-life crisis you have found yourself in.

You are seriously the one who has come here with all nerves out of sort with a shotgun blast of a post.

"My point is that our profession will not retain or recruit the best and brightest as long as we are not compensated in step with other professionals."

Wow, what a total disconnect. Surveying isn't about competing financially for the best and the brightest, but for competing for those best suited to being professional surveyors.

Wow indeed. If your post were satire, it would be unimprovable.

The "Shut up and eat your gruel" mentality is the problem, not the solution.

Why do this at all? - Because it is a great profession
Why do it this way? - Agreed, we have met the enemy and he is us!
Why do it now? - See first answer.

As to answer #2......
Winning bid for a ALTA survey of a commercial tract with a four story office building and numerous improvements on a seven acre tract - $3,000......... Amazing!

> As a survey manager (and therefore compensation setter) in an engineering organization, do you find that compensation for surveyors is comparable to engineers at 10-30 years out?

Yes, but the way you phrased the question is telling. "An engineering organization" performs engineering; a firm with engineers and surveyors (and others) is multi-disciplinary.

>If it is comparable, is it comparable on an hour for hour basis? (Surveyors, myself included, have been making very good money for years...as long as we were willing to work 80 hours a week and holidays.)

Yes, if we're comparing surveyors to engineers, not survey technicians. 10-30 years out they are going to be holding down positions as "Project Surveyors" or "Survey Project Managers"; they'll be salaried employees and be paid (and billed) equitable to similar positions of responsibility in engineering, planning & landscape architecture.

Now not every firm in my market works that way; some have a reputation for treating the surveyors as the engineer's b!tches. But eventually everyone knows who those firms are and they attract the survey staff they deserve 😉

First, I know several millionares who are surveyors only.

Second, I can't think of another job that allows me to retrace lines outside during the most beautiful and terrible of weather patterns.

Third, I can't think of another job that allows me to immerse myself into a mind-set of 50 years to 150 years prior when solving large puzzles.

Forth, I can't think of another profession where I can mud-hog on Monday, meet with executives on Tuesday, cut steel on Wednesday, create new house lots on Thursday, and send out invoices on Friday for all that fun.

This job isn't for everyone. It has been said in a myriad of ways that if you love your job, you won't work one day. I truly love my job and it compensates me, monetarily, enough that I don't struggle. I don't want to make a killin, just a livin. I truly love what I do. That's not to say that I don't have bad days, but that more often than not, I'm happy. That means more than money to me.

Also, I have degrees in business that the business model of surveyors is excellent, if tweaked when necessary.

jwabbitt

Have spent several weeks worth of days in the QCA. First stretch was between 1975 and 1979. The next stretch was between about 1981 and 1987.

First go-round involved working with the hundreds of engineers and upper level managers based there working for the Big Boys of the agricultural equipment business. Second go-round involved hanging with the upper echelon government employees at Rock Island. Day vs Night. North vs South. Tastes Great vs Less Filling. Two completely different experiences.

I always thought it was odd that it was called Quad Cities when there were five. Moline, East Moline, Rock Island, Bettendorf and Davenport.