My own company since 1999, solo with robotic TS and GNSS, sometimes another solo pal, occasionally my understanding wife to babysit a receiver or two.

First job in surveying was late 1960's, 3 crews, mostly section subdivision, each crew a Rear-Chaninman (RC), Head-Chainman (HC), Instrumentman (IM), and a licensed Party Chief (PC). I was RC, 2 days out of high school where academic underachievement delayed graduation to within a week of my 19th birthday, and sure to get drafted. HC was 23, couple years of junior college, 7 months experience, an ACLU member or at least a maybe-coulda-wanna-be, who continues a career of note in land surveying today. IM had a 2 year Tech degree and 1-1/2 years experience, an ex-pat Aussie who alleged he'd spent most of WW II in a “Jerry” POW camp, and, alleged he was 48 or 58 depending, I guess, on his mood. IM on the two other crews had the experience and temperament to manage day to day field work, not so ours. PC was 35, PLS, son of a PLS, no college as I remember, and wore White Boots. He'd taken the ICS Surveying curricula and later became a licensed Civil. PC was a patient, tolerant, soft-spoken supervisor but I think he had his hands full with us during my first six months until he up-trained HC and me, putting IM at RC. As long as IM was neutralized at RC the crew was productive, accurate, and mostly sane. In retrospect our wacky IM meant more training time by PC and I've always felt privileged for it.

Jobo was my first PC and when I began he seemed like a wizard some days. His crew for the day, we three or two or just me, digging, probing, measuring, hopeful, or hopeless, sometimes helpless, he'd get out of his truck or up from a log, with notes and maps, slide rule, dip needle, a hand compass or “turn this angle”, and for me, an eager Chainman-to-be, ax in hand, BT scribing to find, scraper of duff for post remains, or the shovel-man digging for our surveyors' treasure, … when we found the scribing in the stump, post remains, the stone, or the pipe, even a shiny new monument, it was gold, maybe not King Tut's Tomb, but for me, 24 karat.

I've worked with hundreds of surveyors over the years and early on learned from other boundary miners like Joe. I wonder about our boundary skills today though. It seems like technology has enabled a devolution of sorts to a full time strip-mining practice standard, lots of dirt, maybe some decent ore, but we don't necessarily budget or train for the rich lode deposits, takes too much time. Also, sometimes it seems like we're so proud of our methods and tech “we don't need no stinking redundancy anymore”, except of course, when we wish we had it.