so a construction company reached out to me through someone i know and they want to hire a full time in-house drone operator, basically doing site surveys, progress photos, some volumetric stuff with their software. salary is decent, nothing crazy but it has benefits which as a freelancer i have basically been ignoring for two years and my back tooth situation is reminding me that was a bad idea.

the thing im wrestling with is that ive built up a pretty decent little client base on the freelance side and i feel like taking a staff job means i kind of give that up, or at least let it go quiet. maybe i could keep a few weekend clients but honestly when ive worked full time before i know i dont have the energy for side stuff after work.

curious if anyone has gone from freelance to staff or vice versa and what that transition actually felt like. the construction gig seems like solid experience too, they use pix4d and apparently have a lidar setup i'd get trained on which is cool

the lidar training alone would make me take it honestly. that's the kind of thing that costs a fortune to get on your own and opens a lot of doors later even if you go back freelance eventually. i did in-house for about three years at a utility company and yeah i missed the variety of freelance but when i left i was worth so much more to clients because i had that specialized background. the dental insurance thing is not a small thing either, i learned that the hard way

i'd probably think hard about what the actual day to day looks like before deciding. like is it the same three sites over and over or do they have projects all over the region. i had a friend who took a staff mapping job that sounded amazing and it turned out to be flying the same warehouse roof twice a week for a year and he was losing his mind by month four. not saying that's your situation but worth asking specifics in the interview if you havent already. the pix4d experience is genuinely useful though, thats a skill that transfers