bit of a weird situation. i've been freelancing for about 18 months doing mostly mapping and some film work and a construction company reached out to me after i did a project for them and they want to bring me on as basically their dedicated aerial guy. salary, benefits, all that. its flattering and the money is actually pretty comparable to what i made last year freelancing but last year was a good year.

my hesitation is i genuinely like the variety of freelancing. some weeks im doing ag stuff, some weeks its filming for a local production, its never the same. a staff role would obviously be way more repetitive. but then again the stability thing is real, i have a kid now and the feast or famine nature of freelancing does stress me out more than i want to admit. just curious if anyone has gone one direction or the other and has regrets or feels good about it.

i took an in-house role about two years ago after freelancing for three years and honestly dont regret it. the variety thing is real, you do lose that, but what i didnt expect was how much i learned going deep on one specific type of work. i do a lot of volumetric surveys and thermal inspections now and im genuinely way better at it than i would be if i was jumping around. the benefits thing with a kid is no joke either. that was a big factor for me.

the one thing id say is make sure you negotiate to keep your part 107 and any certs in your name not theirs, and get clarity on whether you can do any outside work on weekends. some companies are fine with it some arent.

ugh this is such a tough call. i would personally hate giving up the freelance lifestyle but i also dont have kids so probably easy for me to say. what kind of equipment would they have you on, like are they buying you gear or using their own stuff already