kind of a weird situation and not sure how to think about it. a construction and land development company reached out through linkedin, apparently they found my portfolio somewhere, and they want to talk about bringing me on as essentially a full time in-house drone operator. would be doing progress documentation, surveying support, some marketing stuff for their projects. salary would be real, benefits, all of that.

ive been freelancing for about three years and while its been ok its also been stressful, slow months are really slow. but im also a little worried about getting locked into one company and losing the variety. like part of what i love is that one week im doing something totally diffrent and the next week im doing something else entirely. also not sure how much creative control id have or if id just be flying the same flight plans over the same sites every week basically becoming a data collector.

has anyone made this jump either direction? what did you end up preferring and why

I did the in-house thing for about two years at an engineering firm and honestly it was fine. You're right that it gets repetitive - I was doing a lot of the same corridor mapping jobs week after week - but there's something really nice about not having to hustle for your next client or wonder if you can make rent. The skills I picked up there were actually pretty valuable too because I got deep into photogrammetry workflows and ground control points and stuff that I probably wouldnt have bothered learning properly on my own when I was bouncing between different gigs.

I eventually went back to freelance because the pay ceiling felt low and I missed picking my own projects, but I dont regret doing the staff job first. If I were you I'd at least take the call and see what the actual terms look like. Construction companies sometimes have more interesting work than you'd expect, especially if they're doing anything large scale.

salary + benefits as a drone pilot sounds almost too good honestly, is that actually becoming more common? curious what ballpark they're talking if you dont mind sharing. also yeah the repetition thing would get to me too but steady income is steady income