curious about peoples real timelines here. ive been doing drone work on the side for about 18 months, got my part 107, done some real estate, a couple event shoots, some mapping work for a small surveying company that found me through a local facebook group of all places. its starting to feel like maybe this could actually become a thing but im nervous to take the leap from my desk job.

i make decent money at my current job and the idea of giving that up is scary. my wife is supportive but realistically we need a certain income floor. i keep reading these success stories online but they always feel a little too polished if you know what i mean. id rather hear from people who actually did it and how messy the first year or two really was, not just the highlight reel version.

also for anyone doing mapping or inspection work — is it realistic to get into that without a surveying background or do companies expect you to already know GIS and all that

took me about three years from first paid gig to quitting my day job and honestly i probably waited a little too long but i also have two kids so the risk tolerance was low. the mapping and inspection path is real but you're right that it helps to know the software side — pix4d, agisoft, even just being comfortable processing point clouds. i taught myself a lot of it on youtube and then just kept offering to do small jobs cheap while i built the skills. the surveying company i work with now didnt care that i had no formal background, they just wanted someone reliable who could fly consistently and deliver clean data. showing up on time and communicating well honestly got me further than any certification did

first year was rough financially, not gonna lie. had some months where i was really sweating it. having some savings buffer before you quit makes a huge difference.

the GIS question is interesting because i feel like thats actually becoming a bigger deal as more clients get sophisticated about what they want from aerial data. like early on you could deliver a nice orthomosaic and people were impressed, now some of the engineers im working with want specific deliverables and accuracy tolerances and its pushed me to actually learn more of the technical side. theres free coursework through esri and a few other places that can at least get you conversational in the terminology even if youre not a full surveyor. that said plenty of operators just fly and hand off to the client to process so depends what niche you're going after