kind of a weird situation. ive been freelancing for about 18 months and its been going okay, not great, but okay. a surveying and mapping company in my area reached out through linkedin of all places and offered me a full time staff position. its a real W2 job, benefits, the whole thing. salary is decent, not amazing, but its stable which freelancing definitely has not been for me lately.

my gut reaction was to be excited but then i started second guessing myself because i feel like i'd be giving up the flexibility and honestly the potential upside of building my own client base. the job would be mostly photogrammetry missions, some lidar work with their equipment which i've never actually used before, and probably a lot of time driving to job sites in the company truck which sounds kind of tedious honestly.

i dont know. maybe im overthinking it. has anyone worked staff vs freelance and have thoughts on which was actually better for them long term? not trying to get rich just want to do something sustainable

take the job. im serious. the lidar experience alone is worth it — that stuff is genuinely hard to get exposure to without either buying your own sensor which costs a fortune or working for someone who has one. surveying and mapping companies are also pretty stable clients of work, infrastructure spending isnt going anywhere. you can always go back to freelancing later but with way better credentials and a more specific skill set that commands higher rates. the guys i know who came out of survey backgrounds and went freelance afterwards did significantly better than people who just did real estate stuff for years.

also health insurance. ive been freelancing for 4 years and paying for my own coverage is one of the most annoying parts of the whole thing.

im kinda in the opposite boat, been thinking about leaving a staff gig to go freelance so reading this with interest lol. i think it really depends on what you actually want day to day. staff work is steadier but you're flying what they need flown, not what you find interesting. some people that's totally fine. for me i started feeling like i wasnt growing because every week was basically the same type of mission. but the financial stability thing is real, freelancing has some really slow months that i did not anticipate when i romanticized the idea of working for myself