bit of a weird situation. ive been freelancing for almost four years, built up a decent client list, mostly commercial real estate and some film production assistant stuff. out of nowhere a regional media production company reached out asking if i'd be interested in a staff position, like actual W2 employee, benefits, the whole thing. salary they quoted is decent but not crazy, probably a bit less than what i made last year freelancing but last year was a pretty good year for me.

the stability sounds appealing honestly, freelancing has some months where im stressed about where the next job is coming from. but i also really like controlling my own schedule and picking my clients. plus i have no idea what being a staff drone pilot even looks like day to day — do they just have you sitting around waiting for shoots? do they have you doing other production stuff in between? i didnt ask enough questions in the initial call and now i have a follow up meeting next week.

has anyone made this switch either direction? what should i even be asking them in that meeting

ask them straight up what percentage of your time is actually flying vs other stuff. a buddy of mine took a staff gig at a marketing agency a while back thinking it was going to be drone work and ended up spending like 60% of his time editing and doing random video production tasks that had nothing to do with flying. not saying thats bad if you like editing but know what youre signing up for. also ask about equipment — are you flying their gear or yours, and if its yours what does the insurance and liability situation look like. some companies are weirdly vague about that.

i left a staff job to go freelance so kind of the opposite direction from you but for what its worth — the thing i did not expect to miss was having colleagues and just like, a creative team around. freelancing can get lonely faster than you think especially if most of your gigs are solo. the stability thing is real too, i had a rough patch about 8 months in where i seriously questioned everything. so i dont think theres a wrong answer here, just depends what you actually want out of your work life, the money math is only part of it