kind of a weird position to be in honestly. been freelancing for a while and a construction and infrastructure company reached out through linkedin of all places and they want someone on staff basically full time. theyd own the equipment which is actually appealing because my mavic setup isnt really ideal for the kind of mapping they need anyway. salary would be decent, not amazing, benefits obviously which i dont have right now.

the thing giving me pause is that ive gotten pretty used to setting my own schedule and taking the jobs i want. and some months freelancing i make more than what theyd be paying. but then some months are really slow and its stressful. i honestly cant decide if the stability would feel like a relief or would drive me crazy after a while. anyone been in a similar spot or made this kind of call before

I went in-house for about 18 months with an energy company doing transmission line inspections and I have mixed feelings looking back. The work itself was interesting and I learned a ton about LiDAR and actual survey-grade workflows that I never would have touched freelancing. But yeah, you lose a lot of the flexibility and there were definitely stretches where I was basically just waiting around for weather windows and it felt like a waste of time.

I think it really depends on where you are in terms of skills. If the company is doing serious inspection or mapping work, the in-house stint can be really worth it just to build your technical chops. Then you can go back to freelancing but at a higher tier of work. That's kind of what I did and it worked out, but I also got lucky that my manager was decent and didnt micromanage the flying side of things.

the benefits thing is underrated tbh. health insurance alone when youre freelance is kind of a nightmare depending on where you live. i'd probably take the staff job personally, especially if they're doing infrastructure stuff — that experience looks good on paper when you eventually go back out on your own