In general, salary for land surveyors is often similar to that of a professional engineer or lawyer - surveyors are often "comfortable" but not "wealthy."

Sometimes I imagine a surveyor 100 years from now reading my plan, retracing my boundaries, and finding the monuments that I set. It's an honor to make a mark in history like that.

I was attracted to the direct connection with history that land surveyors experience in the form of plans, field notes, and from surveying monuments from decades or even centuries in the past.

There's a popular misconception that property boundaries are based on coordinates that surveyors can simply "walk to" with our instruments. The reality is that, while physical coordination of monuments is easier than it's ever been, property boundaries often need to be determined based on evidence and plans that are old, decrepit, and done with different technology and expectations than we have today.

Some land surveyors delve into land development advocacy, working with local government on behalf of clients in order to facilitate progress on a project. Others stick to strictly surveying. The approach depends on the individual firm and the needs of the local area.

Land surveyors can spend as much time reading legislation, bylaws, and engineering documents as we spend in front of an instrument in the field or calculating coordinates for a subdivision. We are mathematicians, historians, project managers, advocates, engineers, and even chainsaw operators!

Building smart processes to streamline the workflow can make the work easier and the results more reliable, which keeps my head above water and my clients happy.