Land surveyors start as employees, and move up to partnership in a firm or to ownership of their own enterprise if they wish. Some wind up working for government, private corporations, or public enterprise.

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.

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

I automate some tasks and delegate many others. Doing research, job organization, data processing, field surveys, and plan preparation can be tedious, detailed work.

Land surveyors start as employees, and move up to partnership in a firm or to ownership of their own enterprise if they wish. Some wind up working for government, private corporations, or public enterprise.

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!

Land surveying has been a positive influence on my life, and I'd encourage anyone who hasn't considered it to give it a chance!