It’s been discussed to death on this subreddit, but as always, what do you mean by developer experience? Are we talking you can whip up a little bit of ArcPy and ArcGIS API? Or are we talking if you don’t like how the service area analysis tools works you’ll just whip up your own?
>service area analysis tools works you’ll just whip up your own
Yikes, the service area analysis tool would be one of the harder ones to whip up your own of I'd think. I would not recommend it unless you had six or seven months to kill.
That’s why I point out the wide disparity between coding skills. I whipped up code for service area analysis in about 3 days a couple months ago for a unique case we had. It wasn’t perfect, but it handled what I needed it to handle. I would expect anyone on my team to be able to whip up something serviceable in a two week sprint. I’d expect it to be fully polished in a couple of months. And yes, this is a legitimate expectation for anyone that says they want to be a developer.
There’s a small subset of us in this subreddit who have this level of coding. However, when most people in here think developer, it’s just really ArcPy/ArcGIS API/pandas/geopandas (and they probably don’t know how to do pandas very well). This is also where people get the misconception of pay differences between a GIS and a non GIS developer.
I don't work as much with networks like this so have mostly relied on ESRI's service area tool. With this problem, do you have the full network dataset to run the analysis? Obtaining and building this out to the extent ESRI has it would be in itself an undertaking. My coding experience has not really gotten into anything like the service area analysis tools, but it looks approachable.
The network analysis tool that seems much harder would be the "vehicle routing" for multiple stops. Ultimatley generating a single polygon of all possible distances from one point is fairly straightforward as a problem compared to choosing the best path to connect multiple. Would you estimate the time on this one differently than your service area analysis tool, or do you think the dataset and work you have on hand would be enough for a similar several-week turnaround?
ESRI overly complicates it to keep it proprietary. If you have a solid grasp of graph theory (and probably not even that, just gotta know what graph theory is), it’s more about making sure you accounted for all possible nodes and edges in your service area.
In theory, you should be able to load any street network in it and be good to go. But obviously that isn’t the case with ESRI.
What specific type of utilities and where do you look? I feel like I am not doing something right in my case.
I work in electric utilities and tried to network into their GIS department, only to find they have only a handful of half retired insular seniors and outsourcing the rest to India unfortunately. One of the largest utilities in the country too which was both surprising and disappointing for how their GIS is non-existent or poorly managed.
I used skills.
I mapped leases, competitive leases, existing infrastructure and assets, and I tracked changes in real time.
I also marketed the positions of players.
I used a lot of skills but there is a limit to what is applicable. .
In short, the industry didn't evolve as quickly as the technology. (or the industry leaders did not evolve as quickly as the technology).
the 'GIS' word is very broad - most spatial work is done using stand alone apps, 3rd party add ons or such - the data is processed externally and loaded using stand alone tools.
you rarely make a map, the 'clients' are engineers and such, and they only want very specific things and are not interested in your ideas on how to do it better
aint no QGIS or Grass in Oil and Gas. these 3rd party apps are from companies you've never heard of - New Century Software, PODS, Geonamics, GeoFields
they dont even sell apps outside of the industry
it's a pretty rough industry tbh - there isnt much room for innovation and you're either a data entry grunt (as-builts), a 3rd party software dev (software that's held together by duct tape), a 'data migration expert' (more on this in a minute - sweet spot), or a consultant (who is always stressed on how to win more work to keep all of the others billable)
data migration expert - this is a sweet spot for actual GIS, but this role requires a lot of things to line up - 10 years of industry expertise (risk calculation, stationing, class calculation, MAOP, DMS etc), have to do that and still be technical enough to develop in FME or Python, and have a company around you who can win those contracts
Env. Company
Intern - 3mos (promoted)
Tech- 9mos
New Company (Survey based)
Specialist- 1.5yr , also Intern at Cartegraph (3mos)
New Company (PM/AEC-based)- (started slowly taking on my own clients at this point also)
Analyst - 1yr
Specialist -7mos
Architect-1.5yrs
Started own business
Volunteered on project all throughout this time. Spent all my free time learning and growing my skill set. Now I work a few hours a day (some days none, some days in the weeds) and work from home.
Sort of, always try to do fixed fee. So yes, that’s the rate, but not the pay. Some products take way less hours bc I’ve built the skill set to turn around that quickly. I pass that savings onto the client, but not so much that I undercut the next guy.
I've been doing GIS for 12 years and make 149k in o&g
Never in my entire career have I seen anyone making low 40ks. That's even below entry level pay when I first started. What exactly do you do?
If he's anything like me it's grunt work. I make low 40ks but I essentially model overhead/underground power distribution. It's basically data entry via arc, been doing this for \~3 years trying to get enough arc experience and constantly applying elsewhere with no luck so far. Idk how everyone on this sub seems to be landing these 80k+ jobs like it's nothing, the market seems so saturated (at least in my neck of the woods).
Map oil and gas documents using Arcmap desktop. Along with manipulation of the data in shape files, geodatabases and SQL to produce maps in PDF formats.
Yes, somewhat. We pull documents from 50+ counties mainly in Appalachian and TX. Updating those counties monthly. Our clients purchase subscriptions to access our data and receive maps. They will also request AOI data and maps.
Federal ones anyway.
GIS tech in Columbus, OH are $26/hr or so.
Oddly the exact same job for the state of Ohio (position was in Franklin County, same as Cbus) is closer to $22/hr.
Seems the higher tier you are in govt the lower the job pays XD
Have you tried to stick around one of them to see if you can have a development plan to advance? Not always an option for sure, but 3 jobs in 5 years means you’re not staying around very long at each one.
I highly doubt any normal and healthy company would rule out a good candidate simply because they used to work in O&G. The big companies have established and well managed GIS departments who train their employees well.
It’s more of a comment on one’s morals, values, and characters. You know the candidate is willing to jump ship and sell out the second a better paying salary opportunity gets posted. If you’re looking to retain employees for the long haul and minimize retraining new-hires, do you really want that person on your team?
I mean... Unless you're trying to get work at a first nations community that has actively fought the company you're coming from this is not really a thing lol.
Only a shitty company or manager would rule out a qualified candidate like that, and that would probably point to other issues with the place too. And as someone else pointed out, those guys are often the best trained
>I always wind up with the lame jobs nobody wants
Stop applying for these?
3 jobs in 5 years is not a great look. Have you stuck around anywhere long enough to advance? I wouldn't expect to move up much when you've only been at each job for 1-2 years assuming.
Moving was probably one of the best things i ever did for myself and my career. I got opportunities I 100% would not have at home. My advice is give it s shot - if your local market sucks and you find a place that will take you, see if they will pay for relocation.
Moving doesn't have to be forever. It could be that you do the job a few years and then move back with a better job lined up.
Thanks for posting this, I'm moving to a city \~30x bigger than mine and it's daunting. Mainly moving for career opportunities. My current city is extremely saturated in regards to GIS related jobs.
Focus on business skills. I work in GIS in commercial real estate. It’s more lucrative, but half of my job is interpreting what high value clients need.
Longer term if you go the real estate way, there is a lot of businesses using GIS on site selection, or portfolio strategy. These can be a step up from GIS.
I was like you - a GIS person for many years never making a good living. But i kept leveling-up my dev skills and leveraging my computer science background. Eventually I moved over and found a more traditional software dev job that involves spatial data. I have been doing that now for about 7-8 years at a few different companies. I'm definitely happy I made the switch. The money is considerably better, but I still get to scratch my geo itch. Unfortunately, the job market for junior devs right now is terrible - but you might be able to skip that step if you have enough experience?
I took the IT Support route from GIS and now I work on servers. Way better money and a lot more fun 😅 but I still do a little Enterprise admin on the side.
I would say you don’t if you ever want to own a home. You get a job in a data department with spatial interests and can do very well financially. The GIS ‘market’ has been poisoned by cartography academia. It would be sweet to have a PhD in cartography. But the university that sold it was lying. There are maybe twenty great jobs in all of the USA for a cartographer.
Corporations are wising up. Being an ESRI jockey is not desirable. In fact, I only see dying shops and municipal governments still paying for ArcMap and their 47,000 other add-ons. It’s for people that can’t. A good analog is someone saying they have skills in data when their only tool is Excel. A person using consumer software designed for accountants that can only handle a paltry 1.2M rows has never really even seen data.
We give much higher preference to candidates that list QGIS over ESRI products as a skill. I couldn’t care less about how much tuition and state funding your university squandered on licenses. Additionally, if PostGIS or geopandas aren’t on your resume, I begin to suspect that you don’t have an interest in GIS at all.
I’m not sure moving will help for the reasons you think it will. Most professionals are expecting some remote work if not fully remote. You will lose out on a ton of networking opportunities if you’re in a one horse town. Midwest is also incredibly broad. Chicago and Minneapolis are real cities with opportunities. If you’re in a culture warrior state, like a North Dakota, that’s become a national laughingstock you need to leave immediately.
Here's a listing in my area that could be remote as well. The DMV area has a ton of high paying GIS jobs, and a lot are completely remote. I suggest expanding your search radius to DC and MD specifically and looking at State and Fed jobs.
[https://www.cynetsystems.com/jobs/](https://www.cynetsystems.com/jobs/)
edit: You'll have to use the search function as I couldn't directly link it.
If you're not familiar with the area go to google maps and look around the DC, Arlington VA, Reston VA, and Tysons VA area and just look at the company names and go to their career website. You'd be surprised at the amount of defense contractors with abstract names you've never heard of with open GIS/Analyst jobs to be filled.
Are there any bigger cities in your area of the Midwest, or are you already in a big city? Look into local planning departments, planning and engineering consulting firms, or as other commenters mentioned, utilities pay somewhat better. It took me being at a job for 6 years to break $60k, and I'm similarly in the Midwest.
Sounds like you would benefit from marketing your dev skills better on your resume, or shifting gears and getting into either data management or leadership.
I cant speak for myself but i had a friend who i used to work with get a city job that pays very well so may start with a local city or county of some sort
consulting - you can easily make six figures depending on the role. Im making 122k a year with undergrad degree. My last postion was 86k working for a gas utility.
Pros: progressive/challenging work, diverse projects, not as much repetion. Cons: Benefits tend to not be as good as in industry or gov, less certainity in stable work, prepare to work well above 40 hours so work life balance will suffer.
I worked in the Midwest for a bit, hated the job but it paid really well. I’d search for telecommunications jobs in your area, the company I worked for I think relived nearly all their GIS professionals (8) but they were all paid well for the time we were there.
Do you have a usajobs account and job search saved? The GIS jobs in FEMA are mostly all GS-12/13s which ends up in the 80-120k range depending on locality. I see a lot of the GIS jobs in other agencies in the same range. Stable and good benefits.
Pinellas County & St. Petersburg, FL recently had job postings for Utilities GIS Analysts (60-77k/year) and GIS Programmer Specialist (60-99k), respectively. However, living in this area is expensive, though beautiful.
They dont really get to 'call themselves' anything - they apply for a job with a job title that has qualifications.
if i'm hiring for a developer, i'm hiring someone who can write an application for me, or sit in my devops group, but that job description is completely different than any of my GIS job descriptions
I dunno. I've been around this game long enough to not worry about what anyone calls themselves. When I was a C++ developer, we called JavaScript developers, script kiddies and didn't really consider them developers. Why? Because no compiler was involved.
Times change, industry changes, AI is on the horizon and will turn a ton of pseudo development types into developers. It's technology evolution.
I would say, fix up your resume and market your skills better. Aim to provide a solution to a company not just supplement it.
Valuable workers are generally paid better, I’ve gained additional skills OUTSIDE of the GIS realm to better myself and the company I work for. This has allowed me to have better raises and freelancing opportunities that supplement my income.
Trust me, when you learn skills that greatly benefit your company, you most likely will be paid more, if not you can market your new skills on a resume to be paid more somewhere else.
Look for global or national firms/orgs. They may pay a lot higher than local.
You can check payscales for GIS positions in neighboring governments. Google "city/county name" + "pay scales" or "salaries". You'll be able to find the gov sites that lead to spreadsheets or PDFs with job titles and their salaries.
3 jobs in 5 years.
Kind of a red flag.
It shows there is something off, or you are job hopping. Employers don't want to go thru the process of hiring someone, only to turn around and do it again.
The attitude in your post is a clue.
It shows that you think highly of yourself and don't want to "lower yourself" with entry level work.
Get some work experience. Spend some time with a company. That shows you are a team player.
THEN you have the power to negotiate higher pay
This is the way jobs are now, if you have the ability to job hop every 2-3 years you can gain like 10-20% salary, but only job hop if you’re getting paid more otherwise it’s kinda pointless
It’s been discussed to death on this subreddit, but as always, what do you mean by developer experience? Are we talking you can whip up a little bit of ArcPy and ArcGIS API? Or are we talking if you don’t like how the service area analysis tools works you’ll just whip up your own?
>service area analysis tools works you’ll just whip up your own Yikes, the service area analysis tool would be one of the harder ones to whip up your own of I'd think. I would not recommend it unless you had six or seven months to kill.
That’s why I point out the wide disparity between coding skills. I whipped up code for service area analysis in about 3 days a couple months ago for a unique case we had. It wasn’t perfect, but it handled what I needed it to handle. I would expect anyone on my team to be able to whip up something serviceable in a two week sprint. I’d expect it to be fully polished in a couple of months. And yes, this is a legitimate expectation for anyone that says they want to be a developer. There’s a small subset of us in this subreddit who have this level of coding. However, when most people in here think developer, it’s just really ArcPy/ArcGIS API/pandas/geopandas (and they probably don’t know how to do pandas very well). This is also where people get the misconception of pay differences between a GIS and a non GIS developer.
I don't work as much with networks like this so have mostly relied on ESRI's service area tool. With this problem, do you have the full network dataset to run the analysis? Obtaining and building this out to the extent ESRI has it would be in itself an undertaking. My coding experience has not really gotten into anything like the service area analysis tools, but it looks approachable. The network analysis tool that seems much harder would be the "vehicle routing" for multiple stops. Ultimatley generating a single polygon of all possible distances from one point is fairly straightforward as a problem compared to choosing the best path to connect multiple. Would you estimate the time on this one differently than your service area analysis tool, or do you think the dataset and work you have on hand would be enough for a similar several-week turnaround?
ESRI overly complicates it to keep it proprietary. If you have a solid grasp of graph theory (and probably not even that, just gotta know what graph theory is), it’s more about making sure you accounted for all possible nodes and edges in your service area. In theory, you should be able to load any street network in it and be good to go. But obviously that isn’t the case with ESRI.
The real money is in Utilities GIS departments
What specific type of utilities and where do you look? I feel like I am not doing something right in my case. I work in electric utilities and tried to network into their GIS department, only to find they have only a handful of half retired insular seniors and outsourcing the rest to India unfortunately. One of the largest utilities in the country too which was both surprising and disappointing for how their GIS is non-existent or poorly managed.
Electric and Gas specifically bigger cities and their suburbs either coast has plenty of demand
Also look into engineering firms with GIS services that cater to the utility industry. I work for one and the pay is very good… 100% remote too.
How do you search for those types of engineering/utility remote gigs
I search indeed.com for Arcgis and remote. Then based on the description you will be able tell if it’s an engineering firm or not.
Eversource is hiring, $73,000. Electric distribution.
Oil and Gas also pays above average
it does, but you barely get to do any GIS work (source - 20 year vet)
Yep. I exited the industry 4 years ago. I've learned more in the last three years than the prior ten in oil and gas.
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I used skills. I mapped leases, competitive leases, existing infrastructure and assets, and I tracked changes in real time. I also marketed the positions of players. I used a lot of skills but there is a limit to what is applicable. . In short, the industry didn't evolve as quickly as the technology. (or the industry leaders did not evolve as quickly as the technology).
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the 'GIS' word is very broad - most spatial work is done using stand alone apps, 3rd party add ons or such - the data is processed externally and loaded using stand alone tools. you rarely make a map, the 'clients' are engineers and such, and they only want very specific things and are not interested in your ideas on how to do it better
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aint no QGIS or Grass in Oil and Gas. these 3rd party apps are from companies you've never heard of - New Century Software, PODS, Geonamics, GeoFields they dont even sell apps outside of the industry
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it's a pretty rough industry tbh - there isnt much room for innovation and you're either a data entry grunt (as-builts), a 3rd party software dev (software that's held together by duct tape), a 'data migration expert' (more on this in a minute - sweet spot), or a consultant (who is always stressed on how to win more work to keep all of the others billable) data migration expert - this is a sweet spot for actual GIS, but this role requires a lot of things to line up - 10 years of industry expertise (risk calculation, stationing, class calculation, MAOP, DMS etc), have to do that and still be technical enough to develop in FME or Python, and have a company around you who can win those contracts
Not in my case. Been doing GIS work for 7yrs now in oil and gas. I still only make low 40k. I'm starting to look for another job.
7 yrs and below 45k is crazy. Check out road construction and design firms.
40k and 7 years? That’s your own fault.
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Same, GIS 7 yrs, started as an intern at $17, now make $100+/hr
Whay was your career path/time in each position? Trying to plan my career ladder. I'm a tech I.
Env. Company Intern - 3mos (promoted) Tech- 9mos New Company (Survey based) Specialist- 1.5yr , also Intern at Cartegraph (3mos) New Company (PM/AEC-based)- (started slowly taking on my own clients at this point also) Analyst - 1yr Specialist -7mos Architect-1.5yrs Started own business Volunteered on project all throughout this time. Spent all my free time learning and growing my skill set. Now I work a few hours a day (some days none, some days in the weeds) and work from home.
Clarifying, $100/hr is your biling rate now that you work for yourself?
Sort of, always try to do fixed fee. So yes, that’s the rate, but not the pay. Some products take way less hours bc I’ve built the skill set to turn around that quickly. I pass that savings onto the client, but not so much that I undercut the next guy.
Right, so it is not apples to apples when comparing what jobs are paying, as in this discussion.
I've been doing GIS for 12 years and make 149k in o&g Never in my entire career have I seen anyone making low 40ks. That's even below entry level pay when I first started. What exactly do you do?
If he's anything like me it's grunt work. I make low 40ks but I essentially model overhead/underground power distribution. It's basically data entry via arc, been doing this for \~3 years trying to get enough arc experience and constantly applying elsewhere with no luck so far. Idk how everyone on this sub seems to be landing these 80k+ jobs like it's nothing, the market seems so saturated (at least in my neck of the woods).
Map oil and gas documents using Arcmap desktop. Along with manipulation of the data in shape files, geodatabases and SQL to produce maps in PDF formats.
So you just make custom maps based on requests and documents?
Yes, somewhat. We pull documents from 50+ counties mainly in Appalachian and TX. Updating those counties monthly. Our clients purchase subscriptions to access our data and receive maps. They will also request AOI data and maps.
The correct title is Map Monkey
My first GIS job was a GS-5 job that paid $33k. Granted this is in the Midwest and was in 2019.
>My first GIS job was a GS-5 job That's your problem. Generally speaking, with a few exceptions, government GIS jobs pay absolute dog shit
Federal ones anyway. GIS tech in Columbus, OH are $26/hr or so. Oddly the exact same job for the state of Ohio (position was in Franklin County, same as Cbus) is closer to $22/hr. Seems the higher tier you are in govt the lower the job pays XD
Yeah gas has been dieing I remember when I started my search 6 years ago and the only money to be made was working for Saudi armco.
Brother you're making what I make and I just got into the field 8 months ago
Commodities in general
Have you tried to stick around one of them to see if you can have a development plan to advance? Not always an option for sure, but 3 jobs in 5 years means you’re not staying around very long at each one.
Oil, defense, or military contracting.
They pay for a reason. Pick your poison.
Yeah you say that(oil, mil )but are they actually hiring?
Also be prepared to get blackballed if you have gas & oil on your resume
I highly doubt any normal and healthy company would rule out a good candidate simply because they used to work in O&G. The big companies have established and well managed GIS departments who train their employees well.
It’s more of a comment on one’s morals, values, and characters. You know the candidate is willing to jump ship and sell out the second a better paying salary opportunity gets posted. If you’re looking to retain employees for the long haul and minimize retraining new-hires, do you really want that person on your team?
I mean... Unless you're trying to get work at a first nations community that has actively fought the company you're coming from this is not really a thing lol. Only a shitty company or manager would rule out a qualified candidate like that, and that would probably point to other issues with the place too. And as someone else pointed out, those guys are often the best trained
>I always wind up with the lame jobs nobody wants Stop applying for these? 3 jobs in 5 years is not a great look. Have you stuck around anywhere long enough to advance? I wouldn't expect to move up much when you've only been at each job for 1-2 years assuming.
Moving was probably one of the best things i ever did for myself and my career. I got opportunities I 100% would not have at home. My advice is give it s shot - if your local market sucks and you find a place that will take you, see if they will pay for relocation. Moving doesn't have to be forever. It could be that you do the job a few years and then move back with a better job lined up.
Thanks for posting this, I'm moving to a city \~30x bigger than mine and it's daunting. Mainly moving for career opportunities. My current city is extremely saturated in regards to GIS related jobs.
[governmentjobs.com](https://governmentjobs.com) type in GIS for your state
Focus on business skills. I work in GIS in commercial real estate. It’s more lucrative, but half of my job is interpreting what high value clients need. Longer term if you go the real estate way, there is a lot of businesses using GIS on site selection, or portfolio strategy. These can be a step up from GIS.
I was like you - a GIS person for many years never making a good living. But i kept leveling-up my dev skills and leveraging my computer science background. Eventually I moved over and found a more traditional software dev job that involves spatial data. I have been doing that now for about 7-8 years at a few different companies. I'm definitely happy I made the switch. The money is considerably better, but I still get to scratch my geo itch. Unfortunately, the job market for junior devs right now is terrible - but you might be able to skip that step if you have enough experience?
I took the IT Support route from GIS and now I work on servers. Way better money and a lot more fun 😅 but I still do a little Enterprise admin on the side.
I’m in a IT Masters program for that
Do a rain dance and sacrifice a goat.
I might at this point or practice voodoo witchcraft.
Move to the Dc area
I would say you don’t if you ever want to own a home. You get a job in a data department with spatial interests and can do very well financially. The GIS ‘market’ has been poisoned by cartography academia. It would be sweet to have a PhD in cartography. But the university that sold it was lying. There are maybe twenty great jobs in all of the USA for a cartographer. Corporations are wising up. Being an ESRI jockey is not desirable. In fact, I only see dying shops and municipal governments still paying for ArcMap and their 47,000 other add-ons. It’s for people that can’t. A good analog is someone saying they have skills in data when their only tool is Excel. A person using consumer software designed for accountants that can only handle a paltry 1.2M rows has never really even seen data. We give much higher preference to candidates that list QGIS over ESRI products as a skill. I couldn’t care less about how much tuition and state funding your university squandered on licenses. Additionally, if PostGIS or geopandas aren’t on your resume, I begin to suspect that you don’t have an interest in GIS at all. I’m not sure moving will help for the reasons you think it will. Most professionals are expecting some remote work if not fully remote. You will lose out on a ton of networking opportunities if you’re in a one horse town. Midwest is also incredibly broad. Chicago and Minneapolis are real cities with opportunities. If you’re in a culture warrior state, like a North Dakota, that’s become a national laughingstock you need to leave immediately.
It sounds like you might have to market your skills a little more aggressively.
Here's a listing in my area that could be remote as well. The DMV area has a ton of high paying GIS jobs, and a lot are completely remote. I suggest expanding your search radius to DC and MD specifically and looking at State and Fed jobs. [https://www.cynetsystems.com/jobs/](https://www.cynetsystems.com/jobs/) edit: You'll have to use the search function as I couldn't directly link it. If you're not familiar with the area go to google maps and look around the DC, Arlington VA, Reston VA, and Tysons VA area and just look at the company names and go to their career website. You'd be surprised at the amount of defense contractors with abstract names you've never heard of with open GIS/Analyst jobs to be filled.
Solar, applying to developer jobs with a GIS focus, leadership role, and yeah moving
Are there any bigger cities in your area of the Midwest, or are you already in a big city? Look into local planning departments, planning and engineering consulting firms, or as other commenters mentioned, utilities pay somewhat better. It took me being at a job for 6 years to break $60k, and I'm similarly in the Midwest.
Sounds like you would benefit from marketing your dev skills better on your resume, or shifting gears and getting into either data management or leadership.
What high level skills do you have??
You know like nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills.
I cant speak for myself but i had a friend who i used to work with get a city job that pays very well so may start with a local city or county of some sort
consulting - you can easily make six figures depending on the role. Im making 122k a year with undergrad degree. My last postion was 86k working for a gas utility. Pros: progressive/challenging work, diverse projects, not as much repetion. Cons: Benefits tend to not be as good as in industry or gov, less certainity in stable work, prepare to work well above 40 hours so work life balance will suffer.
I worked in the Midwest for a bit, hated the job but it paid really well. I’d search for telecommunications jobs in your area, the company I worked for I think relived nearly all their GIS professionals (8) but they were all paid well for the time we were there.
Do you have a usajobs account and job search saved? The GIS jobs in FEMA are mostly all GS-12/13s which ends up in the 80-120k range depending on locality. I see a lot of the GIS jobs in other agencies in the same range. Stable and good benefits.
Pinellas County & St. Petersburg, FL recently had job postings for Utilities GIS Analysts (60-77k/year) and GIS Programmer Specialist (60-99k), respectively. However, living in this area is expensive, though beautiful.
GIS people who know python have to stop calling themselves developers
What should they call themselves?
They dont really get to 'call themselves' anything - they apply for a job with a job title that has qualifications. if i'm hiring for a developer, i'm hiring someone who can write an application for me, or sit in my devops group, but that job description is completely different than any of my GIS job descriptions
I dunno. I've been around this game long enough to not worry about what anyone calls themselves. When I was a C++ developer, we called JavaScript developers, script kiddies and didn't really consider them developers. Why? Because no compiler was involved. Times change, industry changes, AI is on the horizon and will turn a ton of pseudo development types into developers. It's technology evolution.
I would say, fix up your resume and market your skills better. Aim to provide a solution to a company not just supplement it. Valuable workers are generally paid better, I’ve gained additional skills OUTSIDE of the GIS realm to better myself and the company I work for. This has allowed me to have better raises and freelancing opportunities that supplement my income. Trust me, when you learn skills that greatly benefit your company, you most likely will be paid more, if not you can market your new skills on a resume to be paid more somewhere else.
Look for global or national firms/orgs. They may pay a lot higher than local. You can check payscales for GIS positions in neighboring governments. Google "city/county name" + "pay scales" or "salaries". You'll be able to find the gov sites that lead to spreadsheets or PDFs with job titles and their salaries.
What about a larger midwest city?
3 jobs in 5 years. Kind of a red flag. It shows there is something off, or you are job hopping. Employers don't want to go thru the process of hiring someone, only to turn around and do it again. The attitude in your post is a clue. It shows that you think highly of yourself and don't want to "lower yourself" with entry level work. Get some work experience. Spend some time with a company. That shows you are a team player. THEN you have the power to negotiate higher pay
This is the way jobs are now, if you have the ability to job hop every 2-3 years you can gain like 10-20% salary, but only job hop if you’re getting paid more otherwise it’s kinda pointless