I did have an on-going hubski post in a word doc from about two weeks ago that went through learning I wasn’t going to hear back from the employer I previously traded jobs from, despite emphatic thanks and mentioning a spot if things didn’t work out. There was also developments in there like paying for/going through commercial drone pilot certification (which was one of the false promises from the most recent employers) ‘cuz it’s something I’ve been wanting to learn.

And on top of those, something about being excited to really get my hands dirty through PostgreSQL – finally piecing together a web app from this site to 3D data-enriched, interactive visualization through NASA’s open-source Google Earth Pro for developers. Finally, in the good news department, I’ll be an author on published research as of the end of the year.

Since then, I’ve stalled fairly hard, lost the much longer word document, and having a hard time looking for a job of interest in my area for my current field (hence the drone pilot school).

The S/O and I acknowledged that our town isn’t the best for career development… and its clear she’s fine with that. Me, not so much, but would rather secure a gig in the meantime to replenish savings before re-opening that conversation. For better or worse, there’s a non-negligible amount of items to unpack in said discussion, to top it off.

All-in-all, the September hasn’t been the sweetest of starts.

Bookmarked.

Great connection, thanks for sharing. Didn’t know of this - and both research articles were published in Nature.

Gave me the same feeling. The first half made me want to go back and read the comics as well. Storylines seem slightly altered towards the end in a way that would lend itself to a second season differing from the comics more.

Ironically, it looks like they'd be picking up second season from a dropped plot point in the comics.

A year ago today I (caught?) began exhibiting symptoms of the 'rona. Assuming it was Delta due to how quick the symptoms came on... and how hard.

That single J&J shot put in WORK. Had the thought a few times that if not for it, I would have easily been hospitalized at the minimum - just based off how grueling the fatigue was.

Working on building back stamina, which I might have been able to work on sooner during recovery? No doubt a creeping laziness that WFH can inflict didn't help. If anything, I'm looking forward to winter time in order to run outside. The difference in ability to breath (let alone function) normally in winter vs spring/fall is notable enough for me to consider moving to a colder, drier climate.

Bookmarked this very comment. Thank you very much.

It's been hard not to get distracted with shiny gadgets like qgis2threejs while messing around with personal projects. While I realize I've come a little farther than I expected in a matter of days, there's quite a lot to polish and a lot of resources out there.

Appreciate the back and forth on the topic. Hard to find opensource GIS discussion IRL in my town.

As far as healthcare, I'm not sure if travel insurance would work since I'd be moving with a residency visa and not travelling for leisure. I'm sure they would fight it on those grounds. Not sure what other pitfalls may be as I haven't looked into it.

CLEARLY didn't eat my wheaties that morning. That's a simple google-search fact check...

Will keep an eye out for something similar none-the-less if you haven't found something already as a possible route to insured healthcare.

Aw shucks. I do what I can. O:-)

Goals

Short-Term:

    - Finish setting up my office
    - Revive passion projects as way to learn PostGIS
    - Regain employment by September (absolute latest)

Mid-Term:

    - Shell away more emergency money
    - Scope out feasible new countries of residence 
    - Lose the COVID 60lbs #WorkIt

Long-Term:

    - Contingent on 2024 election outcome

I'm doing multiple Pubski-driftings here. Just to keep the current pub top-of-feed.

Not much comment on the lower pay portion of yet - but assuming there's the already lower pay elsewhere, would that mean a significant amount less would be unlivable?

Regarding healthcare, it would require saving up for the event of less pay... but I recommend reviewing 'travel insurance' as potentially interim health insurance.

veen

Please excuse the delay. I've been in the middle of moving in with the S/O on top of a family visit that has thrown off my schedule without my full workstation... You've hit a loooooooooot of topics swirling on my mind for a few years now.

As a whole the GIS world is...surprisingly shallow. There are some technical niches for sure, but compared to what I've seen in other domains of engineering, one can get incredibly fast to a point where one can do 80% of all GIS work. Really, a basic GIS course combined with a modicum of data-wrangling chops and Google skills can get you very far. To speak from personal experience; I had 2 mandatory GIS courses at uni, took one PythonGIS elective

Looking back on my certificate and MS in GIS. I've realized this profession could easily be taught in a trade school. A couple courses here (one on vector data and it's applications; followed by a course on raster), another there (types of data collection - in situ, remote sensing and its varieties). Maybe, just maybe some visualization via web dev (AGOL), storage/'big data' (SQL/PostGIS) or automation (ArcPy).

That right there could get a solid 2 years' worth of 'full-time' schooling and be done with it. This isn't to say I'm happy to have a couple extra letters after my name, but - call it imposter syndrome if you want - I don't think the value of what I learned in grad. school significantly impacted the type of job or salary I got coming out. Even looking at the market now, there is very little in between from technician to developer work. From what I've found, most job descriptions don't have that much variation between Tech - Analyst - Specialist. Unless, of course, you're starting out as an imagery analyst. Which is a job that has its day's numbered.

and learned enough on the job the past 4 years (all of ArcGIS Online PostGIS + ArcPy) that I can prolly apply for most senior GIS jobs out there. A lot of GIS work is just about getting the right input into the right GIS tool(s) and ✨presenting✨the result. I know people who have done nothing more than "load data into GIS, apply pre-made tools, visualize" for decades.

A shockingly small niche (over here at least) is the people who are good at writing queries and half-decent at GIS. PostGIS legitimately can replace 95% of the individual pre-made tools QGIS and ArcGIS has to offer. You can do much more complex things much faster. My largest project the past year ended up being 2300 lines of PostGIS/SQL code I wrote on my own. The first 30% is just data prep written in code - "make sure I properly join tables A thru G in the data type I want it to be without ever having to touch Field Mappings ever again". The rest is a bunch of clever geo-joins and a bunch of not clever regular joins of tables and features. Nothing special to anyone who already knows how to handle semi-long SQL queries; PostGIS is really just one new column type and a bunch of functions to do stuff with it.

The tipping point at my last workplace was a senior GIS dev that replicated my 2 months of census analysis (via ArcGIS) under 2 weeks with PostGIS. Now, I adore this dev, they were the only mentor in that floor. It made me realize how much more there was out there in GIS (and how little I could contribute to the field with my current skillset).

Most salient of the points made while watching said dev work was "You've done a great job grinding at this for the past two months, though QC'ing is not possible since ESRI writes fresh data every. step. of. the. way. Now scale that over the course of 2 months of troubleshooting, trial & error, etc."

It's a no-brainer.

Would you mind sharing the course you took by chance? My resources of yet are a couple textbooks by recommendation of the former GIS Dev co-worker, a 4 hour YT vid on PostgreSQL, and a coursera course on SQL.

mk, where do I buy my hubski coins to badge this.

Welcome. In which meaning are you asking about open source?

Hot dawg! Good luck on this route.