Retiring Surveyor

[Michael de Estrada]

(01-28-2018 08:19 PM)CosmicTruth Wrote:  

(01-27-2018 05:19 PM)Michael de Estrada Wrote:  The same situation occurred in the drafting profession with the advent of CADD systems.

Not so much in the Drafting department, when you think about it, The draftsman just moved behind a computer.
In the field Surveyors lost 1 man with the EDM (no tail chainmen), Then with the Total Station invention the Party Chief was moved to the Rod. Then the Robotic Total Station and GPS got rid of the Instrument Operator. So the old 4 man crew is now 1 man.

Actually, it was much worse for drafting, as 1 CADD operator replaced 10 board drafters. Even engineers suffered as computer programs eliminated about 90% of the manual computation time, so far fewer engineers were required to complete a design. I am a retired Civil/Structural engineer, and what saved my career was that I learned computer programming early on. I also specialized in seismic design, rather than just doing traditional Civil/Structural work, which is rather cook book and doesn’t pay particularly well. Finally, I realized that being someone else’s employee wasn’t going to result in a secure retirement, so I started my own company with another colleague 25 years ago, which eventually lead to a nice retirement nest egg.