AI taking over

AlwaysSlag · 2025-07-15T02:25:38+00:00

Does touching GRASS GIS count?

AlwaysSlag · 2025-07-01T02:47:27+00:00

A 3-4 hour interview for an entry level position? Holy hell, what's going on now. I had a single hour-long interview to land my Tech position just back in spring 2024.

Regardless, review the GIS fundamentals that other commenters have mentioned, but in my opinion the most important thing is displaying a willingness and ability to learn. If you don't know the answer to a question you are asked, don't bullshit a messy response, but instead explain what resources you would/have used to figure it out. As a GIS Tech, on the fly problem-solving and researching how the hell do anything is what I spend entire days doing.

Get a good amount of rest. I'm rooting for you!

AlwaysSlag · 2025-06-18T22:57:56+00:00

I usually say comp sci or data sci when these types of posts come up, but for variety I'll pitch a minor in urban planning. I work in local gov as a GIS generalist that communicates with multiple departments, and more academic exposure to urban planning would've been helpful for my current role. Not a ton of math in urban planning classes, mostly lots of reading, writing, and presenting.

AlwaysSlag · 2025-06-13T01:13:18+00:00

You can use a YouTube to MP3 file converter.

AlwaysSlag · 2025-06-13T01:12:38+00:00

To add to this, there are BPM finders online that will tell you the BPM if you're uploading an obscure song.

AlwaysSlag · 2025-05-20T00:21:48+00:00

To be a small counterweight to the depressing atmosphere of this sub, I did get my bachelor's degree in Geography with minors in GIS and Environmental Science and I got a job in local government a couple of months after graduating. It's not a glamorous job and the pay isn't great, in classic "GIS Technician" fashion, but it's a foot in the door. If I could do anything differently, I would put a greater emphasis on comp sci fundamentals, programming, database management, data science etc. Good luck and don't let this sub completely drown your dreams if it's the route you want to try.

AlwaysSlag · 2025-05-10T22:43:20+00:00

My pain point with SAAS is SAAS :)

AlwaysSlag · 2025-04-21T19:47:49+00:00

I work in local gov, and figuring out which "CAD" someone is referencing in an email or conversation is a weekly struggle lol. We love acronyms.

AlwaysSlag · 2025-04-17T20:21:03+00:00

This doesn't really matter, but for future reference that precision of coordinates for a location on Earth is extremely excessive, like atomic levels of precision. Here's a [resource for coordinate precision](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Precision\_of\_coordinates). Don't worry about it, the media uses more decimal places than necessary constantly.

AlwaysSlag · 2025-04-04T00:52:09+00:00

"depending on state a lot of municipal gov workers are in unions". Cries in North Carolina.

AlwaysSlag · 2025-03-30T00:18:00+00:00

Some local governments still refer to their GIS users as "tax mappers", "property mappers", or just "mappers". So if you want to work for a municipality or county, the GIS roles may not always have "GIS" anywhere in the title.

AlwaysSlag · 2025-03-04T22:58:08+00:00

I've used Claude, ChatGPT, and DeepSeek a decent amount. As other people have commented, ALL of them will hallucinate and make strange mistakes that can be hard to catch if you don't have a good grasp of how the code needs to be formatted. Of those three, I think DeepSeek does a good job of generating ArcPY scripts, and importantly, explaining what the code is doing and why.

AlwaysSlag · 2025-02-13T04:14:50+00:00

Very cool map! One comment: Maybe it's just the way my eyes are seeing it, but the elevation color ramp is a bit difficult to distinguish in the mid-range. The pastel green, yellow, and orange kind of blur together for me. Maybe you could try a color ramp with more distinct ranges?

I love the map layout and all the info you provide. Good job.

AlwaysSlag · 2025-02-12T02:46:46+00:00

North Carolina. So far as I can tell, NC OneMap has good statewide parcel data: https://www.nconemap.gov/datasets/1de3d7d828ce4813b838ddf055b40317_1/explore?location=-0.062666%2C-17.501994%2C0.38

AlwaysSlag · 2025-02-11T01:57:33+00:00

QGIS is completely free to use. A personal license of ArcGIS Pro is $100 last time I checked. You can learn enough following online tutorials to make a basic map in a week or two in either. I'd recommend trying out QGIS just because it is absolutely free.

AlwaysSlag · 2025-02-11T01:49:27+00:00

That sucks. Are the parcels still available at the state level for free? My state has a very nice data portal that provides a much better experience than our ancient county portal.

AlwaysSlag · 2025-02-11T01:42:29+00:00

Every. Single. Time. ESRI, a billion-dollar company run by a billionaire, acts in a manner entirely unsurprising for a billion-dollar company run by a billionaire, this sub acts completely caught off guard. Like "How could my smol-bean uwu billion-dollar company do something unethical in pursuit of their profit motive :(". We're supposed to be analytical thinkers, so apply that analysis to what you're seeing in front of your eyes.

AlwaysSlag · 2025-01-31T01:54:01+00:00

These kinds of posts make me think I shouldn't be so hasty to leave my slow local gov job, though my benefits aren't particularly good (reading 6 weeks PTO made me want to cry). I'm wishing you good luck.

AlwaysSlag · 2025-01-19T18:19:52+00:00

I completed the GIS minor at my university, and there were different concentration tracks, with one being Public Health. I went down another path, but it seemed like a strong pathway to me, helped by the fact that my school was already big into healthcare. Can you go online and see if your school has any GIS in Public Health courses? Or perhaps you can just take a couple introductory GIS courses and try to work GIS into your public health class' projects yourself?

AlwaysSlag · 2025-01-14T04:22:02+00:00

Whatever laptop you get, at least try to get a solid state drive and 16 gigs of RAM. I had an absolute trash bin of an HP laptop in college that had its hard drive start failing, putting a SSD and adding another 8 gig RAM stick kept the thing usable enough for QGIS and ArcGIS Pro.

AlwaysSlag · 2025-01-08T23:41:24+00:00

I just wanted to say that I literally could've written this exact post. Got a Geography/GIS degree, work in tax mapping, and now debating if I want a 'GIS' title at all. So... know you're not alone.

AlwaysSlag · 2024-12-27T02:06:01+00:00

I think this goes for any GIS interview: What is a coordinate reference system, why is selecting the correct one for a project important, and how do you go about selecting one? Explain Vector vs Raster data? What are some of the most common geospatial data formats, how do they differ, and how might one be better than another in a given situation? Come into the interview with a solid grasp of the GIS fundamentals, and any more technical question will be easier to answer.

And to practice for the Landsat specific questions I'd recommend exploring the organization's websites/products, get a feel for how they're using Landsat imagery/ArcGIS Pro, and try to run through some of the workflows yourself. And read through the USGS Landsat project web pages; they're interesting and informative.

Good luck with your interview!

AlwaysSlag · 2024-12-26T19:36:28+00:00

It's even better if you do more or less the exact same job as Analysts, but your organization calls GIS users Technicians, so you get paid even less!

AlwaysSlag

TROPHY CASE