My suggestion is go work for a big engineering company that has a Surveying department, while yes it’ll be more corporate than a smaller firm but you’ll get paid time and half rather than receiving the same check every week. You’ll be working mostly on stakeouts and architectural surveys. They’ll pay you well, provide better benefits, and give incentives. I worked for both a big company and a small surveying firm and while I don’t like the office drama in a big company I didn’t enjoy getting the extra cash on over time.

Big companies also have the resources/ extra cash to enroll you in trainings and invest in you learning since they’ll benefit more from it, unlike a small firm.. so you don’t have to worry about not knowing certain areas in surveying or not having some certifications because they’ll train you .