I’m curious why did you all chose GIS as a career, as is a “niche” field. It’s widely used but not much people know about it.
In my case I studied History & Geography and had to use GIS during one course. I really liked it and I also like to code, so I guessed GIS could be a career for me as I didn’t want to be a teacher back then.
I’m now finishing a GIS Maters and working as a GIS analyst, using python to automate routines. Is my first job in the field (started as an intern).
I stumbled into GIS. Mine is not a “GIS career,” but it’s been very GIS-centric at several points.
I first stumbled into mapping projects when I was measuring time and frequency shifts from satellites as an electrical engineer. Satellite ephemeris mattered, and so did the shape of the earth. And when you’re tracking things on the surface of the earth, you have to map them.
My next stop was in the context of an electric utility where we had to do everything from tracking the location of physical plant to calculating path loss for microwave links. Finally, off in grad school for something completely unrelated, I found myself working utility problems as a consultant. I stumbled into Postgres/PostGIS, then QGIS, then GeoServer and MapServer. I was hooked from there on out.
It still remains an ancillary part of what I do, but I’m as likely to open QGIS for a personal project as work.