The Vanishing Survey Crew Chief

I was reading Reddit recently and came across an eye-opening discussion that kicked off when a recruiter asked a surprisingly tough question: ‘Where does one find a surveyor now?’

The post wasn’t just idle curiosity; it was a genuine plea from someone struggling to hire survey crew chiefs. The responses that followed were a raw and honest look into the state of the profession from the perspective of the people doing the work.

Now, I can’t say for sure how much of this reflects the reality in every company or region. Maybe things are great in your area. However, the opinions and frustrations shared in the thread are real, and they offer a valuable glimpse into the challenges the industry is facing. For any business owner, this is feedback worth taking seriously.

A Profession Aging Out

The most common response? Most experienced crew chiefs are either nearing retirement or have already left the profession. Younger replacements are scarce, and the few who exist are often self-trained under pressure or actively looking to exit.

“I’ve got 10–15 years left and I’m out,” one veteran wrote. “I’ve tried mentoring young people… but there’s a general lack of interest and motivation.”

However, the discussion also revealed that this isn’t just a one-sided problem of a disinterested younger generation. Another commenter pointed out that retention is possible, but it requires a deliberate effort from employers: “All five of my crews were in-house trained. None of them are even close to retirement age. But you have to take care of them or someone will poach them.”

The industry, in short, is in a long game — but it hasn’t been playing it.

When Loyalty Collides with Low Wages

In theory, demand is high and opportunities are abundant. But there’s a catch: money talks, and many employers are still whispering.

“I bill out at $180/hr and get paid $25. I’m in Massachusetts — maybe I should start looking elsewhere,” one crew chief noted. The response? A chorus of encouragement to jump ship.

In contrast, some firms do offer strong compensation, and it shows. One commenter described a crew chief in his early 30s who gets frequent job offers — but stays put because he’s treated well and paid accordingly. They laugh together at recruiters’ lowball pitches.

The One-Man Crew Problem

One of the most sobering threads throughout the discussion was the impact of “one-man crews.” While efficient on paper, this model has upended the traditional path of hands-on learning and mentorship.

“The way we survey anymore has killed the way people used to get trained,” said one veteran. “Nobody wants to pay for a two-man crew.”

Worse, new hires are often dropped into solo roles without proper preparation. One young tech shared how they were sent into the field after just two shadowing days, then blamed when they made costly mistakes — mistakes that still haunt them.

The Rise and Fall of Recruiting

Recruiters took some heat in the conversation — often viewed as middlemen offering underwhelming jobs with high demands and poor pay. Some users defended them, pointing out they’re just the messengers. But the reputation damage is real.

“I’ve never used a recruiter,” one crew chief with 30 years of experience wrote. “Opportunities either present themselves, or someone I know gives me a call.”

It’s a reminder that surveying is still, at its core, a word-of-mouth profession.

Barriers to Licensure: Protecting Quality or Choking Growth?

Many expressed frustration with licensure rules that vary by state and often discount real-world experience in favor of rigid education requirements.

“I have over a decade of experience, but in my state I can’t even sit for the exam,” said one user. “They won’t count anything I did before graduation.”

Others pushed back. “What you described is a profession,” one licensed surveyor replied. “If someone can’t pass after six to eight years of work and school, that’s not an argument for lowering standards.”

Still, some see room for reform: keep the tests hard, but give experienced professionals more ways to qualify.

The Education Bottleneck

That Reddit thread isn’t an isolated pocket of frustration. More and more, people are connecting the dots on the surveyor shortage and realizing it’s a systemic problem. An in-depth interview on GoGeomatics Canada with Carina Butterworth, a geomatics instructor in Alberta, lays out the problem from an educational perspective. While she’s discussing the crisis in Canada, many of the themes will likely sound familiar to surveyors in the U.S., though the situation certainly varies from state to state.

Butterworth explains that there’s a huge mismatch between education and industry. Colleges, bound by accreditation rules and academic tradition, are churning out graduates with advanced skills who are aiming for desk jobs. But the industry is desperate for boots-on-the-ground crew chiefs. We’re training analysts for a fieldwork crisis.

She argues that the whole system is stacked against the practical, hands-on people who would make great crew chiefs. High academic bars (like calculus for field jobs), the crippling cost of running geomatics programs, and even confusion over the term “geomatics” are all strangling the talent pipeline before it even gets started.

What Now?

The entire thread, despite its occasional cynicism, offered a blueprint for where the industry can go from here:

• Pay fair wages - If you’re billing $150–$200/hour, you can afford to pay $50+ to the person doing the work.
• Invest in training - Two-man crews aren’t just about productivity. They’re how you pass on legacy knowledge.
• Modernize wisely - New tech like LiDAR and photogrammetry can’t replace foundational field skills.
• Respect career paths - Not every chief wants a license, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t professionals.
• Play the long game - Grow your own. Train. Nurture. Retain.
• Rethink Education - Get behind new models, like the apprenticeship-style programs Butterworth mentioned, that value hands-on work over just a diploma.
• Challenge the Rules - Is calculus really a must-have for every field job? It’s time to push for smarter regulations and licensing paths that don’t shut out experienced, practical people.

Final Thought

Land surveying stands at a crossroads. The old guard is retiring, but the next generation won’t arrive by accident.

This isn’t just a hiring challenge. It’s a reckoning.

As one user in the thread put it bluntly:

I do not know what the future holds for our profession when we are all gone. It’s a self-inflicted injury.

A Path Forward with Better Tools

While the core issues of compensation and training are deeply rooted, they are fundamentally business problems. To pay people what they’re worth and invest in the future, a company needs to be profitable and well-run. This starts with having a clear, real-time understanding of every project: are you on budget? Is all your time being captured and billed correctly? Are you learning from past jobs to create better estimates for future ones?

Answering these questions is difficult without the right systems in place. This is where modern tools, built specifically for the land surveying industry, can provide the clarity needed to build a more resilient and profitable business that can afford to invest in its people.

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