First job out of school $90K/yr with geography degree
Im only posting this because I see so many doom sayers in this thread. I recently received a job offer that will pay me $90K and I graduated with a geography degree and data science minor two weeks ago. I’ve heard a lot of people say that GIS/geography degrees will lead to lower middle class careers, but that doesn’t have to be the case if you put the effort in.
The job is a junior data engineer position, so it’s not necessarily a GIS job, but I will be responsible for managing some spatial data. There is no nepotism or any close relationships that helped me get the job at this company. I don’t know anyone there personally. I worked extremely hard at my internship through my last year of school and some people I worked with put me in contact with another company as there wasn’t a full time position available for me at the time. I did 2 interviews and received the offer all within about 10 days.
For anyone interested this is what helped me land the job:
- I took as many computer science related classes as I possibly could to enhance my understanding of GIS and managing data
- I maintained a 4.0 GPA
- I automated 2-3 processes at my internship that really turned some heads. These were major talking points during my interviews as well
- This one is probably the most important one: I talked to everyone around my office and made a point to connect with them on some sort of personal level. Being personable and making friends at work goes such a long way. If people like you, they will help you out.
Anyways, I’m super excited about this new job and I wanted to say that if I could do it anyone can! Hard work pays off!
Edit: Sorry if I sound arrogant or cocky or something, but in my experience the hard work I put in paid off after 3+ years of dedicated effort. Just trying to share a success story, not trying to be insulting to anyone. Geography and GIS has been an amazing path for me that helped me land this position, even though it is not a GIS specific role.