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).
Like others here, I kind of stumbled into it. Went to college for software engineering, had a medical withdraw due to some severe illness, got that corrected but had a year to kill before I could re-enroll. Got a job to kill time as an entry-level CAD drafter. Transitioned to a GIS technician because Python, never went back. I plan on re-enrolling part-time this fall and hopefully transitioning back to a software dev role. But at least for my company, GIS = a little bit of CAD + a little bit of Computer Science. So it worked out well.