Opinions on GIS as a career field?

[aerohead_18]

This isn't really science, or maybe kind of on the fringes of it, but recently I've been looking into GIS as a career and was wondering if anyone knows anything about it. I only recently started researching it so I'm still not very familiar with what kind of work a geographer could expect to do with GIS. Everywhere I look online seems to say that job opportunities are good right now and that growth is expected in the near future, but I'm still getting a feel for what these jobs are like.

Also, what skills would help with this field? I've read in a few places that coding (Python especially) is a highly marketable skill in GIS right now, but other than that it sounds like most of it is done on a handful of software packages, like ArcGIS or QGIS, that are used mostly to generate maps. Is that all there is to it, or is GIS broader than that?

Thanks for any insights!

 

[jedishrfu]

I found there's a website for jobs:

http://www.gjc.org/

You could review the job descriptions and see what they do.

I know a lot of GIS is related to other industries. As an example, retail GIS would analyze how people shop and where they live. This might help a company decide where to build a shopping center or new store. Similar problems exist in Utilities, Banking and Insurance industries. For these industries you might be searching for the optimal place for a new electrical substation or bank branch office or to estimate the fallout of a severe storm on your customer based on where they live.

Here's one such job description:

https://www.gisjobs.com/listing.php...Vy6rpuzUFOkTbvMp_b600OtZ1EFIfbc0z9fPsFyXhIEi3

and a link to the AAG:

http://www.aag.org/

and its job listings:

http://jobs.aag.org/?gclid=CjwKEAjw_6XIBRCisIGIrJeQ93oSJAA2cNtMZpQJD_HBcV4YAJRPENae0ILxNM3J3qYPMnxg71kycxoC_tLw_wcB