Pros
You can set your own schedule to some extent, you're outdoors all day, decent benefits, no one is looking over your shoulder.
Cons
Things got progressively worse the longer I stayed... very high turnover rate, micro managing, unreasonable expectations, managers who have not done your job, but expect you to do your work on their terms, even when it makes no sense. I was frustrated every day. You are expected to photograph and record statistics on a certain amount of buildings each day, which was more than doable when all buildings in the county needed to be done. But as time went on, it turned to only recording buildings for sale or for lease, (but only those that were not yet in the system). There were days when I spent all day in the field and found 5 or less. That is well below what is expected, but it wasn't my fault... there just were not that many new leads... This also directly affects your income!!! I am a hard worker and when I started, I was getting 40+ building done each day. 15 was the minimum required at the time; each extra building earned you more income. Now imagine how much less I was earning for months at a time only doing the minimum or less, because the leads just weren't there. I complained about this quite often, and my manager said if I wasn't being so negative, I would find those leads... what?! Another time he said that everyone was in the same boat, and that I just had to just do what was asked of me. Don't rock the boat - otherwise it's your fault. I was unhappy too, that I was alone at work all day, every day. I called and checked in with my manager (located on opposite side of the country) in the morning and at the end of the day. Management at the time was trying to get people in the field more involved in the company so we wouldn't feel like such outsiders... so they required us to listen in on 1 hr + long conference calls while sitting in our vehicle, wherever we happened to be at the time. That also meant we were not supposed to do any work for that time, but we were to listen to the call. That of course also meant that we lost an hour+ of production time, which cut into our potential earnings! The conference calls were for the most part irrelevant to those working in the field. They actually asked us in the field to come up with ideas for the conference calls so that it would be of more value for us. How about not requiring us to listen to the calls? I notice nothing has changed when I look at current reviews... I'm just repeating or backing up what many others have already stated... I noticed how some current research photographers complain about having to clean up the mess of those who did the work before them. I wonder if they need to clean up my work? Requirements and parameters were constantly changing. At one time they required you to drive up and down every single street in a square mile grid regardless if it was commercial or residential. That is a lot of wasted time driving in neighborhoods that you knew had nothing commercial. I complained, and again, I was being negative and that was the reason why I didn't magically find commercial properties in these areas. A month or so later, they scrapped that idea and we didn't have to drive through residential anymore... I guess they finally realized it didn't make sense. You are salaried, so only allowed to work 8 hours per day which includes your drive time to and from your given territory. For me this was 3 hours roundtrip or more at times, so my day of actually working was often reduced to 5 hours or less to get my minimum number of buildings. I "illegally" worked overtime without pay and without letting Costar know, because this was really affecting my income! I was getting pathetic numbers even with that overtime. I remember a day where I worked 4 hours overtime (happened more as the norm than the exception) and even with those extra hours only found 4 leads. Drove around all day and found 4 new leads, and then management asks why I did so poorly... Well, it can't be because there are no new leads... Very Frustrating! Taking this job was a poor decision on my part and I lost several years of my life to it... Looking back, I wish I would have passed on it.