Why the GIS Title Is Shrinking but Spatial Work Is Growing

Join me at BUILD with Mapbox: September 15th to 17th (Sign up here for free) I'll be speaking and you can join thousands of GIS and geospatial developers at this virtual conference driving the future of online mapping. Create your agenda here and I hope to see you there! In this episode of the Spatial Stack, Matt sits down solo to work through a fight that broke out across Reddit and LinkedIn last week: is GIS dying, or is it just changing its name? It started with a GIS manager who argued the field is alive, pointing to a friend who landed a $200,000 job building autonomous systems, a role where GIS never appeared in the title or the description. The comments pushed back. If the keyword for our whole profession barely returns jobs anymore, is the field really growing? Matt's answer is that both sides are right. The work of spatial is expanding into data engineering, software, and product roles. The GIS title is contracting at the same time. It's one trend seen from two directions, the same way geology departments quietly became geoscience without the work ever changing. He makes the case that the title was never the skill. Spatial intuition is, and it's the thing that transfers into higher-paying roles that don't carry the GIS label. Then he closes with a challenge: describe who you are and what you do without using the words GIS, spatial, or geospatial. Whether you're job hunting, stuck in the technician trap, or an employer who wants this skill set but doesn't know what to call it, this conversation is about how we position the work going forward. --- 📊 FREE: The Modern GIS Skill Map The 5 skills that actually matter in modern GIS (and what you can stop learning). Based on a survey of 1,400+ geospatial professionals. ➡ Get the free training + PDF guide: https://forrest.nyc/go/training/ CHAPTERS: 00:00:00 – The Reddit post that started it 00:01:00 – Two views: the work is growing vs. the title is shrinking 00:02:34 – Why "stay positive" doesn't pay the rent 00:03:33 – Spatial is special: what actually transfers 00:04:53 – The geology-to-geoscience analogy 00:05:54 – The title of GIS was never the skill 00:07:09 – The technician trap and where the salaries moved 00:08:18 – Listener comments: spatial judgment, the map as interface 00:10:32 – What to do now: SQL, Python, and cloud-native beyond the toolbox 00:11:51 – Building a portfolio on LinkedIn 00:13:22 – The Spatial Intuition Challenge 00:15:32 – Put your face on it: make it a video CONNECT WITH ME 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matt_forrest/ 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mbforr/ 📧 Newsletter: https://forrest.nyc 🌐 Website: https://forrest.nyc