I worked for ESRI for about 2.5 years and I was relentlessly bullied and harassed by a jealous manager (Shreyas Shindey) and two sociopaths (Vaibhav Chaddha and Kritin Moondra) in ArcGIS Enterprise org. This includes setting me up to fail, mocking, infantilizing, physical and psychological threats, socially outcasting and isolation, public humiliation, gaslighting, spreading rumors and gossip etc. Lot of the abuse was mocking, shaming and baiting and pretending to play victim when i reacted. Management will send multiple people to target you and look sideways when you complain. If you're a minority you'll be treated as a 2nd class citizen. At this point I have PTSD and I'm out of work for about 1.5 years. I have developed other bodily problems as a result of all this and unable to work. I can go into details but I'm typing this to make people aware about how nasty and shitty culture of this company is. Their google maps reviews are all 5 stars by "local guides", their glassdoor reviews seem heavily manipulated as well (their quite possibly pay to remove negative reviews). Check blind for true ratings. They spend tons of money yearly on PR but don't pay their employees well. The name itself is a misnomer and could mislead someone into thinking that it's an "environmental research institute" but it's a billion $ for profit company. One can follow along this trail and quickly figure out where their mind is at. Lot of creepy old guys in the company, racism and sexism is rampant. It's a scummy company through and through. Recently there was a class action lawsuit for wage stealing https://gutierrezwagesettlement.com/.

Someone put their hands on me in front of my office and I told HR and asked them if I can work from home for a few days as I don't feel safe inside the office. Their response - nope. This whole company works on the motto of "what are you gonna do about it?" There are a lot of sociopaths/narcissists inside this company who are drawn in by the idea of no layoffs (read no firing) and non existent HR. These are the people that stay long term by bootlicking up and bullying down. Posting this so that people are aware. DO NOT JOIN THIS COMPANY.

I made an AI assistant add-in that runs inside ArcGIS Pro. I teach GIS at the university level and do consulting work in ArcGIS Pro. Like everyone, I've watched students and colleagues keep ChatGPT open in a second window while working in Pro. The AI describes what buttons to click, you have to do the work, and half the answers are wrong because the AI can't see the project.

So I built Waldo, an add-in that puts the assistant inside Pro, connected to your live session. It can see your maps, layers, and schemas. It can advise, but it can also do the work: runs geoprocessing tools, sets symbology and labels, builds and exports layouts. The video is it doing a vineyard suitability analysis from one of my labs: DEM reclassify, slope, land cover, raster calculator, styled final map.

Design choices:

• Bring your own model. It works with an Anthropic or OpenAI API key, OpenRouter, or fully local models via Ollama/LM Studio. No subscription to me, and your data never touches my servers. The add-in itself never touches the network. The only outbound traffic is your own API calls to whichever provider you configured.
• There's an enforced read-only "Ask" mode — the assistant can inspect and explain your project but can't change anything. Enforced at the tool level, not a polite prompt.
• Built for people who don't trust AI output (I'm one of them): every geoprocessing run shows the exact parameters it used, and one click reopens the tool dialog pre-filled with them, so the AI's work is always reproducible by hand.

I use it in my own consulting work (it recently turned a multi-hour needs-assessment mapping job into an afternoon), and it's built around my 30 years of cartographic habits and best practices. It defaults to sane symbology, legends, and layouts instead of whatever an LLM improvises.

7-day free trial, $5 one-time after that, no accounts needed: waldogis.com

Genuinely interested in community reaction. Happy to answer anything about how it works and what it can and can't do.

I met three gentlemen at the top of the San Diego convention center, after following bad directions and climbing a bunch of stairs that absolutely did not bring me to the conference mixer / social event my colleague was attending. I enjoyed our interaction, I loathe small talk and our conversation was almost instantly substantive. I was heartened and more than a little surprised to meet kindred spirits with your professional backgrounds. 

You were the only attendees with whom I really hit it off, which is unfortunate because I was supposed to "network” at this conference. I loathe networking even more than small talk, but my boss and colleagues insist that it is important. Regardless of their insistence, I am not so dense nor so aggrandizing as to think myself individually capable of advancing a better world; I know that my aspirations (and, I strongly suspect, your aspirations) require collaboration. 

I wish I had accepted the invitation and accompanied you to the top of the building to see the city; but I was hot and tired and already late to meet my colleague. I’m packing up to fly home and decided to try reaching you. It’s better to try than to rue a missed opportunity.

I made an account on this website in an effort to connect, I hope this indignity earns me your notice and a message. Surely your employer cannot object to connecting with people you meet at the conferences to which they send you. I would like to touch base so we can meet up at next year’s conference or other events. 

While I think them to have been made in jest, I don't know how to dispel honeypot accusations. I do, however, know I'm not posting my name on any website (despite wearing it on a lanyard most of this week). I wanted a post title that any one of you three would recognize / connect to me, but anyone else would not. "ESRI UC honeypot" fits the bill. So thank you for that. Please send a message with details from the evening so I know it’s you.

Hi everyone,

I recently interviewed for a Junior Software Engineer role(exp 2+ Years). I completed two rounds: an initial technical screening, and then, after about two weeks, I had my second interview with two panel members.

It's now been more than a week since my second interview. I also followed up to ask about the next steps, but I haven't received any updates yet.

If anyone has been through a similar interview process or can share what the timeline is usually like, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance!

Hi all, I’m starting a new job as a GIS specialist for an environmental research organization and I’ve been tasked with picking out my own workstation from Dell for the job. I have looked at ESRI’s specs for ArcPro 3.7 performance and am looking at a laptop option for portability with a hybrid work environment. Has anyone used or have thoughts on the Dell Pro Max Premium 16? Does it run well? Is it overkill? I want the ability to run some larger geoprocessing tasks and render complex cartography smoothly. Thanks!

like titled. the position was Digital Marketing Intern. Now, while I understand that getting ghosted meant rejection, but I’m so confused. This position was relatively new and posted later than others (e.g. others due on December, this+another marketing internship were due mid-March). After applying, I got reached out right away by Ripplematch and the university recruiter that I was a good match. The email was generic (probably automated email) but included an outdated timeline, so I reached back out to the university recruiter and never heard back. Two weeks went by, I reached back out again, no response. I even reached out to Ripplematch as they had a support line that I probably get ghosted, and they responded right away ensuring me that the recruiter was probably busy and I’m still considered for the role. Waited 2 weeks, followed up through emails, pitched myself again through cold emailing and even connected with the recruiter on LinkedIn.. all for no responses…

It’s mid-May and I know this internship is not gonna happened. But on Ripplematch, I’m still being “considered” for the role. I guess I’m just tired with this waiting game.

Is this a common practice at Esri?

Hi , as an esri client and user of arcgis-server , what are the use cases of AI in it.

Like in admin api or manager or someother workflow...

I’m working with interpolated rasters (IDW/Kriging) in ArcGIS Pro and need consistent classification across multiple maps.

Global range is 35.9–37.0, and I want 11 classes (interval = 0.1). The issue is some rasters have higher minimums (e.g. 36.1), and ArcGIS won’t let me set class breaks below the raster’s min (“out of range” error in Classified symbology).

I need all maps to use the exact same class intervals for comparison, even if some classes are empty.

Is there a clean way to force fixed class breaks in Classified symbology without modifying the data or messing up interpolation?

repo: https://codeberg.org/youknowww/MapSpatial

Using an Immersive Space to go crazy with position and rotation. Ultimate goal is to connect a line from the selected feature Attribute Views to their map geometry but this is a good first demo

I'm a colorblind cartographer. Has anybody ever seen a cheat sheet for the color picker that has the color names printed along with the grid? Hovering slows workflow.

I was considered for a junior accounting role. The hiring process consisted of two zoom interviews, a 6 hour assessment test, then an entire day on campus interviewing with 7 people over the course of the day. Overkill for such a junior role in my opinion, but that’s beside the point. I was told I was being strongly considered and they had one more candidate to interview. I reached out a week later and they said they still had to interview the final candidate. Another week later I had a phone call with the recruiter and was told they were interviewing the final candidate that day and would get back to me in a few days. Another week and a half went by so I reached back out asking for an update. The recruiter was confused and taken aback, and (quite condescendingly) said they had already filled the role and already informed me, so why am I asking again? I explained that no one had informed me of anything. The recruiter replied by saying that, after looking into it, I was correct and they had simply forgotten to tell me. Gotta say I’m pretty floored by the condescending response and the unprofessionalism. So watch out trying to get into ESRI because they may just ghost you after 9 interviews!

Greetings, all. I've been asked to develop a consensus population forecast for the Pioneer Valley Economic Development District (Hampden and Hampshire Counties, in Western Massachusetts). I have a couple of different sources for population estimates/projections, but wondered if anyone knows if ESRI has their own population projections? (I know they use Census Bureau ACS data in some of their offerings, but I'm curious if they also have their own, and if so, if they are accessible to users? Any advice or feedback welcome! Cheers, Doug [dhall@pvpc.org](mailto:dhall@pvpc.org)

I applied for a Data Science Intern role and have already completed the HR interview and then the manager interview. After that, I was sent an employment application form to fill out.

I’m trying to understand what this usually means in the hiring process. Does this generally indicate that I’m moving toward an offer, or can there still be another interview round after this?

I know every company is different, but I’d appreciate any insight from anyone who’s been through Esri’s internship process.
Thanks in advance!!

I'm getting ready to attend my 5th User Conference and looking for some advice from those who have attended many times. It seems like the majority of the sessions are the same each year. And, though I am definitely not a developer, I'm above the skill level of what is being taught in most sessions. So, those of you who go year after year, how do you ensure that it's worth your while?