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akylekoz
akylekoz UltraDork
11/7/23 12:41 p.m.

We are overall slow, low volume metal components manufacturer.  I'm on my own island or building, my only production machine is slow and I have been asked to limit my overtime.  Between quoting and constant HOT jobs, pretty steady.

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter)
Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) UltraDork
11/7/23 12:41 p.m.

Just signed up for Medicare last night and I'm still working a full 40 hour week and probably will be for as long as I want to. Our firm is still defending complex lawsuits and believe it or not, I still get calls from recruiters on a weekly basis, and no, I don't want to move to California or Chicago or Austin or anyplace else where real estate is stupid expensive. 

I wish I had more time to work on my car projects.

pheller
pheller UltimaDork
11/7/23 12:47 p.m.
SV reX said:

The large project I am on for a major EV auto manufacturer seems to be revealing some cracks under the surface. They are making some pretty big changes in the timeline moving forward, and in the milestones they are projecting. Many of the goals are being moved out several years. 

Completely different industry, but seeing something similar. 

There is a lot of talk of regulatory burden in the form of "asks" by Feds/state/regulators - mostly driven by consumer pressure. These expectations are pushing other projects further out in anticipation of spending spree in the mid-term. 

SV reX
SV reX MegaDork
11/7/23 12:56 p.m.

In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :

I get frequent calls from headhunters too, but in my industry it's not necessarily a sign of strong growth. 
 

Commercial construction companies have cut staffing to the bone, and are not interested in keeping excess staff on hand.  When they land a job, they don't have the staff to man it. So the headhunters start making empty promises to get people to jump ship (which also helps cripple the competitors). 
 

Problem is those companies that are "always hiring" are also always firing. They've learned to treat labor as a commodity job cost like a 2x4.  They bring someone in at a high salary, with no intention of keeping them when the project is over. Rinse, repeat. 
 

I ignore them consistently. I'm glad I work for a decent company that cares more about their staff.

Sonic
Sonic UberDork
11/7/23 1:06 p.m.

General liability insurance claims in a F500 and DJIA company.  We have more work than we can handle right now, are trying to hire but struggling to find quality candidates.  
 

As someone else said, all the good people have solid jobs.   

triumph7
triumph7 HalfDork
11/7/23 1:09 p.m.

I work for a startup in the water cleanup and monitoring industry.  Right now we are on the verge of a couple major government contracts, actually looking to hire soon if things continue.  Also just moved out of the university incubator into our own space, today I'm setting up 220 for the welder and compressor.

TAParker
TAParker Reader
11/7/23 1:11 p.m.

My repair business is heavily dependant on the energy industry. We service and repair oilfield service trucks. We also service and repair light duty cars and trucks. 70% of our work is those service trucks. Currently the energy industry here in East Texas is in a downturn.  We have slowed considerably.  We are not "dead" but not as busy as we like. Changes are inevitable.  Economy and environmental concerns abound and we will see what becomes of our industry. 

Appleseed
Appleseed MegaDork
11/7/23 1:11 p.m.

ZF transmission rebuilder. We are balls out. Mandatory Saturdays til the end of the year. We were unaffected by the UAW strike.

grover
grover GRM+ Memberand Dork
11/7/23 1:16 p.m.

I sell B2B advertising for mostly F500. It's been a down year and budgets are higher than last Q4, but CFOs in general seem to be looking more closely at line item spending. Selling more content than distribution this year and channel sales are on the rise. We had a small rif Q2 and I'm safe as a high producer- but I'm thinking about going back to software sales. 

GameboyRMH
GameboyRMH GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
11/7/23 1:18 p.m.

Been unemployed a few months now but I notice the tech job postings aren't staying up long. Also my last employer's stock has taken a 20% dive since September, being a popular stock with amateurs will have that effect though...good thing I sold most of it back in August.

RX Reven'
RX Reven' GRM+ Memberand UberDork
11/7/23 1:26 p.m.

I'm in medical device engineering so...

#1    Our customers rarely pay out of pocket for our products.

#2    The alternative to getting our products tends to be death.

Sales are fine.  

ShawnG
ShawnG MegaDork
11/7/23 1:28 p.m.

We started a market garden business last year. Our prices are the same as the grocery store but the quality is far better.

Sales are dismal, nobody is opening their wallet right now.

I've gone back to turning wrenches out of my own shop in the off season.

Also, my boss is a jerk who makes me work long hours, spends all my money and sleeps with my wife.

iansane
iansane GRM+ Memberand Dork
11/7/23 1:29 p.m.
Appleseed said:

ZF transmission rebuilder. We are balls out. Mandatory Saturdays til the end of the year. We were unaffected by the UAW strike.

Just autos or manuals too? Do you have a resource for oddball ZF manual trans hardparts?

Datsun240ZGuy
Datsun240ZGuy MegaDork
11/7/23 1:31 p.m.

Industrial sales - hose manufacturing and it's slowing up.  We ask this question a lot to our customers.

Most are busy with zero confidence in the economy the next year.  Everyone is waiting for the bottom to drop.  

aircooled
aircooled MegaDork
11/7/23 1:33 p.m.

The company I work for generally does good in downturns as well as upturns.   We are still opening new stores, hiring, etc.  Pretty much same as always. 

Also, being privately held, even if there was some sort of general downturn, I would not expect any significant changes. No need to chase stock prices etc.

Ian F (Forum Supporter)
Ian F (Forum Supporter) MegaDork
11/7/23 1:33 p.m.

Fairly busy. As long as the pharma industry keeps inventing new drugs, they'll need facilities to make them.  I just left a meeting about looking for cost savings, but that always happens.   The big issue is lead times... We need to order a piece of custom switchgear and the estimated delivery time is 84 weeks.  And that piece of gear is the first item between the utility and the rest of the building.  And we need two of them for two buildings. 

Ouch. 

Oh... and the steel for the first building is going up as I type this. 

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter)
Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) UltraDork
11/7/23 1:38 p.m.
SV reX said:

In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :

I get frequent calls from headhunters too, but in my industry it's not necessarily a sign of strong growth. 
 

Commercial construction companies have cut staffing to the bone, and are not interested in keeping excess staff on hand.  When they land a job, they don't have the staff to man it. So the headhunters start making empty promises to get people to jump ship (which also helps cripple the competitors). 
 

Problem is those companies that are "always hiring" are also always firing. They've learned to treat labor as a commodity job cost like a 2x4.  They bring someone in at a high salary, with no intention of keeping them when the project is over. Rinse, repeat. 
 

I ignore them consistently. I'm glad I work for a decent company that cares more about their staff.

There seems to be a lot more openings in the legal field in cities that people want to get out of like San Francisco and Chicago and there are more and more people willing to take a pay cut to get out of those cities. They actually will pay you enough to get a crappy apartment near where you work in those cities, but single family homes are for the guys who own the firm and they guys who bought 25 years ago. There are also fewer and fewer jobs for people who want to work from home. They want you back in the office now. Being willing to travel and live in hotels for weeks at a time is also in the mix. Guys with families and kids don't want to do that but I don't have a problem with it.

We actually can't get all the people we need.

slefain
slefain UltimaDork
11/7/23 1:40 p.m.
Javelin said:

Been unemployed since July. Applied for over 100 jobs, 2 interviews, no dice. Unless you want to work E36 M3ty hours for minimum wage at a retail place, the jobs have evaporated. 

Going back to grad school now to be a CPA. Things are really tight. Trying to turn YouTube into an income stream is about my only option left. 

Any interest in hanging out your own shingle and consulting? That's what I did 9 years ago. My friend did the same thing after getting laid off last July. He teamed up with a buddy who had strengths that compliment his talent. I recently did something similar with a friend to land a client, he does the marketing and I do the writing.

914Driver
914Driver MegaDork
11/7/23 1:52 p.m.
thewheelman
thewheelman Reader
11/7/23 1:54 p.m.

Reasonably busy here. 

I'm a senior supply chain business analyst for a value added IT reseller. During the recession, all of our customers doubled down on telecommuting hardware/software/licenses to keep their employees working remotely. Much of that business has slowed back down to normal volume, but we have large amounts of business selling cloud services. Every major hardware manufacturer (Cisco, Juniper, HPE, etc.) is going to subscription based services and solutions. We just saw a lot of growth in sales to automotive manufacturers looking to shore up their network security. YOY revenue is on target to be +20%, costs are down, so good. 

My wife is a labor and delivery RN, and people only seem to be making more babies.   

Ranger50
Ranger50 MegaDork
11/7/23 2:12 p.m.

People are still either livin', dyin', or being birthed.

Definitely burnt out because of the lack of staffing, too many chiefs, ignorant people populations, certain people that keep getting bonuses but never fixing the main problems. You can only slash and burn for so long until you have nobody else left.

Byrneon27
Byrneon27 HalfDork
11/7/23 2:40 p.m.
Captdownshift (Forum Supporter) said:

The automotive service consulting side is... interesting. My employer, a parts distributor, needs to lop some heads at the top, some of them are new, like 4 months on the job new, but they haven't even begun to address the issue that the previous regime should've fixed when there were massive supply chain issues over the pandemic. Inventory management. They missed earnings by 19% last quarter and the stock price drop resulted in a $2B loss in evaluation. More than 80% of the district managers should be gone. It's worse than when I was advising Pep Boys on their exit strategy from the market, except this entity isn't leaving the market. The board is definitely dragging on making the needed changes though. I'm upping my client count within their portfolio, all of said clients know what the next move is and are planning to come along. 

If you don't mind sharing how did you get there? I'm so over the dealership/shop life 

Appleseed
Appleseed MegaDork
11/7/23 2:57 p.m.
iansane said:
Appleseed said:

ZF transmission rebuilder. We are balls out. Mandatory Saturdays til the end of the year. We were unaffected by the UAW strike.

Just autos or manuals too? Do you have a resource for oddball ZF manual trans hardparts?

Automatics. 8sp. and 9sp FWD/AWD. What parts are we looking for?

Brokeback (Matt)
Brokeback (Matt) HalfDork
11/7/23 3:02 p.m.

In reply to RX Reven' :

Hah - I'm also an engineer for a medical device company and those ring true.  

Some complaints about exchange rates impacting margin overseas over the last year but sales/demand doesn't seem to be going down anytime soon.  Maybe if people ate better/exercised demand would go down but I don't see that happening anytime soon :P

JG Pasterjak
JG Pasterjak Production/Art Director
11/7/23 3:06 p.m.
RevRico said:

Dicks warehouse that a month ago was sending people home for days at a time is now in full OT mode

The sporting goods store or the all-male strip club?

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