What's happening where you work?

Appleseed said:

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?

I have a spare s6-53 from a Jag 2.7 diesel with a borked 2nd gear synchro. Both the borked trans and the functioning one I replaced it with had no tags other than maincase casting numbers so the ZF tech support wasn't able to help me.

STM317 said:

Commercial powertrain OEM. We stayed busy with lots of backlogs tied to pandemic supply shortages that have now mostly fulfilled. Forecasts are gloomy for 2024. Business results have remained strong, but the belt tightening has gotten progressively more aggressive. OT used to be the norm in my department. Then it became limited in Q2, and now it's been nearly eliminated through the end of the year, and they're not expecting enough work to need help during the regular holiday shutdowns. Travel budget for Q3 and Q4 was basically zero. Emails came out last week that they're restructuring top level leadership a bit to plan for expected downturns in key markets next year, and they're offering early retirement packages to many salaried employees. And yet they're about to reopen an office building that they've probably spent $10mil renovating over the last 3 years, so that all of the employees that have been successfully WFH during the pandemic and renovation can come back in a few days per week.

No RIFs yet, but it definitely seems like they're more likely than they have been at any time in the last 5-7 years.

So I have a pet theory that a lot of companies are pushing return to office to act as a first round RIF, basically get people to quit so they can see how much they have remaining to cut. It makes sense of a sort even if it isn't the way I'd approach it.

Fortune 100 Fintech. Growing like weeds. We just keep hiring with double digit growth. My options are booming. Up 17% this year. I'm working on a major product release. All and All there are 0 complaints here.  

Current geopolitical conflicts means my job is very secure, pretty secure even without the BS going on currently.

I prefer to be a deterrent, but if you want to berkeley around you will find out. Fact.

dclafleur said:

STM317 said:

Commercial powertrain OEM. We stayed busy with lots of backlogs tied to pandemic supply shortages that have now mostly fulfilled. Forecasts are gloomy for 2024. Business results have remained strong, but the belt tightening has gotten progressively more aggressive. OT used to be the norm in my department. Then it became limited in Q2, and now it's been nearly eliminated through the end of the year, and they're not expecting enough work to need help during the regular holiday shutdowns. Travel budget for Q3 and Q4 was basically zero. Emails came out last week that they're restructuring top level leadership a bit to plan for expected downturns in key markets next year, and they're offering early retirement packages to many salaried employees. And yet they're about to reopen an office building that they've probably spent $10mil renovating over the last 3 years, so that all of the employees that have been successfully WFH during the pandemic and renovation can come back in a few days per week.

No RIFs yet, but it definitely seems like they're more likely than they have been at any time in the last 5-7 years.

So I have a pet theory that a lot of companies are pushing return to office to act as a first round RIF, basically get people to quit so they can see how much they have remaining to cut. It makes sense of a sort even if it isn't the way I'd approach it.

It sounds bad at first, but I don't actually have a problem with that. If a company has made a determination that return to office meets their business needs best, then one of the first things they need to figure out is if they have workers within their ranks who won't fit into that business model. Nothing wrong with desiring a WFH position, but if that's my desire, then I won't fit well with a company that wants people in the office. 

JG Pasterjak said:

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?

In reply to bobzilla :

It's not a built bottom end until a couple forged rods are thrown into it

I work for a large IT manufacturer.  Business has been solid, but we've had two very significant rounds of workforce reductions this year.  One was very public earlier in the year (6% of the overall workforce), and the 2nd hit in August and hit our area pretty hard.  We seem to be stabilizing coming out of that, but things that other people competently handled in minute/hours are now taking months, and I waste a lot of time following up on things I shouldn't have to.  In the end, though, I'm thankful to be employed.

In terms of the overall market, demand for laptops/desktops has predictably slowed since the pandemic.  Data center stuff seems to be in pretty high demand, although companies are moving to longer and longer refresh cycles (3 years used to be typical, now I'd say the average is about 6-7 years).  Companies that are all-in in terms of AI are spending big money, but the majority seem to have cut back on budgets, so they don't have funds available for things like AI.

Ridership continues to climb as people return to work and tourists continue to pour in. We can't find enough people to fill positions, mot at all helped by current management that works to make this a worse option than pretty much everywhere else while no longer paying enough more than other options to attract people. 

Auto technician.  I still get spammed by headhunters, offering to pay me to relocate and stuff.

Last couple weeks were relatively slow.  Still made enough bonus cash that I should have the credit card paid off by the end of the year if not sooner.  And I bought another mountain bike, because I was looking for a Cannondale V bike and the seller of one of the bikes I was checking out made an offer that was "hell, why not?".  Less than the tablets that I was trying to buy last weekend.

New bike is a URT double boing bike with 7 speed STX/Grip Shift, cantis and not those godawful V brakes, and I won't be afraid to take it to rallycrosses because it might get scratched or breathed on wrong or something.

Auto tech here also.  We as a whole are starting to get back on track,  the whole gm and stellantis work stoppage slowed us down a lil.   I took a recon spot at work doing mostly high end euro cars so luckily I was able to dodge it and still make 60-70 hours a week. 

I work at a small niche automotive aftermarket seat distributor, and things at work have remained strong. Last month was one of our busiest months ever. 

iansane said:

Appleseed said:

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?

I have a spare s6-53 from a Jag 2.7 diesel with a borked 2nd gear synchro. Both the borked trans and the functioning one I replaced it with had no tags other than maincase casting numbers so the ZF tech support wasn't able to help me.

If you can somehow get me a part number I can try to make it work. I'll ask around and see.

Industrial Equipment Manufacturer here.

Balls to the wall, booked out till at least this time next year on new custom equipment.

Off the shelf or copy-paste jobs are little slow but they mainly serve foundries and forges so they are boom or bust

Hiring like its our day job.  Anyone want to be a field service tech (lotta hours, lotta travel, lotta money) basically anywhere in the USA?  Any production welders in Wisconsin want to work?

We are opening our own foundry next year to the tune of 25 million give or take to build it.

We are fortunate that we are diverse.  When oil and gas slows down, bridges and infrastructure pick up.  So on and so forth.

We are also blessed that one of our major competitors got bought out and basically shut their custom equipment and rebuild and service divisions so we are eating their lunch a ton.

I work in IT for a financial institution and the message we have is to get ready for cuts. My goal now is to be mid-pack or better, so when the cuts come, I'm not on the cutting board. It helps that I'm in a one-touch (directly customer impacting) group, versus a two or greater touch division. 

It's part of a cycle. They hire, get work done, see a dip in stock prices due to expenses, make massive cuts to the point work can't get done, but see stocks rise, hire people again... rinse, repeat. 

 

In reply to Byrneon27 :

I'll reach out, but probably won't be able to until Friday. My personal experience entails a lot of documentation of systematic and management shortcomings, and frankly, leave locations when those shortcomings were documented, rinsing and repeating. Documentation of how and why systems fail was key. Eventually I ended up running a shop, then I got sick and wasn't able to work for nearly 3 years. When I returned to the workplace, I had to cut my teeth at the bottom, thankfully outside of automotive, then got involved with an established brewery, who's celebrating their 11th anniversary this weekend, but they were failing at the time in spite of the industry being on the upswing at that point. A few shop owners who knew me through the brewery reached out, I started assisting them and then was contacted by a consulting company that specializes in automotive. (it was also during this timeframe that that distillery started up and also relocated in less than 3 years as we had already outgrown our space. We hopped into commerical real estate for our own use while the market was depressed during covid, before interest rates took off. Ironically the space we own, or well the bank still owns, but we're on pace to own it outright before 2027, was originally purchased and developed by a competing brewery who we leased out new larger space from, we purchased it from them during COVID. 

In reply to dj06482 (Forum Supporter) :

Sounds like my old company. Glad I got away from there. I saw over the last 4-5 years I was there that the product was just getting better and better with longer refresh cycles and burst capacity was becoming cloud based along with DR. I had a buddy laid off from the compute business and I was not surprised one bit. 

I'm now working in credit card disputes. Really interesting transition but the growth is there. 

Until a week ago, was in a customer success role at a very large software company that catered to dealerships. Lot of rumors about layoffs, and they hit hard last week. Sales, CSM, devops all got cut to the bone, and I was caught up in it.

I actually feel bad for the folks still employed there. Literally double the work and they "restructured" the pay plan to the tune of a $15k/yr haircut. Ouch. Also rumors of another round of cuts in Q1 '24

Not sure what's next. My lengthy auto experience has been primarily at F500 companies, thinking about looking for a smaller, privately held company or exiting automotive altogether. 

Two partner architectural firm. 2 drafters, could use another. We've been overrun with business for 4-5 years. My partner just got sick with the flu and spent two weeks in the hospital and a week in rehab.  We've lost 3 jobs in that span. 2 I don't care about, 1 that would have been nice but the client was demanding so I'm on the fence about that one. Demand is still there, but my partner's health is not back yet. Shows you the downside of tiny firms. 

In reply to Captdownshift (Forum Supporter) :

What are you, Wadsworth?

First dealership I worked at had this company. No matter how well any dept did, it always was "how could you do better?" Never a rah rah congrats on that triple in gross sales etc. Always was that's not good enough. Everyone there dreaded the monthly meeting with them. It was never productive and the dealership paid for it! 

It's too bad we can't set up a poll here. It would have been interesting to see responses to specific questions.

The reason I asked was because of an article I read on the weekend that said Canada's economy is faltering, and is expected to go into recession sooner and harder than the US, opposite of what normally happens. There are some really good reasons for that, some mentioned in this article I don't entirely agree with, and with the recent downturn in business at work I thought it would be interesting to see what people on the other side of the border are seeing now.

It seems that some are slowing, some have already seen layoffs, and some are going balls to the wall, which is exactly where we were until we suddenly weren't. Thank you for the responses.

Sales  / project manager for a privately held commercial HVAC contractor in NE.  We are and have been flat out for the past 6-7 years with only a brief pause during Covid and only because of a mandated lockdown.  Even then because we were considered essential we were able to keep more than half our crew busy during the 10 week lockdown period.  We could easily take on another 2 - 3 techs if they were available.  (And we could get vans for them but that's another issue altogether.)

Construction seems to be slowing in our area after close to 10 years of boom times which will affect the large mechanical contractors the most.  We are more service / maintenance and equipment replacement focused; we do some construction work but typically smaller projects direct with clients or with general contractors we have relationships with.   

We're hoping that we will be able to continue to keep everyone busy.  The larger mechanicals and corporate shops will of course "rediscover" service work as construction dries up, we've seen the cycle before and have been working hard for years to build up our customer list for when the rainy days return.  Time will tell, the game always has it's tricks and turns.

I have two bosses:

One is always sure that we are 2 projects away from starving to death.

One stays awake all night wondering how we're going to get all the work done on time.

They complement each other pretty well, I guess, but it would be nice if they were a little closer together in outlook.

We could definitely use another experienced architect on board.  We've been saying this for at least 10 years, even though they hired one 2 years ago (under mild threat of mutiny from the rest of us).

calteg said:

Until a week ago, was in a customer success role at a very large software company that catered to dealerships. Lot of rumors about layoffs, and they hit hard last week. Sales, CSM, devops all got cut to the bone, and I was caught up in it.

I actually feel bad for the folks still employed there. Literally double the work and they "restructured" the pay plan to the tune of a $15k/yr haircut. Ouch. Also rumors of another round of cuts in Q1 '24

Not sure what's next. My lengthy auto experience has been primarily at F500 companies, thinking about looking for a smaller, privately held company or exiting automotive altogether. 

 

I have some of the same background and a little further down the path if you want to chat.  PM me if you like.

My clients have as broad a gap between their budget and their expectations as Ive ever seen, and ive been doing this for 20-ish years, and for nearly a decade now with this company alone.

Also, most of my hires are for entry level, zero experience required positions. Same as everywhere, candidates want $20/hr for basic work. Often the best I can offer is nearly $2 less - and those that take it act like they can turn in half-assed work because they're doing me the favor of gracing me with their presence. We are all here to do a job - if you love that job, even better! But do the job that you agreed to do at minimum. Im not asking you to do more, just what you agreed to do.

And, at the rate the money printers are brrrrrring, its only going to get worse. Cant wait to try that $45/loaf bread that the USSR was always talking about...