Economy - how has it affected your career/employer?

Wow....we have never installed a video conferencing system. All these damn oil companies have Lear Jets and helicoptors. You see them taking off all the time. No cutback on travel seen here.

We're laid fiber to 34 miles Carlsbad (where I live) and now laying 75 miles past there to Hobbs. We'll pick up more customers and lease the spare fiber to places like Qwest and ENMR Plateau to provide back haul for their services too.

 

gotcha, so you got the shitty sweaty work up in drop ceilings. we use TelAid, Technical Innovations, Baker Audio (not so much anymore) and SCI electronics for our install vendors, which includes laying fiber. i assume you haven't heard from them since we are so far apart but i figured i'd throw those names out in case you had dealt or heard of them before

 

Sometimes yeah. The design is way more fun than the install!!!

We use CCI out of Tularosa NM to lay our fiber. Other than that we do our own design, installs, and troubleshooting of systems.

 

well me and a couple co workers got laid off last year cuz i was the bottom of the barrel first year apprentice :/

then i got my job back at a canadian tire store until i moved to newfoundland for school. the economy hasnt really affected me until now. now that im coming out of school looking for work. its making it much harder to find work than what it was last year when i got the job in my trade.

im an electrical apprentice btw

 

Are you actually getting out @ 20 or just keeping your eyes open to see what is what??

 

im 21, never felt the recession until september 09, im in college (bs business admin) and giving up on construction. i make 19 dollars an hr when i work. i put in 20 hours last month. im still with the same construction company but on call. everyday at 230pm i call to see if there is work for the next day. sometimes i get 3 months of work. sometimes 1 or 2 days out of the week of work. if i get a bank job or something else in the business field, it wouldnt even matter if i dropped down to 12 dollars an hr, id still be making more than i am right now through unemployment. my gfs such a go getter. i used to be as well but my motivation has been shot down due to being at home all day doing nothing. i feel like a loser boyfriend. im fixing my resume as we speak.

 

less hours

 

The military has been good to me and my family, I haven't really felt the affect of the economy, but have seen people who have. I plan on staying in for at least 20 years to get a great pension and medical, I'll be 38 by then which seems far away, we will see what the future holds.

 

Hasn't affected it at all.

One of the unwritten benefits of joining the dark side.

 

FAR AWAY!!! It's only 3yrs!!!!

 

I'm a maintenance supervisor at a 500 unit apartment community. It's sad to see what has happened to so many people and there homes, you know...being forclosed on, but that very thing has kept the apartment industry going strong. That being said, I stay busy, there is always something to fix, A/C, plumbing, electrical, sheetrock repairs, garage doors being hit, gates getting run into, two pools and a spa to keep up with....along with other things. Keeps a team of six techs busy, including me.

 

lol, the dark side uh? damn med people....

actually, i'm like most other military people. haven't been "directly" affected at all. Actually made more money this year than any other (got love being a flier and getting all that yummy per diem).

however, it does suck when i go home to charlotte and catch up with all my old friends and see how everyone is doing. that being said, i'm one of the optimists that think things are slowly going back up.

 

Heh, Pot and Kettle man

When the economy's poor, the 2 MICs (Military and Medical Industrial) are tough to beat for job security.

Come to think of it, they're tough to beat at any time. There will always be demand, no matter what the economy is doing. We're bankrupting the fuck out of this country together, but hey, we're employed.

 

The only thing that affects the medical field is the volume of patients that we are getting. I am a nurse in the Transplant / Hemodialysis Dept. It has gone up to the point that we can barely keep up. Job security and all but it drains the hell out of the staff.

Going home on time is rare now. It is common that we have stay for an average of 2-3 extra hours just to cope up with the patient volume. Just this Memorial weekend we ran out of machines needed to dialyze patients in the ICU. The clinical coordinator had to call hospitals in the East corridor for additional machines. They just decided which patient gets the machine first based on their immediate need. (Looks like rationing healthcare isn't it?)

Paywise, normally we got 3% to 6 % increase every year depending on performance. This year they pegged it at 3%. It sucks but we got a job and have opportunity to help our patients.

 

its high year tenure for me, I need to pick up E7 to stay in past 20.