Page 1 of 1

The Economy

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 11:51 pm
by Benjamin
Ok.. No Politics here.

I wondering how the current economic state has affected you, if at all. Is it driving down your hourly prices? Is the company you work for tightening budgets and watching your hours more carefully? Is the company you work for scaling back projects? Are you a freelancer finding it harder to get projects? Are your clients not paying on time?

Anything related to this is a good response. I would like to get a general feel for what everyone is experiencing right now.

Re: The Economy

Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:27 am
by Chris Corbyn
The company I work for are staying level so far, but Australia hasn't been badly hit just yet. We have tightened up budgets before the new year "just in case", but nobody is worried about their jobs in my office. That does not mean that everything will just sort itself out. It doesn't. We're very well aware that things will get tough and that we'll have to be very tactical about where our business focuses its efforts. But we've gone through the burst of the dot com bubble and come out stronger than before, so we'll manage this downturn too. We've had a few meetings explaining as much.

My housemate however. She works (err... worked) in HR for Pacific Brands. Pacific Brands is a huge Australian owned company that owns many other popular Australian brands such as Bonds. There was a massive public outrage here in Australia when they announced that they'd be making thousands of people redundant and outsourcing the work to China & Indonesia instead. Aussies are pretty proud about the Australian owned and produced goods here so when a company of their size makes such an announcement at a time like this, it doesn't go down well. Even worse, the managers were receiving bonuses beyond the $100K range at the same time.

My housemate, being in HR, figured her job would be safe because of course they'd need her to do the redundancies. But about 3 weeks ago she was given the choice: Take a redundancy payout and leave (with immediate effect), or work part time in a very low paid job, with no payout. She has taken the redundancy and got a reasonable payout so she can get by, but is now struggling to find work.

Re: The Economy

Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:51 am
by Benjamin
It's never a good sign when companies start laying off HR employees. There's a lot of things going on under the hood when that happens... none of them good.

Re: The Economy

Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 10:18 am
by Bill H
My one remaining client is heavily dependent on the financial industry, and is getting hurt badly by significant cutbacks. It would be worse except that they serve small banks and credit unions, which have not been hit by the losses that the bigger ones have. These institutions are being hurt, however, by the fact that people are not borrowing. Forget this nonsense about, "Joe the Plumber can't get a loan to buy a car." These small banks are begging people to buy cars, but people with no jobs don't want to buys cars.

My wife works for an HR firm that deals with programs for people who have been laid off. Classes that have averaged 8-10 in the past are running 40-50 now and would be much larger if they could be accommodated. Her services are booked through June. These programs are paid for by the firms doing the layoffs and they are cutting back a bit, buying shorter programs and a few less services, but the sheer volume of the business is amazing. About 30 times what it was last year. She anticipates it will drop off toward the end of this year as companies reach the end of layoff possibilities and start shutting down instead.

San Diego will maintain a decent core of defense industry employment. SAIC is here, and NASSCO shipbuilding is booked for three years at full cpapcity with Navy cargo ship business and is negotiating much more. SPAWAR is growing like the proverbial weed, two of the Predator drones are built here and, of course, we have Navy and Marine bases up to our eyeballs.

Re: The Economy

Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 11:39 am
by Inkyskin
I freelance, and to be honest I haven't noticed any slide in demand. In fact, I think it's actually gone up a little. I put this down to companies finding lower costs with freelancers than full blown agencies, so I don't expect it to last once things get back to normal!

I haven't had to lower my prices either - people still seem happy to pay what they always have really. (Around my parts anyhow).

I have found that the jobs are a little smaller though, not quite as big as they used to be.

Re: The Economy

Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 3:25 am
by matthijs
Don't notice a big difference either. Not yet anyway. I actually hope to increase my work as I'm a one man company and can sometimes get people better deals then the bigger agencies. I did have one client for which I moved a website to a cheaper host. He paid me $500 and I saved him $1000. (for a static brochure like website he was paying that for hosting...)

I also read about research done on companies and crisis, which found out that the companies who cut down the least during the crisis came out the best in the end when it went better again. Certainly when a company are laying off many people, as soon as the economy improves again they have a problem finding good people again and responding fast enough.

Re: The Economy

Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 1:10 pm
by josh
Business is up, more people looking to start up businesses and quit their jobs is my assumption. My current project is going to heavily rely on outside APIs like iPaper API, youtube, etc... I think more people are going to stop paying to re-invent the wheel.

I also have another client who hasn't made his final payment, kinda sadening since he's payed me 66% of it and hasn't gotten a line of code released to him yet, the projects done... guessing I'm going to resell it and make more then that 33% if he doesnt get back soon