Yeah, I’ve had the same experience.
But, one thing that these enormous lead-times don’t capture is: the 58 (or 103) week lead-time is after not being able to get these components for well over a year already…
I mean, 103 weeks is pretty much the same as saying ‘No, you can’t buy this.’
Fixed my goofed up link:
Xbee3 Pro
This. I work in IT for state government. We had a huge wave of work when people went to working from home, and now it has swung back to people being in the office.
Explaining that they cannot move into a new building because switches and routers have a 9-12 month lead time, week after week, has me on the verge of quitting. If they offered an early retirement tomorrow, I’d take it.
We have a container in Long Beach that has not moved in over 60 days. Several vendors have 3-6 month lead times. We are building quite the sales and repair backlog. Earlier this summer, McMaster-Carr cancelled a line item on a Purchase Order because they cannot source an O-ring.
I work for a company that makes robots to help pick items at fulfillment centers. When the pandemic hit, and everyone started shopping online, our business took off. Now that things are opening up again, we’re starting to revert back to the original growth curve, but we are still growing.
I don’t know what sort of issues our hardware folks are having trying to source the parts for our robots.
Nobody is crazy enough to join the cops in 2022.
I work in the not for profit sector in Aus, we run Kindergartens, have staff working in the Family Violence space and Child and Family services counselling space. All areas are growth industries, Government funding to deliver services is increasing, as are jobs, but the number of available, qualified people isn’t.
It’s fkn hard work trying to recruit.
I do the books for a Landscape Designer. He builds pools and spas and backyard kitchens. He can’t get many of the pavers and tiles and pumps and flowers and so many other things. The list goes on and on.
It’s causing a lot of issues with scheduling work.
It took me twelve months to find and hire an electronics tech who knew Ohm’s Law.
My web development business is fine, we never skipped a beat. Our one big client also seems to have gotten through things fine. They sell used industrial equipment, which they have on-hand or source domestically so there’s no huge upsets in supply.
I also work for my city and that’s been a bit of a shitshow. We have had normal non-covid-related turnover and it has been a real challenge to get staff for the service department and parks & rec. We also had plans to get new vehicles for all the departments later this year, or early in 2023 but had to get the POs for those rushed through so we could take delivery in 2023 MAYBE. Sourcing vehicles has been hard since the aluminum tariffs but it’s ridiculously hard now. Same goes for smaller stuff like baseball field paint and rec center flooring.
I must say, our departments are doing a commendable job both getting products and working short-staffed AND finding new hires amongst the tiny pool of canidates.
Finding some resistance there?
People still want to be consultants. I think the number of qualified candidates per job listing has decreased, but not to the point where we’re having any trouble hiring.
I see lots of research projects getting delayed while waiting for equipment.
We are stretched thin. Soon to be not my problem.
I’m already retired and on a second career. I can collect a second pension on November 1st of this year. Haven’t decided if I will. More years on means more money later. Will inherit beach front property when some relatives kick. That will influence my decision for sure.
The amount of openings statewide is staggering. I’m guessing departments are hiring people that in the past may not have made the cut. Not a good thing.
Someone had to post it.
I think I understand how you feel, and after the events of the past few years, you have my sympathy.
Although police seem to be at the extreme end, I see a growing reluctance to endure any job that deals with John Q. Public. Too many spineless micromanaging cowards who leave workers to face an angry public. Too many damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t scenarios. And too many literally dangerous interactions where management’s only contribution is hiding beneath legal’s petticoats till it’s safe, then rushing onto the field to bayonet the wounded.
In the past, my extended family was filled with teachers, airline pilots, flight attendants, and Walmart and other customer-facing workers. Now there are almost none, the pilots either retired, changed careers or switched to cargo, there’s one remaining flight attendant, and the last teacher in the entire family quit earlier this year, to start a different career.
Sorry about the rant, but my opinion of our modern so-called “leadership” would need toned down considerably before even putting it in the pit – much less here.
Out patient healthcare, specifically pediatrics but this applies across the organization.
Short staffing. For peds this is a very high demand time and some offices are closing some days due to inadequate staff. Our team has consolidated our two locations to one to staff more efficiently and have still had to cancel a few hours here and there. The larger multi specialty organization has been unable to hire mental health therapists to meet our patients’ needs as well.
My sister retired as a teacher last year. It wasn’t exactly early retirement but she probably would have worked a few more years if it wasn’t for what you described. They begged her to come back as a long term substitute but she turned them down immediately.
I don’t know what can be done about hostile customers, save for a cultural shift, and that would require decades of indoctrination in schools or something, and of course jackasses like Ron DeSantis are going to say that a government school curriculum about being polite and nice to workers trying to serve you is too “woke” or whatever.
Americans have a (deserved) reputation for being friendly, but for some reason too many of us check our values of kindness and compassion at the door when it comes to employees “serving” us – flight attendants, food-service workers, etc. I don’t know how or when a bunch of us became entitled Karens, but it goes back decades. A guy I went to college with (early 90s) was the nicest guy in the world – until you got him out into public. He’d rage at servers over the most trivial of imperfections, treated grocery-store checkout people like third-class citizens, etc. A bunch of us had to hold an intervention and tell him that he would no longer be going into town with us as long as he kept acting like that.
I’ve always interpreted consumer rudeness as displaced frustration.
Often people have many stresses in their lives that they have to contain in many of their roles. Then they come upon someone who to them is not a relationship, just the role. The stress and anger elsewhere in their lives just comes out onto the to them relatively nameless placeholder. It helps some I think to recognize that it isn’t actually about you and that they may be having other problems we cannot fathom otherwise.
In my office setting in plays out as rudeness to front office staff and then sweet as can be when they get to the doctor. Those who are rude see the staff as the hoops they have to get through. And sometimes I can understand frustrations. I am a consumer too.
We can let them know that our staff must be treated with respect but often I think they honestly don’t remember doing anything that was rude or unjustified. We have zero tolerance for threats made of any sort and have dismissed families when such have occurred. Understanding that such may originate from other stresses is one thing but that is a red line.
I suspect similar dynamics play in all fields.