The construction industry is unique in that we purposefully and dutifully work ourselves out of a job as fast as we can. That’s the goal. When a job is complete, the project team disperses across the company and new teams are formed. This constant churning allows me to become somewhat accustomed to change, not that the same nervous feeling ever goes away when it’s time to walk into a new office and meet my new team. I just know the rough order of events to come. I’ve come to expect the feelings that arise at the end of a project; uncertainty, anxiety, excitement.

Construction is a microcosm of life. A constant cycle of death and rebirth. To be able to start all over fresh on a new job is great. If I don’t get along with someone at work, I know that very soon we will go our own ways. If there’s something I want to change about the way I lead, I can implement it with new people who don’t know me on the next job. But if I’m on a good job working with genuinely good people, and it’s close to home, then the end of the job might not look so good. I might dread the end of the job and fear the unknown of what’s to come.

Construction Utopia Found

During the last 9 years, the construction industry in San Francisco has been booming out of its mind. Entire neighborhoods have risen skyward riding on waves of concrete and shiny glass.”The halls are empty. Do you know anyone who want’s to be a (fill in a trade) ’cause I can’t find anyone.” This is a common excuse my subcontractors like to say when they are behind schedule. While it might be frustrating to hear, it’s a very good problem to have.

People from all over the country have swarmed into the Bay Area with construction management and engineering degrees. They came in from all union trades too, all looking for a piece of the pie, from places like Las Vegas, Florida, and Texas. For the last 9 years, anyone who looked, found their utopian construction world. This became a place where there was always another job coming up.

Utopias are often only premature truths.

Alphonse De Lamartine

There’s always been a little tension and drama at the end of a job. It’s just part of the business. People get nervous. The uncertainty of next week’s paycheck becomes apparent. In the office they ask questions. They start digging through computer shared drives for estimated or awarded work. Carpenters start to look around for new cranes and fenced off excavation holes, maybe a few phone calls are made. But for the most part, this is just construction culture.

Just like a long bull market run, there was a feeling that the building cycle was due for a correction. What a curve ball this pandemic has been. It was like throwing a wrench into a humming engine. Not only has it impacted the world and construction for the short term, but it has changed the course of the economy, probably forever in some instances.

Owners can afford to wait and so are shielded from uncertainty

Why is it so important to continually purchase stocks and become part of the owner class? Because owners can afford to wait things out.

The pandemic has spooked private capital investments in ground up construction. It costs way more to build now with all the city and county mandated health requirements. There’s not a set cost for this, and owners hate an uncertain cost. Not to mention the whole uncertainty in the economy thing–who is going to be able to afford to use these new buildings? Owners are willing to wait it out, especially with the Fed indicating low interest rates won’t be going up anytime soon. It will still be cheap in the future to borrow money to build with (this is why inflation is important). With lots of jobs ending now and in the coming months, there’s not much on the horizon for 2021.

My old man was a carpenter. I remember being a kid and asking him: “What’s going to happen when all the buildings are built and everyone has a house? What will you build then, won’t you run out of work?”

“Mijo, they’re never gonna stop building. People like new things. They’ll just knock down an old building and build a new one.”

He’s right, they’ll never stop building. But they take breaks now and again.

2008

The first time I was laid off on a construction job, I was 25 years old and working on the Millennium Tower (that famous leaning tower in SF). It was April of that year and we were getting ready to pour the roof. The superintendent on that job called my old man and told him he had to let me go. So I knew it was going to happen, just not when. I remember the foreman of my crew, Jaime, coming back from one of the daily 6:30am foreman’s meetings . He had a look on his face as he opened up the gang box, and didn’t want to make eye contact with me. It was then that I knew this was going to be my last week.

Jaime had taken a liking to me. I asked questions. I sped walked everywhere I went. In the morning I was first at the gang box, and last to close it. I made sure to carry one more 2×4 than him no matter how many he threw up on his shoulder. So he started letting me work with him instead of doing the typical grunt apprentice work. We were on the pick up crew, building all the tricky time consuming stuff left behind by the production deck and vertical crews. Together we built forms and he taught me the details of the trade. So many tricks I have burned into my mind now, I learned on that job from that guy.

But not a word was said till Friday at lunch. We were eating lunch in silence. He’d brought the paper to work, and read the front page eating an apple while I dug through the sports section. We ate overlooking the bustle on Mission Street and he blurted out of nowhere:

“Yeah kid, we gotta let you go today. We can only keep one apprentice and they chose Tommy. You’re getting laid off, so don’t get all emotional. This is part of the business, okay? Be a man and go driving around looking for work on Monday.”

And like that, the Great Recession started for me.

Tommy, the other apprentice, was older in apprentice years and lazy…garbage in my mind, but he was the superintendent’s nephew. And so politics spins the world on a job site, they kept the nephew working for a few more weeks. Jaime gave me my checks once we rolled up for the day, and with my tool bags over my shoulder, he shook my hand and told me he’d hire me on the next one.

We’d never work together again.

So began a year’s odyssey of in and out of work that would find me having to move to San Diego in April of 2009 to get steady work.

But before moving south, I spent a year struggling to stay employed. For weeks after my layoff I woke up early, packed lunch, and drove around to any job I could find, only to find a dozen or more carpenters standing in line to sign the job’s out of work list. There were more guys standing at the job fence watching the work happen, than guys actually performing work on the other side of the fence. Every job I went to was like this. Driving around, crossing bridges, and parking meters started to take a big toll on my bank account. Looking for work is expensive and the uncertainty of it anxiety ridden.

And on top of this, cities started requiring that city residents be 50% of workers on a job site. They would randomly inspect jobs and check ID’s. Guess what? 99% of construction workers do not live in San Francisco or Oakland. What ensued was city residents “selling” use of their addresses so people could get ID’s and work in the city. I was able to use my uncle’s mother in law’s address, not that it helped me get a job, just made getting my mail difficult.

I finally made a call to a “door guy” I knew, to try my luck at interior work. And they took me on. I’d hung doors with these guys on my first project after the concrete was topped off. Interior carpenters are a “good ol’ boys club” if they like you. They liked me and thought I’d been crazy to want to go back to work outside in concrete the first time I left them. I felt like a prodigal son returning to them. I even went back to the Millennium Tower to hang doors.

Before long, we started flipping coins to see who would come in to work on certain days. Our superintendent made a deal to keep us all on, but we had to decide for ourselves who would work the reduced hours. I was young and single, so it didn’t hurt me to work just two days a week if I had to. But I saw the pain on the faces of the older carpenters, some of whom had families and were losing their houses, when the coin didn’t flip their way. More than a few times, I’d give my days to these older family guys.

“I don’t need it. It’s cool man.” I’d say. “Go ahead and take the work. I have plans anyway.” And even when I didn’t have plans, I knew I didn’t have kids. I could easily pop a top ramen for dinner if it came to it, or move back home if it got worse. My rent back then was low enough that I knew I only had to work 80 hours a month to make all ends meet. I could spare the hours.

Old carpenters

In the back of my mind, I also gave these guys my hours in the hopes that one day, it might be me on the other end. Flipping coins to see what my family might eat. There’s a respect in construction for the older guys. They’ve paid their dues. I remember on my very first job asking my dad about an older carpenter named Mel, who I thought sucked. He was slow, smelled of whiskey, and got a lot of the easier jobs. It seemed he wasn’t all the way there in the head either. Every movement of his body seemed to cause him great pain and conjure up a spell of cursing and grunting.

”I’ve known that guy for 25 years. He used to be really strong, one of the best deck guys in the company back in the 80’s. He’ll always have a job. We keep the old guys working, it’s what we do. One day you’re gonna be old and slow too, you know. You want them to throw you out ’cause you’re old?” My dad told me.

I didn’t know about FIRE back then, I thought I’d work till 65. So out of fear of becoming a “Mel” one day, I began to show more respect to him. I didn’t think of him as baggage and slowing us down. It’s the same when we build stuff, we don’t let the old guys climb or carry heavy material. They stay on the ground and cut.

Anyway, things didn’t get better work wise, till 2012. I got a phone call in the beginning of 2009 from my old company asking if I’d be willing to relocate to San Diego. They had work starting down there and wanted guys they knew on that job. So I went. I was able to move back to the Bay Area in 2011.

12/17/20

As I write this, I don’t know where I’ll be working after 12/16/20 of this year. My job is set to complete on this date. So 12/17/20 is a big question mark. It’s shrouded in fog at the moment. The big jobs are all but nonexistent for another year, that’s what the exec’s have told me at least. I’m not even working in my normal division. Since my last high rise finished in June, I’ve been transferred to the Tenant Improvement side, because there’s no work in ground up construction.

I just find it odd they haven’t told me where I’m going next. It’s been a long time since it’s been this close to the wire without knowledge of the next job. Since I made it into the office in 2015, I’ve always known months ahead of time where I’m going next. It’s a little nerve wracking, considering my company has laid off close to 200 salaried people, including “untouchables”. I’ve been told I made the cut and they’ll keep me busy in the TI side for at least another year till the big jobs kick off again. My only option is to believe them. The owners of my company are good guys and I want to believe they are fighting to keep us all working.

Being a carpenter, I’ve seen the cut throat side of construction. A construction where guys are canned for sneezing the wrong way, or not speaking the right language fluently. I’ve had to layoff plenty of good guys, go out and hand them their checks, because the numbers don’t add up. I’ve seen people lie to keep guys from leaving early, only to have to lay them off in the end. It’s this knowledge that keeps me a little nervous.

Janus would have been a fitting god of construction. Change and uncertainty are his specialties.

As I write this and think about the constant change that is inherit in construction, I can’t help but think of the two faced god Janus. In Roman religion, Janus was the god of change; transitions, doorways, and beginnings. He presided over the beginnings and endings of conflicts. I think he’d have been a fitting god of construction.

Whenever something out of our control occurs on a job, we jokingly attribute this to the “Construction Gods.” There’s even a legal term we use in our contracts to claim delay in the project schedule called a force majeure. In our contract, part of this actual verbiage is “an act of God”. So yes, there are gods in construction.

Just thought I’d throw some Roman deity reference in here for fun.

The coin of uncertainty

It’s funny to think that I crave uncertainty in some situations and hate it in others. There’s certain types of uncertainty that I love, like travel. Not knowing where I’m going to wake up in a few days time. What food I’ll eat. Who I’ll meet. What a brand new city will be like when I step foot into it. I love that kind of uncertainty. It’s a rush. And if I had it my way, my entire life would be chasing this uncertainty around the globe.

But when it comes to my salary, I hate uncertainty with a passion. It makes me feel so dependent on my employer, and I despise this feeling. This is what fuels my urge to deposit every spare penny I can into the stock market so that I can take back control. If I were laid off tomorrow, I have nearly 5 years of expenses saved up. So it’s not like being out of work would destroy me and I wouldn’t be able to pay bills and buy food.

Having savings is like wearing a life vest on a kayak in the winter. Yeah, I’m not gonna drown, but I don’t want to flip and get submerged into this frigid water either.

Alas, this uncertainty is what I accepted when I made construction a career choice. It’s the risk that allowed the big rewards I’ve enjoyed over the last decade. 12/17/20 is going to come whether I worry about what’s next or not. I can only keep my head down, work hard, and keep my resume ready, while diligently plotting on my eventual escape from the talons of an employer.

The coin of uncertainty is flipping through the air right now. Which way will it land?

How do/did you deal with uncertainty when it comes to your income? What’s your view on uncertainty in general? How did the Great Recession affect you and your livelihood?

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