Family ties (usually to city inspectors lol)

I’m in that industry.

Walked out of a job, went to a bar, talked about walking out of my job to random people at the bar, one of whom offered me a temp job. One of my co workers at the temp job had an old friends who was looking for an employee, and like that I was hired.

Small family run business that’s been doing it for decades, not many people do it so you tend to run into the same people doing related work, engineers, installers etc all the time. A lot of internal drama, often if you get on the wrong side of a city employee they will make it difficult for you to get things permitted. Or often previous owners had unfinished permits, violations which make things more complicated.

Overall it’s an easy job that pays OK and my office in particular is closed whenever the Department of Buildings is closed, we work pretty much all remote, and by 3PM it gets quiet and I can more or less sign off.

I have also learned why projects like these can take so long to get approved and why they seem like a scam. If you’re doing an inspection, often the client, business owner, property owners, engineers, property electrician, general contractors, people who provide lifting trucks, city inspectors all have a stake and need to be present to ensure things go smoothly on all ends. One person missing the inspection might fuck the entire inspection up if they forgot to point something out and now you have to reschedule ALL those people and it costs thousands more suddenly. And the city inspector is pissed they have to come back again so they will find a way to give you a hard time or ignore you.