Pros
Chances are, you're about to meet the greatest manager you've ever met in your life. Odds are, you're in good hands on the branch level. I cannot stress enough, at the *branch level,* things like culture, communication, teamwork, empowerment, accountability, empathy, support, etc. are all outstanding. Whether you're working sales or production, there's a very high chance you're going to have a great bond with your team and you'll feel a real sense of accomplishment at the end of a successful season. I always felt supported in my branch by both my teammates and my managers.
Cons
Communication between Support Center and the branches is dismal at best. There are a handful of people at the Support Center level who really do love what they do and genuinely care about who they work with. It's easy to figure out who those people are once you meet them. For the rest of them, the constant issue is the assumption that communication has taken place. Nobody really ever knows what's going on or why, changes come down suddenly and very late, essential groups are often completely left out of the loop. It's hard to keep up with what's going on because it feels like no one ever tells you until it's already happening. Deadlines are poorly communicated, too, which obviously causes a lot of problems for whoever is working on the project. Aside from communication, there's no accountability from Support Center. If something goes wrong, there's never an apology. In the last couple years, paychecks were routinely sent to the wrong branches. People had to wait over the weekend to get paid. No one apologized. They just told the other branch to send it overnight. This kind of thing is a regular occurrence and there just never seems to be any kind of accountability or even acknowledgment of a pretty big mistake. If you work on the W2 side, you have to accept that you're a salaried employee who's probably going to be putting in more than 40 hours. From project manager to admin, when things get busy in a high performing branch, it's really difficult to complete everything you need to do in an 8 hour work day. Which is actually a really good transition into the pay and bonus structure for the W2 side. The salaries aren't great, and as an admin, your workload is more like an administrator and less like an administrative assistant. But administrative assistant is your title and your salary range. The bonus compensates for the salary, if you actually get it. Over the last couple years, they've been delayed at the last minute, delayed to the following month, delayed to the next calendar year, delayed to Spring, and then after some changes to employee numbers, were finally paid out. If you do get the bonus, it is a very generous bonus. Training is something that just doesn't really exist within the company. There's no one who's an official trainer, so everyone does things a little bit differently, but differently enough that everyone's processes are different. So what works in one branch won't work in another. It's hard to learn your job, because even the written job training material is outdated. The development team has worked really hard to get those resources up to date, but it's hard to do that when job duties constantly change with little to no warning, and some job positions don't even have clear-cut responsibilities. Lastly, the company is too focused on expansion. Established branches are often in small, cramped spaces with more employees than offices and no storage space. New branches are being put into buildings that could house two of the larger branches. There's no focus on training, and so much energy goes into the new branches and their markets that the established branches struggle to get any kind of support or assistance.