Pros
Weekly pay, great opportunities for bonuses via upselling (if the sales rep forgets a crucial item on the package, you can take his commission right out from under him on said item by adding it to their package after discussing it with the customer), the chance to travel to many parts of the country for work. Also a great way to learn many skills involving electrical and basic home repair.
Cons
Oh boy, where do I begin? Management will lie out their teeth to get you pumped for blitz trips and summer work seasons. Summer plays out like this: You'll be on call from 10am-2am. No matter how late the sales rep makes the sale, you're expected to show up and get the entire system installed, even if it could take hours (ie. Installing a 4 camera system by yourself starting at 1am when it could easily take 4-6 hours). Now if your equipment you installed isn't working (and trust me, it happens ALL THE TIME), then you're expected to do a follow up appointment or be randomly assigned an early morning service call. Now, you're not being paid for either of those since the customer gets 90 days of free service. Simply put...EVERY morning, until the sales team finally starts getting installs scheduled, you're working FOR FREE...EVERY MORNING. Now here's where it gets really bad. Remember how you're on call from 10am-2am? Well, you can't make your own schedule or decline an install. You WILL get push and prodded by your manager and expect to be treated like garbage from the sales team as to them, you're nothing. It's Monday-Saturday, and you WILL work over 60 hours (overtime isn't worth the pay either). Sunday will be your ONLY day off, so make it count or its straight back to another brutal 6 day work week. Now I bet you're thinking your paycheck will be amazing. Yes, you'll make over $1k a week easy, but after they take out taxes, rent, and utilities, that's about $400-600 cut from your pay every paycheck. And no, you won't see that money, even in your tax returns. It's insane how much money is cut from your paycheck...on top of the yearly pay cuts they force on the technicians to keep the sales team all cushy on cash (they'll make 4-5x's as much as you do for simply talking to a customer and making a sale). Of, and yeah, the sales team lies a TON. My personal favorite is when they say an install will take only an hour or two. If there's an outdoor camera or a large amount of sensors (and lets not forget signaling issues which happen on every other install), you'll be there for at LEAST 3 hours. Oh, and now Vivint REQUIRES you to get references...which is the sales reps job. Have fun doing their paperwork and basic job duties for no additional pay or rewards. It's not a job for someone with a family or a deep social life. You won't see your friends and family for half the year, Vivint WILL become your entire life during the summer months. It might seem exciting at first, but after dealing with all the headaches from faulty equipment, unforgiving sales reps /managers, no work/life balance, and getting huge pay cuts, it wears you down really quick. Oh, did I forget to mention that you're forced to use your own personal vehicle? They won't pay for gas (except for traveling to the town where you'll be living during the summer), if your car breaks down you're totally screwed and WILL have to pay out of pocket for repairs while you're not making ANY money (though honestly, it was nice to actually get a day off when it happened), and if your car is totally shot and unrepairable, you're stranded. As a Direct to Home technician, you're completely dependent on your personal vehicle surviving the 16k miles you'll put on your engine yearly (that was my personal mileage back in 2018). Vivint will NOT issue you a company vehicle. And last but not least, despite all the online training, you'll be thrown to the wolves. It took me a solid 20-30 installs to FINALLY have a solid workflow, but its only because we went through a TON of equipment changes (and they'll expect you to learn during your measly 8 hours of off time between on call...which is usually your time allocated for sleep) that kept things confusing. You'll ALWAYS be working alone, unless you have a good team that actually shows up to help the stragglers at the end of the night (or just nice enough to shop up and help during their downtime). When you're not working, you'll be sitting in your car, ready to get a dispatch at any given notice. Often I'd go without work for up to 6 hours, but some other days I'd be slammed all day. You'll be working EVERY holiday, even if sales are slow. Don't believe all the lies about "holidays are our busiest days," more than often they aren't because who wants a security system installed when a family is trying to enjoy a 4th of July cookout at home? That's the summer life. Sure, if you make it through, you DO get a tasty bonus check or two to ride you through the holidays. But...aside from summer, work will be insanely hard to come by. Aside from the occasional blitz week, Id' often go 2-8 weeks without a single dispatch. Service calls are a lifesaver, but no guarentees...plus they only pay $60-70 per dispatch (not hourly, flat payout).