Pros
I worked at the corporate headquarters -- not a franchise -- so I was exposed to all aspects of the real estate business without having to actually be a real estate agent. This is a company that puts its money where its mouth is in terms of living up to 'work / life balance' and philanthropic efforts. At the corporate office (internally referred to as KWRI) the agents are the primary customer, and the customer is king. A lot of people are confused by the profit sharing model used as employee incentive at KWRI, but its a pretty straight forward distribution of profits based on performance in a privately held company. Profit sharing at the agent level is another story, as it involves recruiting and getting other agents in your 'tree'. For a mid-level employee I felt I had almost unfettered access to management (all the way to Gary Keller himself) which helped in making me and my peers feel valued. There was always a strong emphasis on KW education -- studying the MREA, MREI etc. and all the processes that go with it. I wouldn't call it portable knowledge, but useful none-the-less.
Cons
Upper management is made up almost exclusively of stellar former agents and team leaders. While these people are probably brilliant in their former jobs, that doesn't always translate well when they move into corporate positions. From a personality aspect, these are entrepreneurs easily distracted by bright shiny things and often not appreciative of reality checks. The IT department, in particular, has suffered from continually shifting priorities and unreasonable expectations (not to mention general lack of understanding) from executives. Strong personalities = high drama, probably more so than any other corporate setting I've been in (which is about 5). Any one who cares to be successful here must be very good at navigating political waters. But there are plenty of people who don't care to be successful, they just care that they have a job -- so they keep their head down and never ever rock the boat. The funny thing is that KW is big on personality profile testing and trying to translate what that means in any given position. Best advice I could give would be to be honest with yourself as to what kind of worker you are, and don't kid yourself about what you're getting into here.
