Pros
The people. Seriously, ARC has a wealth of potential in terms of the people they have working for them. If you're not already aware, ARC is a company made up of acquisition of many smaller, privately owned print shops all over the country. When they scooped up these various companies, they also took on their employees, good and bad. The great part about this is that they acquired numerous employees who have a great degree of experience in their various fields. The people I got to work under and with during my tenure with ARC are some of the best and brightest in their respective fields, and are also some of the best people I've had the privilege of meeting and knowing in my life. Hell, my former direct boss is still a good friend of mine. Unfortunately, that's where the positives end.
Cons
Due to ARC's poor corporate structure, this company is slowly crumbling. Each geographical area has multiple COOs leading to there simply being too many hands involved in the same projects. When I first got on in 2012, they seemingly realized this and thinned the herd, but still left a number of people in upper management positions whose jobs were entirely redundant. What this resulted in was too many people making unreasonable demands with little to no know how of the respective fields they demanded results from. Meanwhile, the rest of the company suffers from being understaffed, and underpaid. Personally in my experience, I was expected to perform general desktop support/IT duties for a regional area stretching about 70 miles as the crow flies (10 different shops) in addition to supporting every client ARC rents a printer to (literally hundreds, if not thousands of customers) in that same regional area due to (despite numerous claims the company was hiring more people to support the clients in that respective area) there being quite literally no one else in that regional area to perform said task. Oddly enough, there was formerly 2 people doing that one job, but one left for another print company while the other was transferred up farther North upon my hiring. In summary, I was expected to do the job of 2 separate people, as well as perform all IT duties supporting over 50 employees at 10 different office locations, all while paying me under the average salary rate if I was just performing printer support for their respective clients. Initially I accepted their salary offer as I was under the impression advancement opportunity was there, but shortly after my hiring, many layoffs squashed thoughts of the aforementioned. This wouldn't even be all that bad if in addition to that, there wasn't also the constant interference with people sitting in corporate who hardly know how to turn on a computer making decisions about how a network should be established, or what provider the company should go with to support an SIP system, all without ever actually consulting the IT department. Because logic. After a bit over 2 years of being stretched thin, my "time" with ARC happily ended. The ship is sinking, and it's sinking fast.
