Pros
Good pay, featuring commission bonuses and good benefits. The training was very comprehensive and thorough and prepared me well for the job. Additionally, there are great opportunities to learn the industry, whether you’re a real estate guru or fresh out of college looking to expand your knowledge base.
Cons
The word “micromanagement” doesn’t come close to describing the extent of what a control freak the CEO is. Every key stroke of your computer, every square inch your company car travels, every step you take in the office, is monitored. Making matters worse, the CEO appoints robots to all C-level and VP-level positions who will do nothing but say “yes sir,” do his bidding, and take their paychecks. Being reasonable and logical simply did not interest him or the people below him. One of the many examples of this was when he ordered an all-hands call where we were explicitly told to pay attention and take notes by our managers, and he proceeded to talk about how awesome he was for precisely seven hours and four minutes (I timed it). That cost me my entire day, and the next day I was reprimanded because I snapped up zero leads and my car barely moved. Another such example came when he ordered every single field researcher to report to their closest office and sit in a conference room for the totality of a four-hour lecture at a business conference, all for five seconds of air time to his audience in which we waved and demonstrated his company’s might. This conference lasted our whole day, diminishing productivity, and in two of my colleagues’ cases, directly costing them bonuses for falling short of their monthly quota by wasting three-quarters of an entire day. Making matters worse, not only is the CEO a control freak, he changes his mind on a whim, and it affects absolutely everybody- up to and including fear of employee discipline for not instantaneously adapting to the new changes. The job duties that had appealed to me when I first took the job devolved to become about 15% similar within twelve months. He also randomly decided one day that the team of field research managers were too lenient in dealing with their team of researches, too friendly and tolerant, and needed to lay down the law more. So within a two month span, every single manager was either replaced by someone who would happily lick the CEO’s boots, or transformed into a bootlicker themselves. I’m not saying that literally every single thing about the company is awful- if you can handle all of that, this company will pay you well and give you great health insurance. But at least for me, it’s simply not a stable work environment.