Pros
- Educational opportunities. Extensive online learning in the AV industry and adjacent areas (such as IT and leadership), supplemented with frequent in-person classes. - Experience. If you work hard and apply yourself and put yourself out there, you can really learn a lot and get a lot of great production experience, including at high levels of production with 1000+ audience, extensive rigging, and high-end equipment. - Job security. They're always hiring. - Job mobility. People are always moving around within the company, causing positions to open up. - People. There are some awesome people working for this company, especially at lower management and below. - Great perks. The company is huge and there many, many perks if you take your time to dig through the Sharepoint and emails to find them. There are programs for corporate discounts, points-redemption, personal loans, overtime savings (automatically bank your overtime so that you can access it in slow seasons), etc.
Cons
- Certifications are internal only. The educational opportunities may be great, but they don't count for anything outside of Encore. There are no industry standard certifications available, only internal certifications. - Pay is not competitive. Granted, we're employees, not contractors. Even so, I think the pay is still too low, even at management. There's not much financial motivation to retain employees. Perks do not outweigh this. - Overworked on-seasons and neglected off-seasons. Granted, the industry itself is seasonal, but when I speak with people who work with other AV companies and share my experience from Encore, they are surprised at how overworked we are during season. I imagine this is partly to compensate for our low wages, but it is a very difficult life for most of the employees I talk to. As for the summers, there will be always be talk at annual meetings from management about how "this will be the year" when more hours are provided during the summer because of a new program. But many of the promises are left on the table. - Hiring decisions. Time and again, I've seen the obvious choice for a role (the responsible, experienced person working hard for the promotion) passed over in favor of someone else less qualified and other scenarios similar to that. I don't understand the rationale behind many of the decisions coming from higher management, and it seems that there is large disconnect between the upper management and the lower employees leading to a lot of ill decisions.