Pros
Good experience if you want to be a financial planner. 40 hours/week, nothing more or less. Time off, benefits, and HI were high quality. Pay is what you would expect for an entry-level financial analyst position after college, but it never goes up with performance or tenure. Great place to get paid to train, take certification exams, get some experience, and then leave for better opportunities.
Cons
Pay is stagnant. They talk about career progressions and promotions constantly but it's all an illusion, as it takes 3-5 years at a minimum to move up a level and your income never changes (except for a 1-3% increase each year) during that time. Even when you get promoted you are still capped out at a 75k/year total compensation (base and bonus) structure (takes many years to get to that cap) in this department. This coaching role at Ayco is really just a stepping stone to gather experience to ultimately leave Ayco, since there is no long-term career for a coach at Ayco that is financially feasible. Accordingly, the turnover is ridiculously high, which should tell you everything you need to know. My team had about 15 people in my region when I started and every last one had left Ayco within two years. Even during that two-year time frame, many people joined and left shortly thereafter. The biggest con is the universal, stagnant pay... every coach gets paid the same (within 5k margin) regardless of performance or experience. Some coaches may perform consistently at a 10% rate compared to other high-performing coaches , but get paid the same as the high-performing coach. However, since turnover is so high, they will never get rid of the poor-performing coaches. Therefore, it seems like the culture is a competition to do as little as possible, but just enough to not get fired (which they would never do). Coaches that actually stick around long enough to understand the compensation will gradually transition into doing as little as possible at work while they look for a new job. Management and the internal accounting system are extremely antiquated. You can only get promoted at the end of the year and your pay can only change at the beginning of the year. If you are on the verge of promotion and don't get it, then you have to wait a year before being considered again. Internally, the organic, progressive career path for a coach would lead to the team leader position. The team leader runs a team of coaches. I have heard from prior team leaders that their pay is still very low (capped at 75k maybe). Additionally, there are very few team leaders for the coaches and very little opportunity for a new team leader position to open up. However, when a team leader position opens up, it seems like Ayco will hire some externally to fill the role, instead of the hundred-plus coaches looking for promotion (even though some coaches are very qualified and tenured). Very little collaboration. You pretty much just take calls and satisfy your appointments all day, every day once you are out of training. There is very little teamwork and plenty of isolation if you don't create opportunities to meet and socialize with your colleagues. High burnout rate from doing the same thing over and over again all day. Nothing ever changes meeting-to-meeting, day-to-day, week-to-week, etc...