Pros
Occasionally get to work with advanced equipment, though the jobs rarely go well or are organized sufficiently to learn anything.
Cons
Before I left, they were discussing firing an employee for going on maternity leave... Not sure if they did, because they fired me next, a month after a positive performance review—at least I got a settlement. Overall below average pay with above average responsibility and lots of surprise overtime to make up for management mistakes. They promised all kinds of training and raises once training is complete, but then never provided the training or raises. They provided the bare minimum to operate on each job-site, to keep the employees value on the open job market as low as possible. My Title was "Installation Technician," but most of my job was project management of projects as big as $1.5 million dollars, though I was paid just $21 an hour. They keep the "Technician" title to justify underpaying and making it harder for me to use that experience to go to another employer. On one construction job site for a major web company, I asked around and found out that I was the lowest paid person on the entire site! Every drywaller, carpenter, electrician, painter, carpet guy, cable guy was making more than me, even my own team of subcontractors. Only the high school drop-out garbage boy was making less than me, yet I had to meet with the owner, the heads of all trades, and the architect from Los Angeles, to manage the very AV-heavy project. Other companies pay as much as $10 an hour more and have much better working conditions. Almost any company, in any trade, will pay better than Applied Electronics. The working conditions are worse than claimed in the interview. You are required to work out of town for days without notice. They even tried to make us go to a Central American narco-state to install an AV system in an area where foreigners were being kidnapped by guerrillas… seriously. The low-wage of $21 an hour is not worth my life--or yours. One day, I was sent out of town just for the afternoon but was then told to stay there for days, purely because of bad management, forgetting or refusing to plan anything. On the way back the other technician was driving drunk at 160km/h, so I got fired a few days later. I don’t miss this company. Some of the technicians were talented and good people, but then they left. I was constantly fighting an internal battle to keep quality levels up. I had to fight to convince others to clean up their mess on job sites for high-end companies, so I wasn't very popular. The most basic level of professionalism was lacking, and just about everything was “good enough.” The management culture is toxic and they think management is being able to tell everyone what to do, and don't understand that they should know what to do, first. Technicians are sent to job-sites without contacting any other trades for an update on their progress--ever. I have never worked for a company so incapable of project management in my life. I have worked with the best in the industry and I know my manager couldn't get an entry level job there as a shipper/receiver. When the jobs I managed went better than expected, under budget, and superbly efficient, the manager would take me off the job and take over himself--after the hard parts were done--and then take credit to head office for MY work and project management. I would then be put on his nightmare debacles to clean up his failure and then he would tell head office it was my project and I caused the problems!!! A sales guy was so intimidated by me that he set me up to be fired (though I made it though their trap). I was told to demo a Smart Board to a big law firm downtown, even though I had little experience on Smart Board use and others were experts... They trained me on the wrong kind of Smart Board that had completely different functionality to the customer's board that I would be teaching about--on purpose--hoping I would have a meltdown in front of the customer from the stress, so they could fire me. HR hired me hoping I would take over the department and leap-frog my boss and a salesperson, but then filtered all communication to HR/head office through the very guy they wanted me to secretly replace *face-palm* I can't think of a worse way to do business and treat employees. Everything was underhanded, dishonest, and often flat-out illegal. Did I mention they were discussing firing the secretary for getting pregnant? Perhaps that level of misconduct is worthy of a second mention. Don't plan on a long term career here, and avoid this company at all costs if you can. You deserve better than Applied Electronics.