Lets begin with work/life balance, or lack there of. It's strength is also its weakness, while having lots of opportunity to work is great (especially at first when you may have been out of work) this boon quickly fades when you are forced to work at minimum 57 hours per week when things are busy (during my 14 months there were only 2 months that had sub 50 hour weeks). Even still this may not sound all that terrible but combine that will 100+ degree weather resulting in 140+ degree attics, and your will find yourself completely drained at the end of every day with only enough energy to fall asleep and come back to do it the next day. Make no mistake, you will live to work while being a prem tech.
Then there is the job itself. You will be expected to perform an incredibly vast array of duties, 95% of which were not outlined in the job description and/or you received zero training on their proprietarian systems. Thereupon, you will be "metric'd" to death. At&t has a metric for EVERYTHING you can possibly imagine, and no they do accurately reflect quality or efficient work as the second line manager would have you believe. You will learn to play the metrics game and learn to cheat them or you will never last, they can't fire you for low numbers, but they can make you want to quit. The turnover is outrageous, of the 8 people i went through training with, only 3 were still there 6 months later; and of the 165 techs in Austin less than 15% have been there over a year. Why?! Because it's a terrible job.
And if you think you can avoid all the BS and just get through and move on you're wrong. There are techs that have been there for 6 years that can't move up. People would get written up for things without warning in an effort to police the workforce in some strange and perverted authoritarian manner. Really avoid this job if you can.
I could really keep going but I think my point is made.
