Pros
The only pros are technical training which helps when applying for a new job and free television service. Also they have paid holidays and health benefits.
Cons
Yes they have paid holidays, but good luck getting one off. If a holiday falls on your normal work day, you have to work or be written up. If you call in on the holiday, the day before, or the day after you lose your holiday pay. I worked in their call center for 4 years, and worked Christmas every year until I managed to get off the call floor and into a higher position. They force you to work overtime on their schedule, and if you can't they write you up. It doesn't matter if you have a family or prior commitments. They have mandatory shift bids, where they tell you the shifts they have available and force everyone into a new shift. You're allowed to rank the shifts in order that you prefer them, but will never get your first or even second choices. It seems like they just draw them out of a hat, as it never seems to matter what your performance is like as an employee or how long you've been there. You are expected to get there regardless of weather conditions. When a new piece of equipment comes out, you're often thrown into troubleshooting it without getting proper training. The health insurance they provide sucks, and actually has additional clauses for things they won't cover that are specific to Dish, even with the most expensive plan they offer. If you manage to make it to QA, which should be a better job, you are still forced into the mandatory overtime, even though it is a salary position. While you are paid for the hours of overtime you work as QA, you are paid what the employees refer to as "Chinese Overtime"; where you are actually paid a smaller percentage of your pay for each additional hour that you work. It quickly dwindles down to as low as $2.00 an hour. Their tech support agents are expected to sell on every call, even if the issue is not resolved. This only makes customers irate. Criticizing the company will get you fired, which discourages constructive feedback from employees. Speaking negatively about the company, their software, their policies or procedures is considered a non-negotiable. On the books this is called "making disparaging remarks". This includes when speaking with other employees, managers, or customers.
