Pros
Freedom in the field and working with a great diverse group of real estate agents and their managers. Fellow field staff were also amazing.
Cons
Working in this role was honestly exhausting, frustrating enraging. I had to have anywhere from half an hour to an hour by myself, just to come down from the day before interacting with my wife and child. The way management operated made it really hard to feel valued or even respected. If you clocked in two minutes late, you’d get written up and slapped with a warning—no grace, no questions asked. I was put on five PIP's in the matter of 6 months! Every time you got called into the main office, you just knew it wasn’t good news. And when they suddenly asked me to start supporting office work—something I’d never done before—it was even more uncomfortable and confusing. Because I knew nothing of the main office infrastructure, I looked inept and incapable of performing my job as if I were a new IT support specialist!
The biggest issue, though, was the lack of support from leadership. I never felt like my manager had my back. While I understand people face mental health challenges—and I respect that—my manager’s behavior was wildly inconsistent. I later found out it was due to switching medications for bipolar disorder, but after a full year of constant ups and downs, things never got better. Eventually, I had to walk away for my own sanity, suddenly resigning. I lost two good work friends because of my actions too, but it was worth it in my opinion.
Micromanagement was out of control. They tracked everything: when you clocked in, went to lunch, clocked out. They even tracked your computer habits too! There was zero trust. They’d send you out of your region last minute, sometimes on a Friday, and expect you to fight rush hour traffic from places like Saint Charles—knowing it’d take two plus hours to get home. It felt like no one cared how that impacted us.
And don’t even get me started on travel pay. You had to drive 22.5 miles before you could even start claiming mileage, and then it was only $0.50 a mile. You had to play games with Google Maps to find the longest possible route just to try and get compensated fairly. It felt ridiculous.
To top it off, the pay was terrible—about $10,000 less per year than what others were making in similar roles. For the amount of work, the stress, and the lack of support, it just wasn’t worth it. I stuck it out as long as I could, but in the end, I had to move on. Thankfully I was able to image my computer and delete all my data.