Hi, I am new to this forum but here are my observations on this topic.
The first company I worked for that branched into this field (from satellite sales/installation) pretty much did exactly what studiocats1 said, promise the world and dump it in the installers lap to make it happen. The salesman made all the money on the job and was not held responsible for anything that went wrong, which in most cases was because the system was not designed properly from the start. The installer made crap for a living on the job, was forced to use his own resources to make the job work and whenever he submitted an expense report (for things like adapters, plugs, drywall compound etc) the report was thoroughly checked over and it was established that nothing on the report was needed at the job to make it work and they would thereby not compensate the money that came out of my pocket to make the job work.
The second company I worked for offered me $16 hour and a company truck (which was always on order and never actually showed up along with the fuel card I was supposed to receive). Also they told me I would be the lead tech and get a raise in a couple of months depending on how things worked out. After I was hired four other techs were hired and all of them told the same thing. Naturally each of us were trying to be the more assertive on the job site and of course this created some pretty serious conflicts on the site (not very professional I assure you). I heard from several of the companies customers whose accounts I had taken over that they were upset by the number of technicians that had worked on their system. They could never maintain a relationship with a real installer that knew their system and how it worked. Among a dozen other problems that plagued the place (ex: the owner spent 3 of the 6 months I worked there on vacation and nobody could order any equipment while he was out of town).
The next company I worked for had relationships with several large scale spec builders (they built a lot of row houses rather than a few custom houses) and they offered a very unusual (to me) way of compensation, part hourly wage and part piece pay. They had a lot of business running through there and I immediately identified a dozen problems with the processes they were using that if fixed would make their jobs go more smoothly with less problems, take less time and produce better results. Number one they did not really have a system, number two they were not tracking their work in a managable database and the BIG number three there was no management positions in the company whatsoever. No project managers, not operations manager and no one kept track of inventory. (the warehouse was insane) As a result everything was a complete cluster****. Jobs would get missed, installers were getting charged back 5 and 6 times what they were getting paid per piece and were never allowed to correct their own mistakes (until I forced them to allow me to correct my own) Almost nobody was actually trained on how to do anything and as a result I found some of the work being done out there to be substandard to the extreme (a couple of the guys were really good I have to say) and this company did not follow through with one of the largest captive client bases I have ever seen, they did not sell hardly any product whatsoever! The salesmen had little to no clue what is available out there in the market and therefore did not sell anything but basic security systems and the occassional central vac (blech!)
The last company I worked for had several problems that finally led me to believe they were only accredited on paper and had little to no experience in the field and were charging outrageous prices for stuff they had no idea how to assemble. They offered me a pathetic pay scale (but the opportunity is terrific! donchano...) and asked me to get my LV license to allow them to do business in restricted areas (in the city it is required to have this license but in the suburbs it is not) and have since offered me nothing but critisim about my completion rate (which has been largely spent cleaning up their previous work, not a small task I might add) Misappropriation of funds, a job was collected on but the equipment was not ordered now that the time has come to install the equipment there is nothing available to install and a host of other problems too lengthy to get into.
So speaking from experience I can say there are a lot of crappy companies out there that are too greedy to do business the right way and pay their installers what they are actually worth. I love my job and the career I have chosen however I find that it is almost not worth it to continue in this business just because there are not any good companies out there to work for. Speaking for myself (though I think I might be speaking for a lot of installers out there) if I were being paid well and the jobs were actually being designed properly and ordered up without changes (other than what was ordered by the client) I would be very happy making a solid average wage. I also think that too many people are not willing to look past themselves to see that an installer might actually have a few good ideas that would make or save the company money and time.
It is a shame to me that this industry is getting so screwed up in its infancy by so many bad companies and bad installers like these and others.
Sorry so long and so many incomplete descriptions.
