Pros
As a young aspiring Mechanical Engineer, they provided an avenue to learn a lot of things about the HVAC field that were not learnt in college.
Cons
They force you to stay in the "training program" for a full year, yet do not have any real program or guidelines. They promised a detailed, month-by-month training regimen during my interview, with no such delivery. The "training jobs" were just to do the ductwork and piping estimation on any new projects that came in. There was no structure at all to the training program, and the year-long time frame was rather unnecessary. As a Mechanical Engineer, I was doing work that did not require any Engineering knowledge or background, and several of my co-workers had no engineering background whatsoever. There is no need to hire a Mechanical Engineer for this position, unless they are going to pursue a career in design within Control Air's design sub-company, OED. Although, OED is a very small company and rarely has a position open, and has extremely low-quality work output. The other option for an engineer is to go the Pre-Construction route. This is not a bad alternative, but again, this is a very small section of the company, so there is limited space/opportunities there, and little hope for pay increase. Also, the pay was very low, and the benefits were extremely disappointing. 1 week of vacation per year, 40 hours of sick leave were offered for the first 5 years, along with poor health insurance policies. There seemed to be a high turnover rate of employees within the estimating department. Also, I found out that there was no pay-structure at all either. I found out that almost every other employee in the training program had a different compensation, and once out of the training program, I found that employees would only receive a nominal pay increase after they complete another "probationary period" of 90 days, which was already necessary to go through in order accrue vacation days, when first hired.