Pros
Great with the visa, they'll sort you out even if you don't have a degree or are working towards one etc. Meet some fantastic people all in the same boat and its a cool office atmosphere most of the time with good vibes. Management mostly leave you alone and are hands off (barring one or two individuals) Materials provided and lessons plans proivded (with a catch) Some schools are fantastic and the students can be really lovely that you'll look forward to seeing them every week! Front desk staff are lovely and always willing to help if you need something for your classes even at the last miniute due to disorganisation from the aboves! Great overall for a starter or temporary ESL job in Thailand
Cons
Eh. Yeah. Unfortunately there are a couple of those in the office that have let the power get to their heads a little too much. Especially a certain TT that's dating one of the foreign trainers. Very nasty individual and one of the main reasons I left. Lesson Plans - although provided, you'll be made to write them out again manually for absolutely no reason or purpose at all but for keeping you "busy" and for power tripping trainers to nitpick and criticize. Schools - Unfortunately FL is just focused on money and doesn't listen to it's teachers. Some of the schools I worked at very much bowed to the parents at every need and some of the kids were very spoilt which showed in their overall attitudes. The work - It's basically another kindy farm. You're there to be the happy clappy babysitting monkey dancing foreigner. Some of the schools homeroom teachers literally sigh a huge relief and run for the door as soon as you arrive or they dump the kids into your room early. You chase toddlers around with plastic hammers and sing ridiculous songs. No actual language teaching takes place unfortunately. The hours - 8 hour day they say? Great! Wrong. You'll often be pulling 10 hour days or more due to horrendous travel times and the office demanding meaningless braindead work be done (i.e. the lesson plan re-writing, I stopped doing this and refused after a while). It means you'll be too burned to actually do anything after work and you'll be spending your weekends catching up on sleep from those 5am alarms. Not much of a life at all, context I never left Bangkok during my whole time here due to the lack of money and utter burnout. Not what I call a good experience in Thailand. I didn't come to Thailand to live to work (I could have easily done that back in my home country), I came here to work and experience the culture, however FL seems very inconsiderate of this entirely.