Pros
Good stepping stone to make your way into working in china long term. Many opportunities to meet new teachers from your city as well as get in contact with teachers outside of your city. If you're interested in teaching long-term, there are opportunities for advancement such as long distance courses in grammar, lexis, lesson planning, coaching, and intro to management. There is also an opportunity to obtain the Certtesol and Diptesol (very competitive course to get into especially beijing). Upon arrival, your visa and travel fees will be refunded, might take one or two months for you to receive the refund. You are also entitled to a 10,000 yuan bonus to help with apartment hunting. Over the course of 4 or 5 pay cycles they will deduct this from your pay check.
Cons
Each experience is dependent on the environment of your center. For my center, we were quite small in size. There was no clear line of management so when we had an issue, no one knew how to properly handle the scenario. Accounts of racism would often occur that would be targeted towards the international teachers and management would sweep these cases under the rug. All teachers at our center were at maximum teaching capacity, but marketing still opened up more classes. We would often not have a lunch break to properly eat and refuel. There was absolute zero time to properly lesson plan or grade tests. Most of the teachers would often be "winging it" in the classroom resulting in poor teacher-student learning quality. The company is also very strict regarding public holidays. You will not have regular national holidays off compared to other companies in China. You will have to work non-production days to catch up on administration tasks. These days are far and few between and makes it difficult to properly immerse yourself in the culture by celebrating holidays with the rest of the local community. Overall, you are worked hard and you will not see a reward for this (other than seeing the learning outcome of your students). The pay is not as substantial as to make up for what you are giving up. They do promise bonuses around the time of your 5 month appraisal, winter academy, and summer academy, but the company gets away with paying you less for the amount of work you put in.
