Pros
The Apprenticeship offers a fantastic opportunity to gain a trade and valuable experience in a unique organisation at vastly different geographical locations. Travel; Installation work takes you all over the world, exposure to various cultures and communities. It looks great on a CV. Location; it's great for commuting by bike(although the facilities are a little lacking) and if you are lucky to have an office with a window then the views are nice. People; colleagues and co-workers all form one big (happy and dysfunctional) family.
Cons
Work/Lifestyle Balance; You know that Pro about Travel? Well it can be a Con when your given little warning about going overseas for a fixed time. Trips are regularly cancelled, rearranged or extended. Great if you're single but a hardship on a young family. Pay. As a trading fund FCOS follows the 1% paycap which effectively means a pay cut each year when factoring in inflation. Of course you can earn more when travelling overseas but that's at the detriment of your home life. And the Pay Band? That doesn't actually exist, you start at the bottom and it only increases in line with that 1% pay cap, NOT because of the increased experiance one has acquired year on year, the only way to seek a higher basic wage is promotion. Contractors; FCOS tends to get a contractor in and then keeps them FOREVER. Moving them around the organisation and changing job roles/titles to ensure they're kept on. Some of these guys have been around for more than a decade. And of course they're all on lovely day rates whilst the actual staff can only admire the nice suits and cars that the greenbadges can afford. Fixed Term Contractors; Similar to the contractors, except you'll find some quite high ranking personal fall into this category, whilst you could argue a high flyer won't work for the basic 'bottom of the band' pay I would argue that you can't manage a team effectively without actually being paid from the same pot and subject to the same trials and tribulations of that team. Otherwise that 'we're all in this together' kind of thing would sound really hollow... oh. Career Progression; FCO Services offers a full range of IT, Engineering, Technical and Support roles but a glass ceiling is reached within a few years in any discipline, progression at this point is not possible until a role becomes vacant (Dead Man's Shoes).