Berkshire Hathaway is a company that specializes in real estate.
This company is a real estate brokerage franchise network that is designed to help people in the real estate market.
Their team consists of real estate agents, developers, and many others.
They value trust, stability, integrity, longevity, and work that is at a high standard.
Berkshire Hathaway holds themselves and their employees to those standards.
Below you will find some of the pros and cons current and past employees have had about working for Berkshire Hathaway.
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Pros of Working for Berkshire Hathaway
Below are some of the pros of working for Berkshire Hathaway.
1. Training is adequate
Berkshire Hathaway has great training and continuing education opportunities.
Most employees say that they felt like they could do the job well after they were done training.
This might be location specific though, because a few employees have said that they didn’t have great training.
However, the majority of employees say that the training was good and they had opportunities to further their education and training as well.
If there was a struggle to understand something on the job, employees say they helped explain and show what needed to happen.
2. Career development opportunities
According to employee reviews, there are many opportunities to further develop your career.
You aren’t stuck in one position with one pay.
Employees can easily move from one position to another as long as they have work experience and good ratings.
Berkshire Hathaway also offers continuing education courses to help employees further develop their careers.
Employees can use these options to get higher up on the ladder, which can lead to a bigger paycheck.
We can all agree that career development opportunities that lead to bigger paychecks can be a huge pro to any job.
3. Berkshire Hathaway is filled with great people to work with
A positive to any place of work is the opportunity to work with nice people.
Nice people in the work environment can bring great productivity and positivity to the workplace.
If you are consistently surrounded by negative people in the workplace, your productivity tanks.
Most employees who work for Berkshire Hathaway agree that the people at Berkshire Hathaway treat each other with respect and professionalism.
4. The benefits are great
A company needs to take care of its employees.
Some of the ways a company can support its employees are payment and benefits.
Studies have shown that employers who offer good benefits have employees with higher morale and better productivity than those without good benefits.
Employees have reported that Berkshire Hathaway has plenty of good benefits, and treats its employees well.
While most employees have reported good benefits, some locations do not have as many good benefits as others do.
5. Management is supportive
The management in most locations seems to be pretty good according to most employee reviews.
Employees say that management has gone above and beyond to meet their needs without making them feel like they are completely expendable and replaceable.
Like with most jobs, this seems to be a location-specific pro.
Some employees have reported less than favorable conditions when it comes to management support.
6. Good work-life balance
Unlike some jobs, Berkshire Hathaway provides a great balance between work and life.
Most employees can agree that they have a decent amount of freedom when it comes to their work, which means that they can create a good balance between their work and other parts of their lives.
Unfortunately, many jobs demand so much time from their employees that they aren’t able to achieve a good work-life balance and are often forced to choose between their job and their other commitments.
7. Flexible hours
It is always nice to find a job that gives you a lot of flexibility in hours.
You can make your own schedule that leaves room for your family life and other commitments that you might have.
Some employees have said that Berkshire Hathaway allows you to create your own schedule as long as you get your work done without management breathing down your neck.
Many employees say that it is a nice change from previous jobs where they were forced to work countless hours with management micromanaging every single move.
Cons of Working for Berkshire Hathaway
Here are some of the cons that employees have of working for Berkshire Hathaway.
1. Pay is based on commission rather than salary
Just like with most jobs in the real estate business, Berkshire Hathaway pays its employees on commission instead of a regular salary.
In case you don’t know what that means, commission is when someone gets a certain percentage of the sales that they make.
For example, when a real estate agent makes a sale on a house, they get a certain percentage of that sale as their payment.
Unfortunately, this type of payment plan can get very unpredictable.
You might have great pay one month, but then another month you can barely pay all of your bills.
Many employees would rather have a regular salary than be paid on commission.
2. The company favors agents over other positions
Berkshire Hathaway is made up of more than just real estate agents.
While many employees have praised the company for being really good to their employees, some employees were left feeling that they were treated negatively.
Most of the employees with negative feelings about how they were treated were the ones that worked in other areas besides as real estate agents.
The claim is that if you are an agent, then the company will bend over backwards for you.
If you are a developer or something else, then they don’t really care about or value you.
3. Too many agents
As mentioned above, Berkshire Hathaway seems to value its real estate agents over everything else.
Because of this, the company is over-saturated with agents.
With too many agents, the work is spread thinner, meaning that you might not have enough work to keep you afloat.
Without enough work, employees can’t pay their bills on time, and they leave to find a job where they can get paid enough to pay all of their bills and support their lifestyle.
This leads to a high turnover rate for the company.
4. High turnover rate
Due to the unpredictability of pay and the favoring and oversaturation of agents, there is a relatively high turnover rate.
What this means is a high number of employees are leaving the company to work elsewhere, creating a continuous need to keep hiring more employees.
Unfortunately, the company uses more resources for hiring that could be spent elsewhere, such as for current employees and supplies.
5. Poor communication
Many employees feel that communication is contradicting between managers and other staff members.
Unfortunately, that leaves many employees feeling frustrated and confused.
They don’t know who to listen to when getting directions.
Employees might also get in trouble if they follow the wrong directions or advice due to miscommunications and contradictions.
Unfortunately, the employees are the ones to get in trouble rather than the person who originally caused the miscommunication.
6. Layoff risk
Because there are so many agents in the company, the position is over-saturated.
Too many agents means that the company has to lay some of them off due to there being too many agents for the amount of work that is available.
If you are an agent, you either have too little work to keep you afloat or else you fear losing your job due to layoffs.
Unfortunately, agents aren’t the only ones being laid off.
Sometimes, Berkshire Hathaway will lay off people in some administrative departments and combine roles and positions so that they can pay less for the same amount of work.
7. High fees/commission split
As a real estate agent, you get paid a commission on sales rather than a salary.
Unfortunately, Berkshire Hathaway takes a large percentage, leaving you with a smaller cut of commissions.
Other real estate companies don’t take as high of a cut, meaning that the agents get better pay.
Many employees agree that Berkshire Hathaway should take a smaller percentage of the commission to remain competitive with surrounding companies.
Despite the high fees or commission split, some employees are relatively happy with the pay that they are receiving for their work.
14 Pros and Cons of Working for Berkshire Hathaway – Summary Table
| Pros of Working for Berkshire Hathaway | Cons of Working for Berkshire Hathaway |
|---|---|
| 1. Training is adequate | 1. Pay is based on commission rather than salary |
| 2. Career development opportunities | 2. The company favors agents over other positions |
| 3. Berkshire Hathaway is filled with great people to work with | 3. Too many agents |
| 4. The benefits are great | 4. High turnover rate |
| 5. Management is supportive | 5. Poor communication |
| 6. Good work-life balance | 6. Layoff risk |
| 7. Flexible hours | 7. High fees/commission split |
Should You Work for Berkshire Hathaway?
It depends on what position you are applying for as to whether or not you should work for Berkshire Hathaway.
If you are in an administrative or development position, you might have other job requirements due to the combining of roles.
This means that you might have to do a lot more work with less pay.
If you are applying as a real estate agent, you might receive better treatment due to management favoring real estate agents over other roles.
As an agent, you will be paid on commission rather than salary, which can either be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the season and how successful you can be.
