Pros
ALC is a wonderful place to work if you are just getting started in ABA. As a behavior technician, you will get a healthy, robust education in how to use ABA; you will be trained thoroughly and given plenty of opportunities to ask questions and to learn more; ALC also offers compensation for a graduate degree through Bay Path University and will work with you and your cohort to keep you working 40 hours a week while also being able to maintain your class schedule. You'll get a first class education and background in what it means to be a good, ethical, and effective behavior technician as an employee at ALC. Although I am not a BCBA, from what I can tell, ALC is also a wonderful place to get started as a BCBA. ALC will help you become credentialed and will hold your hand through a lot of those first scary steps towards becoming certified. They will reimburse you for one testing attempt, and again, the transition from Program Manager to BCBA is thorough, with lots of training and opportunities to ask questions and learn more. ALC is one of the most ethical ABA organizations in the area and I would argue in the state. They hold their employees to rigorous ethics standards, not just according to the BACB Ethics Code, but according to what it means to be a good person and practitioner. The office is overwhelmingly populated by women, although there are some men as well as some gender nonconforming/transgender employees. ALC is progressive in the way that most places in Boston are progressive. Everyone in the office is very smart, passionate, and dedicated. Particularly the management/admin team -- they care in a very granular, individual way, and a few of them are the best supervisors and mentors I've ever had.
Cons
In ABA, you will struggle to maintain a healthy work-life balance. This is true for whichever organization you work for. The hours are long, you will probably get hurt at least once, you will cry in your car with regularity, and you will at times feel like you spend more time in your clients' homes than at your own house. ALC is very, very bad at helping their employees manage work-life balance, and in fact it can feel like ALC punishes employees (through sort of unfair PTO policies, weird rules about time sheets, and a general utter disregard for behavior technicians' time and energy) for advocating for their needs in this capacity. This has always been a struggle for ALC and other reviews on glassdoor say the same thing. The pay at ALC has always been far lower than other companies in the area. They do not provide a living wage for the cost of living in Boston. Although there have been improvements in compensation the past year, it is still way below industry standards for both BCBA and behavior tech. Many of my behavior tech peers live at home, drive their parents cars, or are otherwise still partially dependent on their families. It is very difficult to support oneself independently on the behavior technician salary provided by ALC. Since being acquired by the Learn family, a lot of what made ALC special and a good place to work has fallen apart. Your hours will change, sometimes with less than 24 hours notice, as demanded by management. Tough hours are part of working in ABA, as I mentioned, but since we were acquired, it is not an exaggeration to say I have felt like a slave to the company--my time from 8am to 8pm is theirs, because they are my full time job and have the right to schedule me when they need me. Particularly for "Summer Schedules," the disarray of figuring out when you work even the next day sometimes feels impossible. Certain job requirements are very difficult to complete given paid time, which ALC does not seem to care about, and has begun enacting progressive consequences against employees dependent on them not completing these job requirements off company time. PTO compensation is strict and difficult to use. You will wind up needing to take off twice or sometimes three times as much PTO as you originally intended to take off to account for certain aspects of your schedule. If you have a doctors appointment mid day, you might as well just take the whole day off. The compensation provided for driving is, frankly, offensive--at my worst I was driving 400 miles a week for the company; while they provide .35 cents per mile in compensation (below industry standards), they do not provide any reimbursement for car maintenance. As a behavior technician only able to afford used cars, I have all but destroyed two vehicles driving for this company. This made it very difficult to work for the company, as there was a lot of fear of being fired if my car broke and I could not afford a new car. They do not provide ANY compensation for commuting. ALC advertises that you can "get your masters for as little as five grand" with them--this is a lie. You will have to pay everything upfront, and they only reimburse for specific things. You will pay more than that, although this option is still a lot cheaper than other ABA graduate school options in the area. It's just not what is advertised. If you are a behavior technician, there is straight up no room for growth in the company unless you get your masters: even with your masters, as a BCBA there is little chance for growth within the company.