Freddie Mac Reviews

Pros

Freddie and Internal Audit have great benefits and wonderful people to work with. There are many opportunities for growth within the division and within the company.

Cons

It either fits or doesn’t. Those who don’t like it leave pretty quickly. Otherwise people stay a long time.

Pros

Cafeteria is/was great. Can be a good place to spend 2-3 years learning a technology to advance your career as long as you leave before you stagnate.

Cons

Extremely byzantine bureaucratic IT systems that make everyone's job harder (except for those whose job it is to manage those systems). Management only pays lip service to fixing any of it. Classic case of "Hairball Architecture" despite massive Enterprise Architecture team whose job you would think is to prevent that.

Pros

- Great name for the resume - McLean campus is large and beautiful - Lots of smart people to work with - Have access to in-house IT support center, fitness center, and wellness center - Subsidized cafeterias and convenience stores - Pay was good though college hires definitely were low-balled - Great benefits

Cons

- Most teams tend to be micromanaged by their managers - Most managers were against any sort of remote work in general - Demographic is generally older; people who have worked together for years tend to form cliques that exclude the younger/newer employees - If you're established enough, you could probably coast your way to retirement - Never saw promotions; most people move up by applying internally to other positions - Many people with credentials/certifications are not in management positions - Many people with credentials/certifications SHOULD NOT be in management positions (possibly favoritism) - Because of how big teams/divisions can be, you can feel expendable - Was told there will be no more hiring of contractors, but a lot were hired right after and a new parking garage was build just for contractors (which is a nice gesture - not mad about that) - Traffic to the McLean office is TERRIBLE

Pros

Great food and facilities (gym included), great pandemic response, laid back atmosphere, tuition reimbursement, good benefits, decent pay, they hire good, smart people at non-management positions

Cons

1. Most managers manage upward (aka always trying to impress/appease higher-ups). That's not to say they don't care about their own employees, but most of the time, any pressure from above trickles downward. 2. Most business personnel and management don't seem to understand the Agile methodology, using it to excuse bad planning, poor foresight and requirements and even whole pieces of functionality changing at an alarming rate based on feedback from above. 3. Product analysts and owners are not trained properly in how to write proper requirements or how to perform real data analysis. I was told this by multiple product analysts who left the company or went to other parts of the company, and it really shows. 4. More often than not, developers are asked to do everything. Anything that requires actual troubleshooting or problem solving within a product team is passed off to developers. As a developer, you will deal with QA testers, product staff, business and management whining about environments that are down at any/all hours like helpless children. After several months/years, it does grate on you. 5. Developers receive a ton of blame for things that are out of their control. For example, if requirements are not fleshed out/wrong, it is because the developer did not bring it up in the grooming session (before they actually analyzed the requirement). If an environment goes down (which its IT, it happens sometimes) and someone can't meet a sprint goal or deadline because of it, the development team is blamed. 6. So much legacy work. I'm on a modern delivery team, yet my management has told me that knowing the legacy Weblogic systems gives me more job security than the Spring Boot API I am working on. 7. The product ownership/business will not take responsibility for bad planning or lack of foresight. It is our job as the development team to adapt on the fly even if it requires duplicate work, weekend work and late hours to complete the sprint goals. 8. If we do not complete our work for the sprint for whatever reason, it is called out as problematic, but they will do it in a passive aggressive way. 9. Hard work being left out of product demos because "the business wouldn't be interested in that," so why are we doing it? 10. The scrum master role has no power to influence anything at this company. You are given a crown from Burger King, and you are told to make sure the sprint goals are met with little/no support. 11. Most developers get burnt out due to lack of interest, too many (non-paid if you're Professional or above) overtime hours and trying to please higher ups that will turn on you in an instant for something like time entry (even though you're a salaried employee). 12. Some technology is old. Too many legacy apps still, but they are working on it. 13. Blame/shame culture surrounding administrative tasks or not completing work on time for whatever reason.