Freeport-McMoRan Reviews in Phoenix, AZ Area

Pros

flexible company, great diversity, good technology

Cons

slow moving company, higher ups are not available,

Advice to Senior Management

NA

Pros

Good use of technology in general
Good exposure to different technologies
Exposure to a worldwide infrastructure, that provides good learning experiences.

Cons

Middle management micro manages everything. It also appears that middle management does not speak the truth about what is happening in the trenches to upper middle and senior management. There is a very poor project completion rate, which is mainly due to a significant amount of politics and very little or poor operational staffing. Exempt employees are expected to work sixty plus hours a week no exceptions. The environment also has a weird mix of long term and short term contractors. This makes for even more politics. Overall there is a very poor work life balance which pretty much negates any positives.

Advice to Senior Management

Replace middle and upper middle management with people that are experienced in technology and understand how to get projects done in a reasonable amount of time while providing a good work life balance.

Pros

-Excellent work environment, very capable mates, feedback is constantly provided
-Free lunch on Fridays (corporate office). Excellent opportunity to mingle with people from different departments and ranks
-Competitive wages and benefits
-International opportunities. There are always opportunities to develop an international career not only in technical areas but others as Finance, Accounting, Supply Chain, Human Resources, Public Relationships, etc.
-Head quarters are located in Phoenix, AZ, a beautiful city.

Cons

As any other mining company, volatility in mineral prices could affect dramatically the performance of the company, so expect good years followed by tight belt seasons. Growth planning could be severely affected in times of slow economy.

Advice to Senior Management

Low company debt leverage is an excellent strategy in volatile industries that pays off in times of recession.

Pros

It's a job, but not much more

Cons

Management decision based on instant stockholder gratification and not for the good overall health of the company

Advice to Senior Management

Who's going to make the honey after you have fired all the worker bees, certainly not all the management that's still around.

Pros

Because the company is so large and diverse, and because they are committed to acquiring and keeping talent, once you are hired there are a lot of opportunities for movement in many directions: people interested in moving overseas can apply for positions all over the world; if the corporate culture of FMI proper doesn't work for an individual, they can move to one of the integrated subsidiaries (e.g. Climax Molybdenum), etc..

Cons

I was only at FMI a short time, but I got the impression that it moves very slowly. For an MBA, promotion into the lowest management levels takes about 2 years, and it seems to take another 3 (5 years total) to have direct reports. FMI proper is also very bureaucratic, with many decisions requiring several levels of approval, and pages and pages upon policies to control internal processes.

Advice to Senior Management

When I was therein 2007, I worked in the Phoenix Corporate Office, formerly the corporate headquarters of Phelps Dodge (PD). PD had a reputation of being a very risk-averse, very conservative, old-school corporate environment (i.e. they had only recently replaced their suits and tie dress code with an 'experimental' business casual policy). Freeport-McMoran had acquired PD 3 months before I started and were working on creating a more modern corporate culture. I would certainly recommend that this trend continue: even during the short time I was there, I saw long-term employees expressing increased satisfaction at the small changes already implemented. More importantly, I saw - and worked on - large-scale policy changes meant to make the company less bureaucratic and much more agile.

Pros

Copper is a great inflation-proof field to be in, the company is profitable and growing like a weed, and the benefits and salary are competitive.

Cons

It's a mining company, so it's an old-boys club in a lot of ways. Also, Copper is in good shape NOW but if the bottom drops out of the price the company will hurt. The company is pretty much a one-trick-pony.

Advice to Senior Management

More openness to telecommuting. So many of our sites are rural, but if you aren't moving rock than moving to these locations is unnecessary, not to mention difficult on our families.