Freddie Mac Reviews

Pros

Good pay and benefits, some work from home, collaborative environment, my leadership is excellent

Cons

Hq office is outdated, not all groups are excellent to work with but under-performers usually wash out.

Pros

Freddie Mac is a great company, you can grow your career and have an opportunity to help Americans own homes. Coworkers are for the most part amazing, as our many VP level leaders and on down the food chain. Professional development is also terrific; certifications, volunteering, etc…You can be a part of products that are truly driving automation and helping make the borrower experience, faster and cheaper than ever before.

Cons

The new CEO and current president have destroyed the company culture. House cleaning to make room for Wells Fargo employees, broadly distributed emails calling out SME level, high performing directors or VP’s who are interim before they are fired for friends of the CEO, etc. Mandating on-site presence 3 days a week led to record levels of attrition. Competitive employers hired away many, many employees who offered more flexibility. The net effect of the above is a brain drain of top talent…Those left who really know how the business works are worked harder to prop up bank executives who don’t understand the secondary market

Pros

- Good benefits - High 401k matching (up to 6% match & separate 2.5% on top company contribution) - Many rank-and-file employees are friendly

Cons

- Senior management is prone to changing unexpectedly, new senior management is prone to making dumb decisions just in order to do something different because they feel like they have to differentiate themselves from the last person - Difficult to get a significant raise outside of job hopping or getting promoted - High levels of bureaucracy and unnecessary hoops to jump through - Information on how to set up access is often difficult to find

Pros

Strong mission, purpose and benefits..

Cons

The senior leadership team still refuses to lead with clear and crisp strategies, roles and responsibilities, reasonability or empathy. To attempt to improve their poor employee opinion survey results they all sit on a stage and smile (mostly) or hold 30 minute informal events. We simply want you to lead us. Create a strategy that is realistic and not the 50 word strategy the ceo puts on a screen. Make it relevant to the people doing all the work. Stop moving the chairs around on the sinking ship. There have been nonstop org changes and many that in a matter of months recreate the exact same teams they destroyed 4 months earlier. All this does is prove their lack of strategy and planning. Talent keeps running out the door for good reason and until the leadership shows leadership, it’ll only get worse.

Pros

Mission is admirable. Coworkers are nice.

Cons

New CEO and his selected leadership team are out of touch with employees daily needs, and frankly he does not seem to care. His dictatorial style of leadership is masked by attempts at an open town hall where questions were encouraged. How about listen to employee surveys results that show no one wants 3 days in the office? No, he made very clear he went against advice and decided on his own to make the 3 days a week mandate. His leadership team is embarrassingly lacking in diversity for a company that is majority minority. Group think at its finest.

Pros

1. I have never in my two years met anyone at this company that I didn’t get along with 2. Work-life balance and no overtime is great

Cons

1. Terrible leadership- mandating 3 days of in-person work just to sit on teams calls in a loud floor with no cubicles so sound travels from end to end. 2. Leadership doesn’t listen to any employee complaints— they released a survey asking everyone about in-person morale and what they think and buried the results when most people said they don’t want to work in-person. 3. With the mandate of in-person work, benefits like gym credits have been removed.

Pros

Free parking and subsidized bland cafeteria food.

Cons

Freddie Mac is in its 15th year of conservatorship and probably is never going to get out. That means people at the director level and above have put in their time to get to that level, and they will never, ever leave. It creates a de facto caste system where it is in the best interest of the leadership class to build their fiefdoms, and leverage the massive 35% turnover in lower level employees to stay in power by treating everyone below them like serfs. Bullies are the only ones who get ahead here, and there are too many of them in management. No remote flexibility. No ad-hoc work from home flexibility. Even when some leaders or their pets get away with calling into meetings from school carpools or while picking up groceries (yes, that really happened). Research your potential manager carefully. Most interviews are just 30 minutes with the hiring manager. Not enough time to see red flags until after you are hired. And, oh boy, are there red flags. The things that come out of my manager's mouth would be appalling to someone in 1953, let alone in 2023. Unprofessional behavior, language, and attitudes are shrugged off as "oh, that's just how so-and-so is" instead of marching them directly to HR or out the door. Senior management is slowly starting to realize how much they are despised. But the actions they take are to have dog and pony show town halls and more surveys in which they sugarcoat the appalling results. Mere lip service while they sit on a stage in front of the employees and act like a bunch of out-of-touch frat bros.

Pros

Freddie Mac has been a great place to work over the years. They are committed to clear communication and making sure all employees feel welcome and have line of sight to the company direction.

Cons

However recently employees have been losing flexibility and benefits. Early Fridays, Spot awards, Wellness Works, etc. all have been lost and now the company is forcing employees back to the office. In fact the new policy is more restrictive than before the pandemic when employees had flexibility to set their WFH days on any day of the week. Now all employees must come in Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays. Because of soon to be crowded crowded offices (and long commutes) most employees are very unhappy with this change especially since things have been going extremely well for the past 2 1/2 years.

Pros

Work life balance and general benefits are top tier. From full medical coverage to tuition reimbursement. There’s plenty of time off available to employees and the ability to work remotely for entire weeks. The company utilizes a hybrid schedule.

Cons

The company is still in a conservatorship so you won’t get the highest pay but the pay is still fairly substantial.

Pros

Freddie Mac gives great opportunities for early career/recent college grads to jumpstart their career. Fair compensation if you live in a low cost area. Good dental plan and 401k matching

Cons

They are taking away some of the most important benefits from employees here for god knows what reason. They took away covid leave and they are forcing people back into office when it is been abundantly shown how unhappy most employees are. WFH benefits from pre-pandemic have been severely reduced and employees are being forced into office 3 days a week without choice on which days. Some of the most brilliant professionals I’ve met have jumped ship in preparation for this inevitable shipwreck we are headed in. Work/life balance is not the best either so be prepared to work long hours into the night and expected to be in office the next day. Career growth is very slow with minimal promotions and low pay raises.