I worked in one of the operations in Chile, in a technical area (maintenance), and the experience was far from what they promised. My intention as a just-graduated engineer was to learn technical stuff related to the mining process. However, I realized the mining company just purchased each and every machine they used at the process, so they were users and didn't do any technical-related activity (for that they call the manufacturer). For this reason, the job consisted just in learning the management process involved in controlling all the contractors who did the technical stuff, i.e. doing a couple of excel spreadsheets and SAP transactions. Obviously such activity didn't require anyone with a degree to be done (I think it was even possible to be automated).
Moreover, due to the large size of the company, there is a lot of rules and bureaucracy, which leads in a lack of autonomy for every employee. Maybe that is effective for the executives to keep everything under control, but it neutralizes every attempt from employees to come up with new ideas/proyects to improve the company and thrive in their careers.
When it comes to the decision making process, this occurs completely at the top level, so employees don't take part in any decision and they just do whatever the boss/manager/vice-president/president says (in ascending order). Also, many times technical decisions are taken upon purely internal political reasons and not according to data-driven technical considerations, which turns out to be very frustrating for everyone with a tech background.
Last but not least, on-site conditions are not the best. The operation was located in the middle of the Atacama desert at 3600 meters above the sea level, with high levels of air pollution, and the job was on a 4 days shift staying on site with 3 days off. Reaching the mine takes a 2,5 hours commute from the closest city, and in case people didn't live in that city they must fly in from the capital city Santiago (where most people live) adding 2 more hours to the commute plus the boarding process at the airport. all this factors plus the long working days (12 hours) plus the bad quality food provided makes working at that place a very physically draining activity.
