HCM company that doesn't know HR for squat - Product Manager ADP Employee Review

1.0
Jun 21, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Pretty decent work/life balance if that's something you care about. Especially great if you'd like more personal time with your family - Liberal personal time-off and leave policy. Can't say that I've heard of something like this at any other organization (including the top 1% firms) - The people are great - they're more than happy to help you with information to help you do your job

Cons

- The culture is pretty laid back if you're ambitious, and want to run fast. The extremely bureaucratic culture will force you to slow down by orders of magnitude. - Despite what they falsely claim, ADP India is most certainly not a product company - it is a services driven offshore op center that indulges in very low quality dev & maintenance work. - ADP India pays terribly low salaries. They're typically in the 60th percentile on the pay distribution. - The interviewing processes are awfully slow and arbitrary. I personally interviewed with them over a span of 40 days, and was interviewed by 8 people (Months after I joined, I learnt that many interviewers spoke with me just to keep the schedule while the HR was scrambling to find a qualified person to interview me) - I worked as a product manager at ADP and realized that their products are 60-year old mainframe systems that are shockingly outdated, and haven't since been modernized. With sparse documentation, there's very little one can do as a PM in such situations. What I learned instead is that a PM role in ADP is really a glorified business analysis job. I've spoken with PMs a across the org, and determined that they're all mostly BAs - please be warned about this fact before you interview with ADP. - ADP has no career progression plan for PMs. If hired, you're being hired for what you already know. There's nothing new you will learn at ADP. PMs don't have a growth matrix, progression plan, study plan, or continuing education plan. What exists is an org-wide plan that applies to all employees equally (with utter disregard to the challenges of a PM job) - at best you get allocated 2K/year for training (usually something as lame as a company organized program on communication) - good luck with that! - Oh, and your growth in seniority is a complex function of your age + and years of experience. You can be an outstanding performer, but you'll still work under a loser only because he's done more "time" than you have. Also, the annual review process is a typical curve-fitting exercise where you will get no more than an average rating just because your manager doesn't want to piss-off the majority (who are mediocre as far as the law of averages go) - ADP claims to be a HCM market leader, but their own HR is terribly disorganized, and inefficient. I found that rather ironic for a company that preaches "HR best practices" to earn its bread. For starters, the induction process for new employees is a 3-day long ritual that is nothing short of a kafkaesque nightmare that leaves you disoriented, without giving you *any* orientation whatsoever about your job. - In the same light, the separation process is shockingly archaic. Among other things, one has to jump through several burning hoops, permissions, and paper-based sign-offs, before a clerk makes a note of your final hand-off in a paper register. Shocking considering that ADP sells HR software that it doesn't use itself. - The icing on the cake is that for a global leader in payroll, ADP still hasn't come around to paying me for my last month of service (and it's been over 2 months since I quit!)

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ADP Response
9y
Hello - we appreciate this in depth and thorough review. Our careers team has escalated this specific review to our HR team as we take these insights seriously. Thank you for taking the time to give us a look into your ADP experience.

Explore other reviews about ADP

5.0
May 28, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

benefits were great and scenary

Cons

no cons during my time there

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ADP Response
1w
We are glad that you enjoyed your time at ADP and appreciate the positive feedback you have shared about your experience.
2.0
Jun 15, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Established company with a long history and relatively stable business operations. - Provides a sense of job stability compared to many organizations navigating rapid changes in the current AI-driven market. - Lower risk of frequent restructuring or large-scale layoffs than many high-growth technology companies. - Opportunity to work with experienced employees who have deep institutional and domain knowledge. - Predictable work environment that may appeal to individuals seeking long-term stability over rapid change. - Strong choice for professionals who value job security and a steady career path in an uncertain economic climate.

Cons

- Documentation is limited or rusted, and many operational processes lack clear runbooks or standardized procedures, making onboarding and troubleshooting more difficult than necessary. - If you're coming from a modern, fast-paced engineering environment, the organization may feel behind current industry practices and tooling. - Internal politics can sometimes outweigh technical merit or execution. - There are teams with very long-tenured employees where change and innovation can be difficult to drive. - Decision-making often involves multiple layers of approval, resulting in significant bureaucracy and slower execution. - Processes can move slowly, and collaboration is not always transparent across teams, leading to inefficiencies and occasional confusion around ownership. - In some areas, roles, responsibilities, and operational processes are not clearly defined, creating unnecessary chaos and inconsistent ways of working. - Engineering standards and best practices vary considerably between teams, making cross-team collaboration challenging. - Organizational change tends to happen slowly, which can be frustrating for employees who are focused on modernization, automation, and continuous improvement.

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