Toxic and demoralizing for new engineers - Software Engineer I Paychex Employee Review

2.0
25 Oct 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Unlimited PTO, just remember to use it. Decent starting salary.

Cons

My first job as a software engineer, and it was a miserable one. I was a coding bootcamp graduate, so set up well with the foundations but wildly inexperienced. I guess they thought I was a bargain hire, not knowing bootcamp coders are longer-term investment projects. In short, I was set up to fail. -I was thrown in the deep end and only given token efforts at support. -No mentoring of any kind, or even a codified onboarding process beyond the most basic of steps -Complete garbage Confluence wiki that’s next to useless -Was told I needed to speak up and ask more questions, then reprimanded for asking too many questions. -Complete misuse of Agile practices, which had minimal effect on the experienced coders, but for me only served to beat me down further and reinforce a characterization of incompetence. -So many requests for help went unanswered that ChatGPT actually became my best coding resource -My work was routinely condemned for being slow and error prone—which it was, as I had 32 weeks of programming experience before starting—but was never given any kind of actionable feedback to improve or quantifiable metrics to reach -Company is east coast, I’m west coast; I was promised that eventually morning meetings would be moved later to accommodate this difference which exacerbated mental health issues; I had to actually file formal ADA requests to get anything done, and even then attempts were made to push things back. And this is what I can pull off the top of my head without consulting notes I took during my time there.

Explore other reviews about Paychex

5.0
2 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Sales training - Team support - Goal oriented work

Cons

Day to day misaligned with company values

1.0
1 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Nothing is good about working here.

Cons

Nobody is ever held accountable. Pay is awful. Benefits were all moved out of state, so all providers in the area are all out of network. Jobs are being moved to India. The list goes on. Sales is the absolute favorite department in the entire company. Nothing sales can do is ever wrong, even when they give false information to clients and then the support team has to deal with the fallback. Don't get me started on Payroll.... the entire department has gone to the wind. I honestly don't know how this company ever did good with payroll services. The #1 complaint i got from every single client I interacted with was they could never get ahold of their Payroll Specialist. The company's response to this was to start making other departments learn payroll duties. This year they moved insurance benefits to a plan out of Arkansas, which made every provider I was already seeing become out of network. I had my first major medical scare of my adulthood and ended up paying a few grand out of pocket because U of R was out of network. Promotions are non existent. They make you apply and interview for any role you want to move into. There is nothing good about working here, and i would advise anyone to stay away from them.

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