I want to preface this by saying Paylocity used to be an amazing place to work, and might still be for some departments. If I had written this review when I started in 2015 or even just last year, my review would have been much more favorable. If you look at the most recent reviews, the majority of the positive ones are by individuals who have been at the company a short period of time; still in their honeymoon phase. Turnover among more tenured employees (meaning they’ve been at Paylocity a year or longer) is extremely high right now (or at least that is the perception).
Because of that turnover and the fact that Paylocity is growing quickly, the company has been hiring like crazy (which is a good thing), and hiring at the executive level is no exception. Many have been excellent hires, and it has to be difficult to find that level of experience in individuals who are also a perfect cultural fit. The departments that have hired poor cultural fits at the top are feeling massive cultural shifts bringing severe morale issues and negativity to the teams. Don’t get me wrong: The executive team is made up of really smart people who know their fields inside and out... and I get that functional expertise and the bottom line are more important than anything else. But for a company that says they value culture and maintaining it through the rapid growth, then hires individuals who aren’t cultural fits whatsoever, it makes one wonder if culture is truly important to them.
I was employed at Paylocity almost four years, during which time I changed bosses six times. In my final nine months spent on the team with new leadership, I never felt more incompetent, defeated or depressed in any job. Nothing I — or most of the team, in fact — did was ever good enough... nor was it good at all, according to leadership. The only feedback I ever received was criticism, and it was rarely constructive. It was straight-up criticism. My direct manager did his best to give positive reinforcement, but at the end of the day, his job was to pass down the criticism from the top. Many times, I’d make changes to my work based on the critical feedback, only to get additional feedback that would revert the work back to its original state (or close to). For one project, I was actually told it was good as-is... only to hear later that my most recent version didn’t include any requested changes (the requested changes that didn’t exist because I was told — in email, which I gladly shared — that my project was good as-is). Did that matter? Of course not. I was still the one in the wrong.
The fact that nothing we ever did was “right” led to a ton of micromanagement. As a team and as individuals, we were not trusted to do anything. We were constantly told we weren’t being productive or accountable, so we did not feel empowered to own anything. Some regularly spoke to us condescendingly. It always felt like we were producing terrible work, when in reality, we were working our tails off. Every little thing we published had to be reviewed and approved by our team’s top leadership. One time, in an email to the team, the phrase “everyone is watching” was actually used. This unnecessary red tape contributed even more to missed deadlines and increasingly tanking morale.
If all of that wasn’t enough, the workload was completely unmanageable. Thinking about taking a week’s vacation? Expect to work into the wee hours of the night in the week leading up to that, just to make sure nothing slips through the cracks while you’re gone. In our department, many individuals were the only ones who could do their job, so there was no other choice. Taking PTO honestly seemed ridiculous because I always ended up tacking those lost hours on either before or after my day(s) off.
For so long, I was high on the Paylocity Kool-Aid. It didn’t matter how poorly they treated me; something would happen in the meantime where I’d think, “This is why I work here.” But then there would be more poor treatment, and the cycle ran over and over and over again. When it started affecting my life and my health, I finally made the decision to get out. The day I resigned, I felt a physical weight off my shoulders and I literally started sleeping again.
