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Tech & Innovation Blog
Innovating Retirement: How ADP Uses Machine Learning to Plan for the Future
How We Work, Culture, Team Collaboration
At ADP, people don’t have to be a leader by title. If there is an idea, and you can think big and innovate, that’s all you need.
Innovating Retirement: How ADP Uses Machine Learning to Plan for the Future
As one of the country’s leading HR technology companies, ADP uses its unmatched data in exciting and new ways. We had an opportunity to catch up with two people critical in recognizing the opportunity to innovate and create a machine learning product for Retirement Services.
Hemlata R., Director of Product Development, oversees the entire product development process. In addition to managing scrum masters, architects, developers, and tech leads, she also heads web development, mobile development, and the machine learning strategy for the entire Retirement Services team.
Sanjay V.R. is the Lead Application Developer and oversees the machine learning practice within Retirement Services.
We asked them how their small team creates cutting-edge technology to build data-driven solutions for their customers, and here’s what they said:
First, let’s hear a bit of what brought you to ADP.
Sanjay V.R.
Sanjay: I started at ADP as an intern while I was attending school in upstate New York. Once I completed my internship, I actually had multiple offers to join other companies. I chose to stay at ADP because getting good opportunities is one of the most challenging obstacles in today’s job market, and at ADP, if you put in the work, getting rewarded is the easiest thing.
Hemlata has been my director for 80% of my career, and I’ve been able to turn to her if I have an idea or if I want to pick up a new role or responsibility. She’s always encouraged me. My senior leaders make sure to recognize me for my hard work. I’ve been promoted three times in my three years at Retirement Services, and that speaks volumes.
Hemlata: I also had several offers when I was looking for a change after my last job. I was attracted to ADP because I’d heard that it was moving toward being more of a technology company that valued innovation—and that its leaders prioritized diversity and inclusion. I’ve seen first-hand that you don’t have to have an impressive title to be a leader here. You can be a leader at any level. You can innovate at any level, and ADP supports and invests on that front. I’m so happy and thrilled that everything I had heard about ADP turned out to be more than true.
Speaking of innovation, tell us about the Retirement Services product you built.
Sanjay: People Like You is a new feature based on machine learning algorithms; it helps participants better prepare for their retirement by offering benchmarks on how people similar to them are planning their retirements. For example, we can show you what percentage of your coworkers are contributing to their 401(k)s and how much of their income they’re contributing. Maybe you contribute 5%, and when you see that your peers contribute 8%, you have the confidence to invest more.
In the retirement industry, advisors usually group people by age or salary and then start giving advice. We wanted to answer the question better and offer advice based on what others in similar socioeconomic situations are actually doing.
Hemlata: ADP pays one out of six Americans; the amount of data we possess is unparalleled. When I joined the company, we discovered that many of our clients’ employees do not contribute to 401(k)s. Since we work for Retirement Services, we saw this as a problem. People often look at their peers and follow them, so we asked ourselves how our data could help create a solution.
How did you go about building People Like You?
Hemlata: We tried to combine the mind and the machine by leveraging our experts’ expertise at ADP and machine learning.
Sanjay: We have folks at ADP who have over 20 and 30 years of experience in Human Resources and Retirement Services. As much as data is our strength, our people and their expertise are equally valuable. So first, we talked extensively with our internal stakeholders since they already know the ins and outs of the industry intimately. Then we conducted market research to understand people’s motivations and concerns better about retirement investing.
After that, we went back to our data sets—everything we have from our payroll and retirement resources—and we started looking at this socioeconomic information to see any relevance between multiple parameters. For example, does age or compensation influence your retirement decisions? What if you’re married, single, or have kids? Based on our internal and external research, we were able to identify somewhere around 30 factors that make an impact; we then narrowed those factors based on the extent of their influence on an individual’s decision. Once we started analyzing that data and built models to create the personas, we realized that we had something worth integrating with our existing retirement products.
When we began this project, it started on a small scale. It was just one other data scientist and me. The two of us created the machine learning part of it, but as we built specific pieces of code for the APIs, we pulled in engineers as we needed them.
Were there any complications you had to work through?
Hemlata R.
Hemlata: The tricky part for me was to make sure that we were compliant with all the security olicies. People trust ADP. It’s our brand. That’s why they come to us for payroll, compliance, workforce management, legal, and security solutions. ADP knows what to do and takes excellent care of its customers, and we take this to heart and always obtain the consent of our clients and employees before we include their data. We’re extremely careful to keep all the data anonymous and not look into any specific client or individual employee data.
Sanjay: Yes, ADP is very sensitive toward privacy laws, so we were very specific about reading only as much data as people were comfortable with. One of the biggest advantages we had was that we partnered with ADP’s DataCloud team. They acted like a data custodian in the project and were responsible for making the data anonymous. They also made it possible to identify an employee—only with their consent—if I needed to access that data to connect specific pieces of information.
I’m a millennial, and I’m one of those people who always clicks on “Do Not Sell My Info” on websites. So, I’m particular about my data, and I think I always had that in the back of my mind. DataCloud made my job easy in that regard.
How do you think machine learning will affect your future work?
Hemlata: We are looking at leveraging this concept of combining the mind and the machine on other aspects of our business, such as compliance processes. As of now, we have used descriptive and prescriptive analytics. Next, we are planning to use predictive analytics to help our clients predict the upcoming required actions. ADP and our clients can solve any predicted problems upfront. We’re always trying to see how we can take our ideas and solutions to the next level.
Sanjay: This is the beginning of an entirely new way of thinking about improving our clients’ experience. We want to look beyond traditional solutions to ensure our clients and their employees feel empowered by our products. ADP also has a general excitement to identify pain points to be resolved and processes we can enhance using machine learning.
Speaking of your customers, do you see any results from People Like You? Are more people signing up to contribute to their 401(k)s?
Hemlata: The results are way better than what we expected. Employee contributions and new enrollments have definitely increased. We also saw this product gain so much attention internally within ADP that several other teams contacted us to see how they could leverage similar solutions within their departments. It’s been fascinating to see the outcomes and the interest from all the other teams.
Sanjay: It’s funny because a bunch of my peers was like, “Oh, I don’t really need a 401(k). I’m too young for that.” Then, two or three months after we released People Like You, someone remarked during lunch, “Hey, did you know that I just signed up for my 401(k)?” Then others joined in—four people also signed up. It’s just a wonderful experience when you hear people say your solution impacts their lives.
After we launched, Don Weinstein pinged me on Webex Teams and said what a great job I’d done and that he was looking forward to what I’d build next. It was a total fanboy moment for me.
Hemlata: This goes to show you what I was saying earlier. At ADP, people don’t have to be a leader by title. If there is an idea, and you can think big and innovate, that’s all you need. Once you have that, you can take it to any level, and people will be so open to talk to you, encourage you, and help support any of these thoughts. It’s really amazing to see that!
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Tech & Innovation Blog
CI/CD at ADP: Going Global with GitOps
Engineering, Innovation, What We Do
Leo Meirelles first worked at ADP for more than six years as a lead technical analyst and senior software programmer. Then he left for stints at Google and The New York Times, where he had the opportunity to learn new environments, improve his knowledge, and refresh his tech stack—all benefits he brought with him when he returned to ADP in 2016. Below, Leo discusses the continuous integration and development (CI/CD) process he implemented with his team and the company-wide plans for adopting it.
As we globalize and streamline GitOps, we are laying the foundation for our future.
CI/CD at ADP: Going Global with GitOps
By Leo Meirelles, Principal Software Engineer and Principal Architect
As a principal software engineer and principal architect at ADP, I work on multiple projects and provide support as needed. Since ADP has a lot of products, one of our biggest challenges is streamlining our processes. Our engineers work on payroll systems, retirement services, and pension services, to name some, for both small and large companies—and that’s just in the United States. Each country we support has different portfolio options for companies that integrate ADP products. Since we continue to evolve our technology, we’re never short on opportunities.
I worked at ADP for close to seven years the first time. When I returned in 2016, I got involved with a great project to aggregate multi-country payroll; we integrated with in-country providers, with internationalization (i18n) and accessibility (a11y) support. I’d spent a few years at The New York Times and then eighteen months at Google, and I was excited to bring that skillset back to ADP. At ADP, I’d always liked the people I worked alongside, and with ADP’s pivot to a technology-first company, I knew I could have a real impact here. In particular, I had the opportunity to implement continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD), first with one group, then two, and now we’re looking at global implementation throughout the company.
CI/CD combines continuous integration and delivery practices, relying on automation to guarantee that code changes are efficient and that application deployments are reliable. With the project I was initially working on, we had teams in multiple countries and multiple time zones, and when you have such a large amount of people spread out like that, you need to stay efficient.
Before this project, to deploy in a QA environment, we needed a UI Development Lead and a Backend Development Lead to approve a deployment release request since they were the most likely to be aware of any issues that could hinder QA work. They had to give the green light and say, “Hey, this code is good to go.” But when you have 30 developers, things get more complicated since you have to merge multiple pull requests. On top of that, we have eight microservices in the backend and three micro frontends—the login, the old application, and the new application, because we’re migrating a few things toward a new Angular version. This level of complexity underscores why ADP needed a global, automated solution that can work for everyone—and why we started the CI/CD implementation via our GitOps project.
GitOps is an evolution of infrastructure as code, where you build the whole environment from a configuration/definition file, and it stays together with the application source code. Later, it can be run by machines and build new environments without human intervention. The idea of GitOps is to use tools that you already use every day, which makes things easier since you don’t have to add new tools to your stack or change how you get work done. Instead of emailing, messaging, or calling someone to say, “Hey, can you deploy that version for me?” now you do that using Bitbucket and make a pull request, make a commit, and merge your code. After that, everything else happens automatically behind the scenes, and you can skip trying to find people for approvals. Because both the infrastructure and your code go into Bitbucket—in fact, the whole process for a new release—we’re able to have a new deployment in 10 minutes for the local environment using GitOps once the code review is finished, approved, and merged. From that point onward, QA owns the release management for their environment; they control what goes into the environment without involving DevOps and managers, giving more autonomy for the team to manage releases.
We knew that having GitOps would make life easier for DevOps and allow them to focus on other things, like maintaining production and improving monitoring and availability. Also, engineers deserved to oversee their code. But we had to figure out the best way to introduce the new process. So, we started slowly to minimize disruptions with the current software development process and give people time to adjust to a new way of doing things.
We had to get developers over the fear of breaking something. Everybody wanted to be either first or last. If they were first, they wouldn’t have to merge their code, and if they were last, they could make sure everything was working before adding theirs. Until we got into a rhythm, it was a stressful time. But once the teams started adopting the new process, things changed dramatically in a positive way. Instead of making considerable changes in the last few days of a sprint, we slowly transitioned to making several small changes every day. And if something didn’t work, it was a straightforward process to revert changes. Since everything is on Bitbucket, we can see the previous versions, making the long-term management much easier.
I talk to team members often, and we’re in a sweet spot right now. What really helped adoption was implementing a process when everyone was ready and open to trying a new process. I prefer to lead by example rather than trying to force people to do something. But as time passed, we built trust when it became obvious the new system worked. Now people have the flexibility to start working in whatever time zone they’re in and look at our online chats to see what’s changed since they last looked. We even have a bot that judges the quality of a pull request. We have twenty to thirty deployments in our development environment every day, and no one even notices. And if we need to make a production fix, we can do it in 20 minutes using GitOps and our other automation tools.
I’m looking forward to the full adoption of GitOps globally. We have a lot of products on a lot of platforms, so that will take time. But there are a lot of exciting things happening right now at ADP. We’re an evolving tech company and developing a cohesive development engineering team. Since I’ve been back, I’ve seen the environment grow stronger. We communicate and share between teams, do a lot of cross-team collaboration, and help drive innovation and ideas through events like global hackathons. As we globalize and streamline GitOps, we are laying the foundation for our future.
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Tech & Innovation Blog
Roll Forward: How breakthrough products are redefining ADP as a tech innovator
Senior Leaders, Innovation, Future of Work
For ADP as a tech innovator, this is just the beginning of the journey.
Roll Forward: How breakthrough products are redefining ADP as a tech innovator
Roberto Masiero, SVP Innovation Labs
From my long tenure at ADP, I’ve learned that when a company gives you the latitude to move around—either within the technology space or from technology to business or sales—you get plenty of chances to reinvent yourself. And reinvention on the individual level influences the reinvention of the company as a whole, which I think we really see now with Roll™.
Roll™ is a mobile chatbot platform that uses AI and natural language processing technologies to anticipate users’ payroll needs intelligently. It’s the first-ever DIY payroll technology, and it’s so intuitive that our clients just download it and go; a lot of them never even talk to a customer service rep. But while we designed Roll™ to seem effortless, it’s the product of years of creative work with a unified team. The idea for Roll™ was to simplify payroll and HR using a novel UX and platform. I run the Innovation Labs at ADP, where we develop new products as quickly as possible. We’re a relatively small team, around 30 people from diverse backgrounds and with no hierarchy, allowing us to pull together tightly as a group. It’s important to me to have a flat organization because the moment you create hierarchies, you create ways to point fingers. In the way we work, everyone shares responsibility.
We came up with the product idea for Roll™ about four years ago when we were finishing up ADP Marketplace and wondering what to do next. At the time, most of our lab projects were satellite projects, adjacent offerings to our existing core services. I thought, “What if we reinvented the core?” We saw an opportunity to improve multiple facets of our payroll platform—the architecture, the design, the user experience. We had a chance to envision a whole new system.
We fixated on this idea of events—that everything done as an action within the system should be recorded as an event. In fact, we initially named the product “E” for “events.” For example, if you hire someone, pay someone, or terminate someone, we record each action as an event. This way, we know who did what, where they did it, what time of day, and from what device. All that information taken together feeds a machine learning engine where the system gets better the more it gets used. Instead of a system with a bunch of menus, forms, and reports, we imagined a vector of events where events cause other events. We basically built the software as a workflow.
But we didn’t stop there. We also wanted to transform the UI into something much simpler and more direct. People tend to design user experiences with a sense of engagement in mind, but that’s not what we needed here. We didn’t want people engaged; we wanted them to get the job done and exit the software. So with Roll™, the user goes straight to chat and tells the system what they need, and the software understands. If it’s to hire someone, change someone’s W-4, change a payroll schedule, the user asks, and the software guides them through the process using conversational UI.
We also built Roll™ to function 100% on mobile. We decided the UX would use a simple chronological timeline, similar to Facebook or Twitter. Clients love having one place to go to see their activity: “Yes, I ran payroll yesterday evening,” or, “Great, that new W-4 went through.” In addition to optimizing for mobile, we also wanted a strong desktop presence. We noticed our desktop users liked to grab info from the system and transfer it to Excel spreadsheets, so we decided to give them an Excel-like UX.
We finished Roll™ in July 2019 and got a pilot client in August. That fall, we presented the software to ADP’s executive leadership team. We got the feedback that we were sitting on something big that works for small to large corporations. But they encouraged us to focus on the smaller markets, those with one to ten employees. So we spent a couple of months designing an additional layer of software to cater to small businesses. In March 2020, we piloted Roll™ with about 50 smaller companies who all liked what we were offering, and then the executive committee told us to put Roll™ on the market and sell it as soon as possible. So we went from pilot program to full rollout in under a year, and today we’re getting dozens of new clients a day signing up for Roll.
A big part of what makes Roll™ stand out is integrating natural language processing with machine learning. We designed Roll™ to understand the mental model of our user’s meaning. We wanted the chatbot AI to talk the way people talk.
We brought in ADP’s business anthropologist, Martha Bird, and copywriters to advocate for the user, helping us to shape the Roll™ voice. We didn’t simply want AI to predict what our clients needed for payroll purposes––though that ability was definitely important. We wanted the voice of Roll™ to demonstrate human understanding. For example, Roll™ learned to respond more positively when addressing a new hire or giving someone a raise in pay, whereas it is more subdued when discussing termination. It’s that empathetic understanding that gives Roll™ an edge in human interaction.
On the backend, we decided that we didn’t want to run servers, or even containers, like Docker or Kubernetes. Instead, we made every event a function. The beauty of functions is that they only exist while that function is running. So our cost of running Roll™ is extremely low. Using cloud services and this idea of functions is another way Roll™ sets itself apart.
Of course, Roll™ didn’t come without its challenges during the development process. Fraud is something we have to consider whenever we engineer or develop a new product. But this is what I love about the Lab: We think of our challenges as opportunities to make our products better. How can we improve? How can we automate? How can we reduce the amount of burden on the system from someone trying to commit fraud? And when we meet a challenge, everyone jumps in to help. We either fail as a team, or we succeed as a team.
I’d say we’re succeeding right now, and the beautiful thing about Roll™ is that it’s always running. We change our models to pick up on new ways clients ask for things, and every new question pulls into Roll’s knowledge and experience. So the more clients we have, the better the software becomes. It’s an unprecedented level of automation.
A program like Roll™ can help further ADP’s digital transformation from merely a payroll company into a competitive tech company. What makes Roll™ exciting is that it almost creates its own category; it’s a technological solution no one else has. We can dominate this market and apply some of the same breakthroughs—machine learning, using functions—with other ADP products. For ADP as a tech innovator, this is just the beginning of the journey.
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Tech & Innovation Blog
Brazil Lab’s Carlos Nascimento Wins First Round NASA International Space Apps Challenge
Voice of Our People, Recognition, Innovation
Creating something out of this world almost came naturally to Carlos Nascimento, literally while he slept. Read about his innovation here.
Carlos recently won the first stage of the NASA International Space Apps Challenge. Yes, that NASA – the National Aeronautics and Space Administration…
Carlos developed a solution responsible for dynamically organizing the entire circadian cycle of astronauts, using Convolutional Neural Networks, being able to interpret brain frequencies, predict and stimulate the next stages of sleep.
“I could not have done this without the experience and knowledge I earned by working at ADP Brazil Labs,” said Carlos. “At the innovation center, we are working on a project that uses machine learning, which gave me the necessary knowledge and inspiration that I used for the NASA competition.”
NASA’s hackathon was the largest globally to develop an innovative app for its astronauts. With only 48 hours of active development, Carlos decided to focus on machine learning and brain signals. He gathered a team of his friends to select the challenge. They thought: “You know what? Everybody has some kind of sleep problem! Let’s help with that!”
Carlos will represent Brazil on the global stage, where they will choose the six best solutions.
At ADP, Carlos and his team work on a product that leverages machine learning. According to Carlos, “The best thing about working with Machine Learning is that the field is always evolving with new ideas and updates.”
Before Carlos travels to spaces and places, we caught up with him to learn just a little bit more:
What advice do you have for someone looking to participate in a global challenge?
These events are about innovation and teamwork, so choose your team wisely with professionals from different fields like designers, developers, and data scientists and read a lot about the subject you plan to solve.
What is your must-have app personally?
Brave Private Browser. We should always be very careful with our data. Like we are at ADP.
What is your favorite movie?
Interstellar.
If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Chocolate. I probably wouldn’t live much, but it would be a happy life.
What is the best advice you ever received?
Treat everyone the way you would like to be treated.
What’s the best place you’ve ever traveled to on vacation, and why?
That would be Arraial do Cabo. It’s close to my hometown, Rio de Janeiro. It has the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen.
Carlos will receive an award from the U.S. Embassy in Brazil for his work in the NASA Challenge. Results for 40 finalist teams, and six winning global teams, will be revealed in January 2021!
Congratulations, Carlos! Good luck to you and your team in the next round!
Learn more about working at Brazil Labs.
Tech & Innovation Blog
Internships to a Full-Time Career
Campus Development Programs, Intern to Full-Time, Pasadena
Accessible Video Controls
Video: Internships to a full-time career
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[LOGO: ADP, Always Designing for People]
[TEXT: Omar, Application Developer]
I actually started out here as an intern. I applied for the position two years ago. What kind of made me look into ADP itself was kind of, I had noticed the name ADP before, what it stood for. Its purpose. And the recognition it has in the industry, as a company.
So right off the bat, right away, I was like, OK, great. That’s probably a good position. I ended up applying two weeks later. I got a call from one of our associates here. I had the interview over the phone, and a week later, I was in the office.
It was a great experience to have a fresh out of college, going into a company like ADP. Fast moving, and I’ve learned so much in the last few years. It’s been a great journey so far.
Why do I stay at ADP? More than anything, I would say, the culture, the people, and the inclusion of being part of something greater. Here at ADP, I feel like, regardless of where you come from, we have people from all different cultures, different experiences, right? All different types of places.
And here, [it] doesn’t matter where you come from. If you are a junior programmer or barely getting into the field, if you have ideas, you’re more than welcome to share those ideas with everyone here. You have the ability to create. People really take your ideas to heart. It’s a company where you, I feel like, gives you a vessel where you can create and show your creativity.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[TEXT: Ready to design what’s next? Visit tech.adp.com/careers.]
[LOGO: ADP, Always Designing for People]
[TEXT: ADP, the ADP logo, and Always Designing for People are trademarks of ADP, LLC. Copyright © 2020 ADP, LLC. All rights reserved.]
As you may be aware, we have a robust technology internship program. This is where we train our future leaders and innovators. Hear from Omar as he shares his experience as an Intern to a Full-Time Application Developer, why he chose ADP, and why he is proud to work for #ADPTech.
ADP Women in STEM Profile: Manjula Ganta
Manjula’s mantra: “Don’t focus on fitting in; figure out how to stand out.” After reading about her hard work, success and leadership, you’ll see Manjula walks the talk — and encourages others to do the same.
Growing up, Manjula Ganta wanted to be a doctor. She loved science and biology and was fascinated by how the body works as a machine. But med school was financially out of reach, so she chose a career in mathematics. Manjula’s mother encouraged her and her sisters to learn computers.
“My mother was a visionary and could see technology evolving even before the internet existed,” Manjula said. “From her experiences and struggles as a homemaker, forgoing a job opportunity due to culture constraints, my mom inspired her four girls to be independent and encouraged us to pursue our careers. She is the greatest influence on who I am today.”
From India to Omaha
Manjula grew up in a small town in southern India near Hyderabad. In school, she was very outgoing, smart, and well-rounded – a trait she carried into adulthood and her career. Manjula pursued a bachelor’s degree, majoring in mathematics. She simultaneously enrolled into a Diploma in Systems Management program that introduced her to computers. Manjula later earned her MBA with a major in finance, and graduated as class valedictorian.
She moved to Hyderabad to work for a financial services company as a management trainee. Manjula was quick to learn the intricacies of the business and even as an intern courageously presented her ideas. Soon she had an opportunity to design the development of an integrated app to better manage the company’s branch reports. “Curiosity and rapid technology changes led me to learn relational databases and the integrated enterprise application software,” Manjula recalls.
A few years later, Manjula married her high school sweetheart, who had moved to Omaha, NE. She moved from Hyderabad to Omaha, and they started a family. “It was a big adjustment for me, both culturally and professionally,” Manjula said, “and it took a while to figure out how to balance my career and family.”
Manjula began working in Boston as a Peoplesoft consultant for the state of Massachusetts, going home only every couple of weeks. “It was a very challenging time in my life, being a young mother with a traveling job – staying away from home and my toddler son,” she recalls.
Manjula then worked as a Peoplesoft technical consultant for a project with General Electric (GE) in New York in variety of roles. She successfully implemented various Peoplesoft modules, leading offshore teams. After a few years, Manjula’s husband took a new job and they moved to Atlanta, where she continued to work with GE remotely.
Have grit and break your own expectations – expectations can be a weight on your shoulders.
– Manjula Ganta, Director of Application & Development, GPT
After her nine-year project at GE, Manjula joined ADP National Accounts Services (NAS) Outsourcing (COS) division as a senior business systems analyst. “It was a big shift going from development to a business systems analyst role,” Manjula recalls. “I would still get into the code and give the developers inputs about the issues.” She laughingly added, “I think they got frustrated sometimes, but it also helped improve our communication.”
Manjula’s role soon expanded to managing the same development team across analytics, robotics process automation (RPA) and other web/cloud tools and technologies, and she was tasked with managing diverse virtual teams as a single global team. “I was responsible for helping the team see and execute the vision, removing any roadblocks and partnering with other leaders to make it successful,” she recalls. Manjula’s ability to combine business acumen and technical competency, along with her pragmatic approach, enabled her to be decisive and impactful across the COS business.
Manjula then became the Director of Strategic Initiatives for the NAS Tools & Technology Operations, where she worked on several technology and transformation initiatives to develop, support, and enhance ADP’s internal and client-facing tools.
Manjula says she’s taken this approach throughout her career: “As a thoughtful leader, I strive to create a positive and collaborative work culture with emphasis on employee recognition – helping teams to look beyond their differences. Celebrating associate birthdays, work anniversaries and key project milestones helps everyone feel valued and included.”
Currently, Manjula is a Director of Application Development, Global Product & Technology (GPT), where she takes an even broader responsibility for building ADP’s core products from a technology architecture, design, quality and user experience standpoint, to make them more effective for ADP’s clients.
Developing Self and Others
“ADP has a unique culture in which they put their associates first,” she says. “Prior to ADP, most of my development was self-initiated, but here we have many career development opportunities, mentorship programs, stretch assignments, networking events through employee resource groups, technical workshops, etc. You just need to be motivated and find the time to develop yourself.”
Manjula had the opportunity to enroll in an external Pathbuilders mentorship program. “The program helped me to become more self-aware, building my own personal brand inside and outside of ADP,” she says. Manjula is thankful to the leaders, mentors and sponsors who invested their time by providing her exposure at the business unit level.
Carrying it forward, Manjula helps mentor others at ADP and through various non-profit organizations. She is an active volunteer for Women in Technology based in Atlanta, which helps girls and women succeed from the classroom to the boardroom. Manjula recently joined the ADP GPT Women in Technology Leadership Mentoring Initiative (WiTL) that helps develop a diverse leadership talent pipeline through a formal mentoring program. She also volunteers for the American Heart Association, Special Olympics of Georgia, and leads several ADP business resource group events in the Alpharetta location, creating awareness and raising donations for causes she cares about.
Best Advice
Manjula offers this advice for women starting their careers in STEM: “Have grit and break your own expectations – expectations can be a weight on your shoulders. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes; it’s important to learn. Life is not just about success; it’s also about failure, difficulty, and learning to recover. Focus on the present, stay positive, and keep going.”
Manjula also recommends finding a mentor. “Mentors have helped me realize my worth and have inspired me to speak up, be myself, and encouraged me to take on the next challenge. One of my leaders would say, ‘I wish you had had your voice earlier.'”
“Always find your support system, family, friends or coworkers and don’t be afraid to seek help or delegate,” Manjula said. “You don’t have to be a perfectionist or do it all.”
She is very grateful for her husband, Ranjith, and two sons, Abhitej and Ritvik, who have always supported her career, helped at home, and offered new and different points of view.
“Have fun, no matter how hard things can get. Humor and fun can always make the journey (personal or professional) easier.”
Through all the learning and big changes as an Asian Indian immigrant and a woman in STEM, Manjula’s best advice is: “Don’t focus on fitting in; figure out how to stand out.”
Read about other ADP Women in STEM and learn about careers at ADP.
Tech & Innovation Blog
Advice I wish I had before my first job in Application Development
First Career Advice, Skills, Application Development
I’m sure we have all been at a point in time when we prepare ourselves to transition from being a student to working and obtaining that first job.
For me, it’s been three years since then, and now as an established Senior Developer, I look back and reflect on that journey.
My goal is to share my experience and a few things I wish I would’ve known to help me prepare for that next big step into web development.
The topics I want to talk about are based on my own experiences and are my opinion, of course, we all have our own. There isn’t a definitive guide to follow whether you are a college student, a self-taught programmer, or someone with nothing better to do. I believe these are all topics developers should learn or be aware of during their transition into the software world.
These topics include server/cloud architecture, APIs, frameworks, Git/version control, CI/CD, unit testing & automation, and development tools.
Server/Cloud Architecture:
I believe it’s highly important for one to understand their company’s project design architecture, which includes how users, applications, servers, databases, etc. all interact with one another. In college, I had a basic understanding of how server architecture and design worked, but a lot of the things I learned were outdated. Companies are now taking newer and different approaches. For example, today, it’s almost impossible not to see some form of cloud architecture in most companies when dealing with web or mobile applications.
It’s critical to understand your company’s design and compare it to others to see how they differ and identify the pros and cons of them. You need to learn the lay of the land and the ecosystem before you can start building your house.
APIs:
Ah, those good ol’ application programming interfaces, or as we like to call them, APIs. I would say that these puppies are probably the most important, if not the most significant, in your work as a web developer. During my time as a college student, I had a brief introduction to their definition and their roles, but I didn’t get any practical training on them. Instead, I read some blogs and articles, and then I started experimenting and built my own web applications. In a nutshell, they provide a way for applications to communicate.
I can go on for hours talking about this topic. Just take my advice and learn the ins and outs of APIs, including what they are, how they work, and how to implement them. Also, be sure to look at different types, such as REST APIs or research other tools such as GraphQL, which takes on a different approach to building them.
Frameworks:
Almost every programming language out there has some sort of framework affiliated with it. Frameworks are your friends, and in most cases, they help guide you in achieving specific things and making your life easier. Each may have an individual purpose but think of them as tools with instructions that can help you build different parts of a house. There are hundreds of frameworks out there, and many of them follow the same concepts. Learn a few of them, maybe the most popular or the simplest, but make sure you learn them. You’re welcome! (You will thank me later)
Git/Version Control:
Although I had used Git for version control along with GitHub to share code with classmates on school projects or to experiment with personal projects, I never really understood its ultimate capabilities in the real world. There, you run into things such as merge conflicts and will sometimes find the need to make a pull request. This example is only one of many things you might come across, so it’s important you learn some of Git’s more advanced features since they will become a crucial part of your daily life.
CI/CD:
For those of you who don’t know what that means, I am talking about continuous integration and continuous delivery. If you are simply a frontend or backend developer, you probably won’t deal with building and deploying your applications live into production. You most likely have a designated team for this. In either case, it’s important to understand how your build and deployment processes work across your environments. You should understand which environments your application uses, how your application is distributed, and how those pipelines interact.
Unit Testing/Automation:
As the world turns to automation to solve our problems, this subject becomes more and more valuable. To make sure you are delivering quality software to your clients, unit testing, and writing automated tests for your software are essential and will increase your overall value as a developer. Look into different frameworks that can help you achieve this.
Development Tools:
If you want to master your craft and be more effective in the way you work, you have to take advantage of the development tools that are out there. For example, we have tools such as Postman, Docker, Cordova, and many more that help you with the process of writing code, as well as testing and shipping it out to clients faster. Everyone needs a little boost.
The possibilities are endless on what you can learn on the path to mastering your craft. These examples barely scratch the surface, and even I have a lot more to learn.
I hope my words help you in your transition from student to career developer. Good luck on your path within this endless matrix.
Please don’t stop the music, Mr. DJ…
Omar Saravia is a Senior Application Developer on ADP’s Studio 55 team for Compliance Solutions in Pasadena, CA.
Being a first-time Engineering Leader
“You did a great job as a senior engineer. You are now promoted to a manager to lead the new team that we just formed. Congratulations on your new role!”
It is something on these lines that most people get promoted or at least that is how I remember when I was promoted to a manager. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with promotions such as this. The key though is in recognising that the expectations change when this happens. As we moved up the individual contributor (IC) ladder we learnt to solve harder technical problems. This change in role, though changes the operating field a little. It is in this context that I am listing out a few things that would have helped me transition into my role as a manager better, when I started out.
Transition from a maker to manager schedule
Staying hands on — in other words writing production quality code is a reality for most first time managers making this transition. It is also likely the first time where you end up navigating both kinds of schedules on a daily basis and it is a hard thing to do. Learn to be protective of your calendar. You could do this by:
Blocking your time in the calendar where you need to stay heads down. I’d suggest at least 3 hours at a time and then adjust up or down depending on what is an ideal chunk of uninterrupted time for you to get something meaningful done
Being ever more mindful of how you now schedule time with your direct reports. Just because you have moved onto a different schedule does not mean they should have to. If you are conscious of how you set up these meetings, that is one more thing you are doing for your team
Doing what you can to string your meetings into one contiguous block. Better yet, define your meeting times and agree with your peers. With a little back and forth, this usually works well for everyone and is another barrier for folks who gatecrash into your time with unplanned meetings
If you want to know more about different types of schedules, Paul Graham’s article explains it quite well.
Stay hands on
You are most likely a manager of a team with highly opinionated ICs. You need to be able to have a conversation with them, ask the right questions, pressure test their approach.
Pressure on your time as an IC will only increase as you grow and if you don’t strive to stay hands on, very soon you will find yourself too far from where the action is. You don’t necessarily have to pick up the most critical problem to solve but do what you must to stay relevant and make a meaningful contribution.
Impediment remover, not always a problem solver
After years of being an IC where you are used to solving problems yourself, it can be hard to take a step back.
Be the person who helps your teams get over the hump even if you are not the one who identified the problem or fixed it. Serve the team in the capacity that is best needed at the time and avoid being a seagull manager. With a young team, it could mean leading with a solution while with more mature teams, it could just be about asking the right questions. And in some other cases, maybe it is just carrying pizza!!
Carve out time for career development
A key reason you choose to be a manager is that you genuinely believe that you can have a greater impact on your purpose by developing a strong team. Be interested in each member’s aspirations, be on the lookout for their strengths and biases. Provide timely feedback. Help identify opportunities that will help them hone their newly acquired skills. These are all things perhaps any standard course on “New Managers” will refer to. There are many talks and articles out there to drive home the point that when you can align aspirations with the organisational goals that is when you are likely to have the most impact, but also derive personal satisfaction. Do the most you can to make this a practice.
Bar raiser
You have to do this at every opportunity you get, not just when hiring someone into the team. You have to be the cheerleader during your team’s journey towards excellence. Raise the bar when it comes to technical excellence; be the torchbearer when it comes to upholding your organisations credos and values. Often in the quest for an organisation’s immediate imperatives culture takes a back seat. Protect, sustain and improve your organisation’s culture like your organisation’s life depends on it; because it actually does.
Manage upwards and sideways
Managing upwards or to the side is typically seen by engineers as an ugly part of organizational politics. Other than the typical activities that are required to manage information, the biggest reason to do this is because software development is a collaborative activity. Managing in its purest sense is about aligning priorities across teams. You will be able to achieve your goals better if you can influence your peers to row in the same direction and are aligned with the direction your manager has in mind. At the same time, this is also about course correcting if need be and ensuring people on the impacted teams understand why a correction is better for everyone.
Conclusion
Doing some or all of these things will not turn you into a super manager overnight. I like to compare this to going to the gym. You will not notice any change after your first day at the gym, but keep at it long enough and the results will be clear for all to see.
