CDK Global Reviews

Cons

Normal frustrations of being a part of a large corporation with many departments and levels of bureaucracy .

Cons

I’m sad that so many people were laid off. Yes like everyone else I’m scared too! However, just about every state in the US is a right to work state. Meaning no matter where you are employed any employer can terminate you without cause, just as you can freely leave. I think it’s horrible the people who are out there slamming CDK, spreading rumors etc. making others scared or worried. Facts before you speak! There is absolutely nothing to suggest the company is going to be sold or even talks about it. If anything it’s growing stronger with it recently acquiring eLead! Yes I’m venting at those who are engaging in this propaganda rumor mill talk! It’s not fair, untrue, and certainly unfounded. I can sit here and offer many ideas behind the recent layoffs. However, why bother? I have no facts or proof of my ideas. So I’m going to keep it to myself, until I personally hear otherwise from my boss or his boss! Please do the same for the sake of others sanity!

Cons

I'm reading a lot of the comments from my peers and, unfortunately, I can tell which ones are from actual employees, and which ones may have been added by those that either are NOT on the front lines, or are in a place within upper management and trying to equal out the negative reviews. There isn't a position around, and I'm talking worker bees, Directors, and even into GM's, that aren't feeling the extreme disjointed working of the company at the corporate level right now. For anyone that's been with us for 10+ years, and say there are "no cons" is just not truthful. We're going thru a lot right now - most of it is generated by Corporate. The employees are ALL really good people, and we've given blood sweat and tears to our customers to keep these products working - and they are good products. BUT Corp is cutting so may corners for what EVERYONE assumes is to make us look at profitable as possible, so that we'll be bought soon - that it's having the opposite affect! Customers see it, the industry sees it, employees and perspective employees see it -- and the competition is drooling over the opportunities that are theirs for the taking. Corp just doesn't and doesn't care - thinking a customer will leave because Sales doesn't visit them...NOT because they can't get support to save their lives (Sending all to the community is ludicris! and they know what I mean by this). It's been so long since those that have a $14M paycheck have had to pay bills, and try to keep their families afloat -- I'm sure if we pushed the CEO position off to India, many would notice. Most of all, I'm just sad about what we look like to those on the outside now. To our Clients: The Employees are with you and we truly do have excellent applications -- we apologize for the decisions made by those at a corporate level who have NEVER worked in a store before. We're trying to make them see. And to whoever is planning on buying CDK -- please do it soon! Or we'll fade off into oblivion.
For Sales, they have a long, detailed, and VERY difficult pay plan and policies that make it extremely hard for you to make money. When you decipher their codes and figure out how to use it to get the customers what they need AND somehow make a paycheck, while jumping thru literally 4K hoops, if you by chance do well and make it to "Club" - you are a target now. Once you figure out how to do it so that you make a decent commission from a deal, they plug those holes in the plan to insure you DON'T make the same money as you did last year. Increased quotas, decreased commissions, decreased discounting capabilities (Dealers say we are already too expensive and leave for smaller, less expensive providers), and LOOOOONNNNGGG wait times for the equipment and software they purchase, with empty promises of a new DMS and iPhone-like addon applications coming years down the line - that doesn't help the company NOW. Since they only pay Sales half at the time it's sold, and the other half when it's installed 5-8 months later, you're stuck staying until you can get paid on what you rightfully sold. We have some really talented sales people who sell on relationships in this industry. It's hard because I don't think Corporate cares that not only is CDK's reputation suffering, but the employees - WHO ARE PEOPLE YOU KNOW - are feeling it worse.

Cons

- After 2 years the travel gets old
- Little to no KPIs that have anything to do with your actual role
- Company will hose you 9/10 times on your bonuses even when you're 110% of objective
- Amazing first class digital products but terrible services
- Don't care about their employees and will throw you under the buss to save face in front of the client
- Upper Management has never worked in a dealership but act like they know what is going on (hint: they have no clue how the website works and don't know anything about digital marketing)
- Essentially, the only good thing about this job is that you make your own schedule and get decent pay
- Advice to anyone applying... Negotiate a higher salary because you will only get a standard 2-3% cost of living adjustment even if you are one of the highest performers in your division
- They don't care about you. They may pretend they do but it is clear to anyone working for the company more than a few months that YOU ARE A NUMBER and the only thing they care about is paying upper management.
- Achieve 110% of goals and only get half of the bonus you were promised while they pay their CEO millions. A good CEO would give up the money he didn't earn in order to give his BEST employees the bonus they deserve. That's why he has less than a 30% approval rating on Glassdoor, bum!
- Company's lack of "care" about the dealers is very obvious, which is why they are losing dealers on the CDK primary left and right! When GM goes to choice model they are going to lose thousands of dealers and the company value is going to plummet!

Cons

CDK Global's digital products (i.e. websites and advertising) and out-dated and function beneath their competitors. There is an extreme lack of stability within the products and the clients are starting to notice and take their business elsewhere. Pay is not competitive in the Digital Marketing business market and you can find better compensation and career growth opportunities elsewhere.

Cons

Pay, MASSIVE lay-off. Management promotes people based on who they're friends with instead of who's qualified.

Cons

Silos. Tough to traverse groups. Direction seemed fuzzy at best

Cons

CDK Global has the "Cons" of most publicly traded company. They have to meet goals that are set. I know the management team is often faced with difficult decision when it comes to a reduction in workforce or change in strategy . It is sad to say that most companies are faced with this from time to time and it not easy for employees.

Cons

If I had to pick a con I guess it would be better insurance coverage . I seem to get a lot more extra medical bills in the mail than I did at my last job and I have their top coverage.

Cons

It would take hours of writing before I even begin to run out of bad things to say about this festering dumpster fire of a company.

The most important thing is the extremely likely scenario that GM will drop CDK as a client. The recent changes to this company are not long-term solutions. They are changes one would make if they wanted to make a company appear more profitable before selling it off. This company is a hot potato and I don't think the current owners want to be holding it when the timer hits 0 and most of its revenue is lost. GM is unsatisfied with CDK, managers are leaving in record numbers, there are mass-layoffs to cut expenses, and resources are constantly being cut. CDK has reached the tipping point, there is no way the company can recover from the disaster they have started. This ship is sinking while the CEO is throwing new coats of paint on the hull and inflating a dinghy. How could that not raise red flags? GM will at LEAST change to a model where dealers can choose web providers, which will effectively be the same since almost none CDK's clients like them.

Let's also not forget about the sheer number of employees that this company will eat through. The content department is a revolving door, where people enter full of hope and exit full of anxiety and depression. It's so bad here that I've seen new employees on job search websites during their FIRST WEEK on the job. Whether you leave on your terms of CDK's... that's a coin flip. Great workers are often let go because CDK doesn't recognize their value.

That's because as a CDK content member you are not a person. You are a single number on an excel sheet, and will be treated as such. This number will be the reason they let you go, or if you're lucky: a paltry promotion. Despite its importance, this number is wildly random and rarely reflects on how hard you have been working. The system for tracking productivity has been updated multiple times in the last year or so, with each iteration being impressively worse than the last.

Upper management goes above and beyond worthless and seems to make decisions that are actively detrimental to all departments below them. People who are clueless about your department's workflow and processes have complete control over process changes and department direction. In the rare instance where they listen to feedback, they will implement a joke of a solution. Real example: we voiced that department processes were not well documented, and communication between departments needed to be improved. Solution? Guest speakers at meetings to tell us how cool CDK's booth will be at the next dealer facing event. This is not a joke, that actually happened.

One of the most frustrating elements of this job is the extreme focus on quantity over quality. There is no time to create quality work here. This creates a hectic atmosphere of stress and unfulfilling busywork. I understand, dealers voiced that they want stuff done faster, so CDK "listened". Guys, did they say they wanted you to sacrifice quality to achieve this? No. They said they wanted stuff done faster because at the time they were mostly satisfied with the quality of the work. You hired cheap overseas work, told us to move faster, and reduced the amount of time we were expected to take on requests. All while our platform was simultaneously getting worse, making the requests actually take LONGER to complete. After this, dealers started complaining about the quality of the work. It got so bad that GM also chimed in to complain about the quality of the work. This surprised absolutely nobody in our department.

The inefficiency of this company is such a trainwreck I don't know if I should laugh or cry. Nobody has any clue what's going on at any given time. Trying to figure out what team is supposed to handle a specific request is like playing Marco Polo with a group of mute and deaf people. No team is properly equipped to effectively handle their responsibilities. I'll say it again because it truly is one of the worst things about CDK. NO TEAM IS PROPERLY EQUIPPED TO EFFECTIVELY HANDLE THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES. You're given a toothbrush and told to dig a hole. You're given a shovel and told to brush your teeth. Multiple team members have considered the possibility of this job being an elaborate prank show.
"They can't be this bad on accident. This has to be intentional...right?"

Features are constantly pushed live before they are even close to being finished. CDK tries to have a "push garbage out fast, fix it later" method of attack, but that last step is often missed. CDK has gone from 50% proactive and 50% reactive to 95% reactive. Problems can be seen coming from a mile away, but you can't prevent them because you're fighting the fires around you now. CDK is trying to stay afloat but it's not even treading water. It's gasping for air and soon it will take a big gulp of the ocean's brine and breath its last.

One elephant in the room that I want to address is all of the work that is being sent overseas. They can hire 2 or 3 people in India for every person here. CDK looks at the flat number of cases completed per $ they spend, and nothing else. Forget the drastic drop in quality dealers are experiencing. Forget the multitude of requests closed out with no resolution. That can't be tracked by raw numbers, and therefore was not considered. All that being said, I can't even blame the overseas workers. If I were in their shoes I would make a lot of the same mistakes. Most of the requests we are asked to complete are written so poorly that they're hard to understand even when English is your native language. They are forced to work vague requests, in their second language, for a market they aren't familiar with, for a company that has no training, god-awful process documentation, all without the ability to reach out to the US during their standard work hours for help. CDK never set you up to succeed, so success was impossible from the start. Don't worry, because even those of us in the USA were not set up to succeed.

There is no room to succeed at CDK. You'll only find success by leaving CDK. This company is incapable of using people's talents, and should never be considered your "career job". I've seen a large handful of people leave this company to do great things. Their talents were wasted here, while other companies were able to let them shine.

I'd be here forever if I gave each problem the attention it truly deserves. I'll finish this off with a rapid-fire list of additional issues that should not be ignored:

Bedbugs, blatant lies from management, missing paychecks, expensive parking, full-time employees need second jobs on the side to make ends meet because of the bad pay , fake Glassdoor and Facebook reviews to boost their numbers, lawsuits about CDK's monopolistic behavior, being forced to work on a crumbling platform, no satisfying work, dishonest job listings (hey graphic designers, 1% of your job is designing), bottom of the totem pole with no respect, no transparency, unrealistic expectations from higher-ups, no training program, bad benefits, terrible wifi, outdated technology, a monthly "blood mess" in the women's restroom (actually last month it was feces on the walls), driving in Detroit, your day consists of completing a litany of vague requests, frequent website outages, you're forced to comply with idiotic decisions, flat out illegal business practices, and last but certainly not least: mass layoffs.

CDK, you may rank as the 16th worst company to work for in the US...but you are #1 in my heart. If this company is still around in a year I trust you'll grab that elusive official #1 position. #1CDK