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Yes, it is what is is. And Adobe has been famous for not bringing their software on par with Hardware for a long time. It seems they are the only ones who thinks they have decent optimized programs.
They should have some warning labels or recommendations imho, because they are SO far behind. I myself bought a 16 core threadripper CPU last year only to notice that After Effects were slower than ever before. So after this I started digging into the cause of all this. So I learned my lesson, and from now on I will read Puget system reports on any cpu before I decide to do an upgrade. I will probably go slightly down on core count next time and try to get the best inbetweeter mixing core count and high GhZ, something around 12 core probably (since Adobe softwares prefer simple low core gamer PC's). I want a fast machine for 3d rendering as well - so need the best I can get for both scenarious...Sadly Apple users don't have the luxury replacing their hardware without getting new machines - so you should do even more planning and research before paying the high price of an iMac Pro or Mac Pro.
Adobe has been having this problem for a very long time so I don't expect it to change anytime soon. Premiere is slow, AE is extremely slow, and so is Photoshop as well. It's kind of ironic that you can work with high res images and use the same sophisticated tools like smudge, warp and large brushes in higher resolution images in Procreate on an iPad with more responsiveness than you can with a 16 core PC with 4 ghZ and 128gb ram....that just says it all and why I don't believe a full fledged photoshop on the iPad (coming next year) will compete with procreate...because its made by Adobe.
I can assure you that FCPX would give you a completely different experience, they actually utilize the whole machine. Rendering and working in FCPX would probably be faster on the ultrathin Macbook than Premiere is on your iMac Pro 
I have run this test After Effects Performance Test File on Vimeo on my
iMac Pro, 8-Core 3.2 GHz, 64 GB RAM, Radeon Pro Vega 64
Conclusion: the previous version of AE renders quite a bit faster than the new one from April - at least as far as this test ist concerned.
After Effects (CC 2018) 15.0.1 - 4 min 51 secs
After Effects (CC 2018 - April) 15.1 - 6 min 6 secs (!!!)
I was also monitoring how AE is using the cores of my processor while going through this test render. Even though all cores are being used, overall CPU usage is only 62%. Exporting with Media Encoder on the other hand uses all cores almost at full capacity.
It should be announced with BIG letters on Adobe.com that Adobe software doesn't follow common modern hardware optimization. Too many people have wasted thousands of dollars thinking they are getting the best machine for the job, without knowing that their main software package will suffer more than it gains from the investment. I don't know how many advertisement companies I have visited over the years where the graphic designers and motion graphic artists works on Mac Pros, when they would have been better off using a Low core gaming PC or a regular iMac with high clockspeed.
Everyone that are buying a new machine for Adobe usage, and specifically After Effects (which is the worst of the suite) should read up on www.pugetsystems.com - those benchmarks don't lie.
And THE main culprit from my findings, is the software UI. Because lower GHz CPU and higher resolution screen just makes the After Effects UI feel completely sluggish - which the iMac Pro suffers from severely.
When I overclock my pc from 3.8 to 4.0 ghz I actually notice the difference in After Effects when scrubbing an empty timeline. and turning off High res UI also speeds up the program.
And also preview suffers the the same, so a better and more expensive machine makes you less effective in the world of Adobe. ... 
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