Workday has taken a dramatic downfall in desirability as a place to work since Carl became CEO with him trying to squeeze every last cent out of the place. We have regular redundancies, to the point everyone jokes about not doing any work in the few months leading up to February (the month where layoffs happen), which is just really demoralising for everyone. People and teams are picked seemingly at random from someone high up in America who has little oversight about the work you or your team do, leaving us short staffed with still the same amount of work to do and higher targets.
We get arbitrary, aggressive deadlines from senior leadership about wanting us to deliver AI functionality that is not suited to our users whilst also suffering from no backfilling of roles if someone leaves, which is becoming more frequent. It feels like we’re being set up to fail just so they can have an excuse to make us redundant and outsource us to India.
Workday used to have an ‘employee first’ ethos, which they still say they do, but this is far from the truth since Aneel left. It’s now an AI at any cost ethos and that comes at the expense of employees. It’s a real shame as Workday was a great place to work a few years ago. I’m sure it’s still great if you’re one of the people calling the shots, but not so for everyone else.
If you’re looking for autonomy in your role, inspiring senior leadership and good career prospects before being made redundant this isn’t the place for you.