Workday Reviews

Pros

Workday is an amazing company and has really invested in their employees. There are lots of benefits such as exercise studio, free snacks, fitness expenses etc. but that isn't really what makes the place great. There are more than 1200 employees now, but it still feels like a small company as everyone is so friendly. The senior leadership in the Dublin office is great, and you really feel like they care. This is the... least hierarchal place I've ever worked - managers and directors are amazing and usually great craic. They make a real effort at diversity and inclusion, and there are always tonnes of charity events and programmes to help the local community. There's a lot of fun in the office, with lots of opportunities to make friends by joining book clubs, running clubs etc. Workday is killing it this year - #1 Best Place to Work in Ireland, #3 in Europe, winner of Best Graduate Employer in Ireland.

Cons

Workday is an American tech company so it's unsurprising that a lot of colleagues are based in the US, but there is the usual feeling of the US team looking at Dublin like it is a bit of a backwater. Accommodations are made for meetings etc with the West Coast, but a lot of the VPs seem totally culturally unaware about international people in the team, and it feels like recognition and promotion often go to... colleagues based in the HQ in California rather than in EMEA.

Advice to Management

Amazing place to work, but better cultural awareness around the EMEA team would create a more solid team environment. European people don't usually ask a lot of questions in meeting. That's not through a lack of engagement, but because we understand presentations just fine without additional explanations. At a recent summit a C-suite leader referred to the EMEA team as the 'offshore team' - that's not how we see... ourselves!

Pros

Good perks ( equal to most tech companies) 27 days for holidays

Cons

No career progression, no proper recognition, communication all over the place, managers don't allow professional development on training level, use to be a horizontal hierarchy but completely changed

Pros

Interesting work Good benefits Good office space

Cons

Promotion path can be a little slow

Pros

Friendly atmosphere Innovation is encouraged Great perks

Cons

High turnover of staff in some departments Don't appear to be able to compete with the bigger tech companies on staff retention

Pros

Fruits in the cafeteria. Clean and neat office space. Work life balance. IT help-desk is very helpful and efficient.

Cons

First of all "Great place to work" gimmick is mainly a BS. Company is not on par in terms of benefits with other large tech companies around (like Google, FB or MS). Culture and work conditions varies largely depending on the department and team you are working at. I've seen examples when the whole teams were leaving their jobs in a course of less than 1 year. It's just shows an example how extremely unhappy people... can be at the "Best place to work". The sad part is that nothing was done on the higher management side to correct the situation. Instead managers report how everything is "great", "positive" and "amazing" which totally contradicts reality. So depending on department/team it can be a good (I wouldn't call it great still) or bad to terrible place to work. Therefore if you are looking to join Workday ignore this "Best place to work" - it really means nothing, it's just a job at an average company nothing more. Also I should note that there is a lot of hypocrisy on different levels. On the lowest level managers and recruiters can lie straight in the people's face and give them fake promises (while knowing they are fake). On the company level good example is that company claims that they promote internal mobility (and there are a lot of talks about it from HR and management) but in reality recently they changed rules increasing minimum required length of stay in the team before people can transfer to another team. Before you could transfer after 1 year of work, now you have to stay at least 1.5 year. Also transferring process isn't simple: they don't make a difference between internal and external candidates. Which means internal candidate would have to go through the same set of interviews as external. So if you were thinking that you can get to random team in Workday and hope that you will be able to transfer to a better team/project/department later you should understand that: 1. once you are in you are locked (in potentially horrible place) for 1.5 years 2. even after 1.5 years passed you will have to go through the same process as if you were applying for the job externally. Point 2 means that being in Workday gives you no advantage in getting to a good team/project over the external candidate. Paint 1 means that you would have a DISADVANTAGE over external candidates b/c you would be locked for 1.5 years and people from outside are not. Given the above: 1. Be VERY careful when applying for the job. Best if you know someone who works in that team or department and can tell you how things are. 2. Don't trust what recruiters say. 3. Remember that it would be more beneficial waiting for a better job opening to come up rather than applying to a random job opening in Workday. Special notes about technologies: Workday has a proprietary piece of something (full of bugs and unpredictable behavior) named Xpresso (XO). They call it "programming language" but it's really not. It is some sort of "platform" where App Developers define business logic by clicking checkboxes and picking items in the listboxes in the web browser (that's correct no coding involved). For the whole day... Every day! Read the other reviews - people described it well there. Basically if you spend couple of years in such project (while not doing any real software engineering on a side) you will hardly be able to call yourself a software engineer and therefore would not be qualified for an adequate position in the market. Read the restrictions on transferring to another team above and you can see that it's a dead end if you don't escape early.

Advice to Management

1. Align to the core values, not just claim them. 2. Look at the attrition rates across departments (it's easily measurable metric) and start investigating what is happening in departments with high attrition rate. Based on that start taking actions. Some directors and managers would have to be fired I'm sure. 3. Technology wise: get rid of Xpresso. Yes I know a lot of things dependent on it but just like it... makes your people noncompetitive in the market it will make Workday noncompetitive. It's already visible that "developing" using XO takes more man-hours (i.e. more expensive) than developing using programming languages. The more XO apps produced every day the higher cost it would be to get rid of it later. Kill XO before XO killed Workday.

Pros

Management place importance on a good company culture, with an employee first approach that actually implement. 1-on1's with my manager were always constructive and open. Opportunities to move departments, and for career progression. Competitive salary and RSU's. Opportunity to work with new technologies and to contribute to the selection of stack for greenfield projects.

Cons

If you're in a role that is mostly Xpresso(WDay proprietary language), it can limit your career prospects.

Advice to Management

Keep it employee first.

Pros

Joined Workday in Dublin this week and the experience from application, to each interview stage, through to receiving the offer was exceptional - fast, efficient, professional but above all I felt like they really went above and beyond to make it a truly personal experience. The welcome I received from the team I’m working with has been beyond amazing. I feel at home already! Plus I’ve been set up for success... through the thoughtful and well planned onboarding plan from week one through to the next 6 months. This is what a great candidate experience feels like! So excited to work with great teams and partners in a company that places culture, values and people at the core of everything!

Cons

Haven’t experienced any at this stage

Advice to Management

When you place culture, values and people at the core, it makes a great place to work. Keep doing what you’re doing!

Pros

Strong stock performance. Many opportunities to progress.

Cons

Front-end legacy web app in GWT. People seem to have varied opinions on how they are treated. I think it depends lot on the department you are in.