Workday reviews

Although Workday used to be a culture of collaboration and fun, it quickly became internal politics and horrible decisions from above. Starting about 6 years ago, there were reorganizations after reorganizations. They move around and replace management at least every year, so a lot of ICs have to start the process to promotion over again. They also constantly changed the review process, move the goalposts for promotions, and some managers just refuse to advocate for you despite saying that you are on the right track. Raises are practically unheard of unless they're cost of living adjustments. They pretend to champion VIBE and other diversity initiatives, but never respond to feedback or follow up on them. They make their EBCs do all the work with very little support from their Diversity team and break promises. Since last year, there's been a large shift in C-Suites where people are seemingly jumping ship. They've been silently and publicly laying off people around the same time, and hardly any of their engineering job postings are in Pleasanton despite a lot of the teams being located there. Yet they want everyone to work in the office 50% of the time, even if your team is in a completely different office.

Here's some of the inspiring messages you'll hear from leaders in the company, 1-on-1: "There's no place better than Workday" "Why would you ever want to leave Workday?" "Other companies are so much worse than Workday, let me tell you about a story from my time at Oracle...." (Oracle Transplants Abound) "Workday is the best place you'll ever get." "I don't care what you do, I only care about what you give to the team." "You can not expect your manager to have your personal needs in mind, you are the only person who is responsible for yourself." "What, you don't wanna help other co-workers? C'mon, speak." "Your 5 year career plan can also include personal goals, like family planning." (yes, this was a female employee this was said to, yes this was right when roe v wade was dominating the airwaves) "I can't handle the panic attacks anymore." "Do you ever cry in the parking lot, before coming into the office?" If you're not in the in-crowd, it is a terrible, lonely work experience. If you join a diversity group to try and find belonging, you also find a bunch of peers burnt out; individual employees try to carry diversity initiatives with little-or-no support from the higher ups. Other coworkers will push back and cry about a "Wokeday Takeover", all while leadership is predominantly white men. Technical and product vision is haphazard, as career-directors use departments as promotion opportunities. For how much proprietary technology the entire company is built on, there is very little investment into it by leadership. Company-wide initiatives will get hyped up for 6 months and then fade into obscurity for another 18. This wasn't as big of a deal years ago, but now they perform "quiet layoffs", that sit under the mandatory reporting minimum, when a big re-org occurs. The hectic nature of org structure also means transfers are much harder than in the past (keep a tally of how many internal req's you apply to get nixxed mid-process). Anyone with any past history of trauma or abuse need to be EXTREMELY wary when interacting with anyone in leadership. Their culture and rhetoric takes advantage of trauma-altered minds, whether it's unintentional or not, and makes you feel like you can't do any better than where you currently are.