Workday

People were great, the building was a fun place!

Compensation and the package overall are good!

The summer/Christmas parties were unreal!

The company has quite an employee-centric philosophy overall, so it is a great place to work.

The proprietary language/stack has one benefit for graduates. Amongst new hires from graduate to senior, everybody has to learn the new language and stack. If you can learn it quickly and excel in it, you can become more valuable than a more experienced person with less experience in the proprietary stack. This can help you gain more responsibility and become a leader.

These are great benefits and Workday is a great place overall.

Workday is ahead of the curve in many ways, but for me in these areas, it was sub-par and something I believe needs fixing. The following cons come not just from my own experience but also from other colleagues and friends within Wday.

The proprietary stack is a double-edged sword for graduates:

• You aren't working with current industry-standard tech, or building skills that are easily generalizable to other roles.
• It can therefore feel like you've pigeonholed yourself.
• This can leave you with a weak spot for technical interviews with other companies in the future.

Joining as a graduate can mean you are artificially held back by a notional timeline that dictates how fast you can advance, be promoted, or have compensation adjusted. A common thing is that you cannot be promoted within a year of joining or within a year of your last promotion. Since evaluations are twice a year, realistically, it can be 18 months before you can even be considered for promotion or advancement.

The counterpoint to this is that new joiners can get an aggressive package. Someone with the same amount of experience as you can join later and receive a better compensation package. This can leave current employees feeling less valued. This also encourages churn.

This also means that opportunities are given to people based on the time they've spent with the company rather than capability. Past contributions or current performance can't trump time spent with the company. This can lead to frustration within teams.

The best way to break out of standard timelines or seek a compensation adjustment is to find a new job, get an offer, and let Workday know that you have other options.

Remove the artificial constraints on new roles or promotions. The timelines used may suit your average employee, but they will hold back your really good ones.

Value your existing employees and their contributions. While seeking new staff is important, the magnitude of the perceived difference between how an existing employee is compensated versus how a new joiner is compensated is significant.

Employees shouldn't have to seek a new job in order to bypass these constraints.

Encourage cross-functional initiatives for application developers to work outside their normal domain. The goal of these initiatives should be to broaden the skills and experience of the employees.