Workday

The snack closet. Alas, that was as short-lived as my "career" at Workday.

There is a palpable sense of falseness and fake frivolity that permeates the entire workday experience and work culture. Similarly, there is the same disingenuous tone to most of the positive reviews about Workday, no doubt the product of some poor intern recruited by HR to game the review average with glowing accolades of the Workday experience. Those young men hired right out of school (yes, Workday has the same extreme gender bias like the rest of Silicon Valley) and the interns seem to enjoy this culture of fakeness, perhaps because growing up they always got ribbons and trophies just for participating. Folks like myself, with 20+ years of IT experience, sense the falseness the moment we walk in the door and start coding.

I liken the Workday culture to a cult. Cults typically prey on the young and naive and always have very rich, super controlling charismatic leaders and fiercely loyal lieutenants. And like any good cult, Workday doesn’t want you to leave. I had 4 exit interviews prior to my departure. When I handed my letter of resignation to my boss, instead of taking it graciously and professionally, he handed it back to me and said, “Oh, we can talk about that later.” My immediate sense was, well, you didn’t value what I did while I worked for you, so why should you value what I say when I quit!

As most of the negative (and in my opinion, decidedly accurate) reviews indicate, Workday doesn’t pay that great. Their initial salary offer was a lateral increase in pay, justifying it with RSUs that vest over a 4-year period for a yet unprofitable company. I held out for more salary (a 10% increase) and, much to my surprise, they met my asking price. Unfortunately, it was all downhill after that.

Overall, I felt my time at Workday was frustrating and confusing, a myriad of half-truths and promises made but never fulfilled, expectations set without timelines, time wasted, and an almost endless cycle of code re-working without proper guidance, planning, or direction. Oh, and did I mention that much of this wasted time occurred on my weekends or during the evening? That time, when according to all the positive reviewers written by that intern from HR, I am balancing my life with work.

The first sign that things were off to a bad start was, ironically, my start date with Workday. I tried to push it back about 10 days (in order to get my semi-annual bonus from my previous employer), but the hiring manager was insistent, and I stupidly agreed to it. A few months later, I was then hurried out equally quickly of the group I hired into and dumped into another group without prior consent.

I strongly felt I was never given a chance to succeed or any kind of feedback on the work I did do. After approximately 2 months, I did a performance review of myself that I wrote myself and never received any kind of feedback on that as well! I offered a co-worker approximately 30 documents (in addition to my daily coding tasks) I had written while trying to acclimate into the group. I even gave this same set of documents to my manager, only to have them summarily ignored.

My genuine impression is that I was hired merely as a placeholder until the real candidate was available a few months later. The timing of my transfer to the other group I was put in left no question in my mind. This replacement candidate had previously worked with all the other members of my group (did some reviews say clique). The only other outsider within my group was accepted mostly because he seemed to fill the role of the team mascot and cheerleader. I was the true outsider in my group, and for this, I was summarily banished because of it.

Meetings were another cult-like ritual at Workday. The first group I worked in met 3-4 times a week, and the second group I worked in met daily for a 15-minute scrum that always went on for over an hour. All told, I would spend 10-15 hours a week in meetings, and these meetings would spread throughout the day. It was genuinely difficult to establish a solid work rhythm when you’re periodically interrupted to talk about the work you’re trying to get done.

A few months after I started at Workday, accrued vacation was rescinded. It was announced via an email, of course.

There are, of course, many more negatives – many of which were expressed in other honest (negative) reviews, such as the chronic back-stabbing, the lying, the Workday HR department that wouldn’t know a hostile workplace environment if they themselves worked in one (and they do), and so forth.

I genuinely think it’s a good place for young people to work, especially those right out of college or interns. They can continue to earn their participation ribbons and trophies in the form of RSUs. But for experienced IT folks (i.e., those of us who really know what we’re doing), I think it’s fake, it’s a facade, a cult trying way too hard to be a profitable software company.

Stop lying.