If you care about your career, stay away - Anonymous employee Workday Employee Review

1.0
Mar 16, 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- free snacks - nice office (including pool table, ping pong table and XBOX 360) - company provided MacBook Pro

Cons

Workday's products are build by teams that only handle one part of the entire app, so it's very likely that you will not get to know the entire picture or how you interact with other teams. Application developers "code" in a proprietary language called XpressO. All the coding part is abstracted away and they only get to fill in some forms. If you develop in XpressO, you will eventually lose all your programming skills and in a few years become unemployable anywhere else (even though the company claims that XpressO helps you focus only on your problem solving skills without having to worry about the actual syntax, XpressO is not similar with any programming language). Not only the app developers have it hard. There is an entire team of people that builds a parser that takes XML and outputs JSON. The whole UI team's task is to create different components (text boxes, prompts, list details) which they rewrite almost every year in different technologies (Flex, HTML5 etc). Apart from the technical side in which you will basically end up doing the same thing over and over again (even though they proud themselves with being innovative), you have to know that the managers in Workday are not technical. Their only job is to supervise you, make sure you are doing your job. Probably it depends on the team and manager, but I had the misfortune to have a manager who micromanaged, who didn't want his team to work from home, who kept track of how much time we spent taking breaks (what's the point of having a pool table if you can't use it?!). Everytime there was a blocker, we had to go to him to explain the problem, go fix it and then go back to him to explain the fix. If you want a manager from whom you can learn, this is not the place for you. Workday mostly hires people straight out of college because they can pay them less and train them to have the expected mindset ("yes" people, that do what they are told). They don't want very technical people because technical people will leave in a very short time. Workday is the place in which you are evaluated by your attitude, and not your technical skills. People are intimated by their managers and are afraid to speak up. In the office everyone seems happy, but once they're on the bus on the way home they start complaining.

Explore other reviews about Workday

5.0
May 20, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Workday is a truly values-driven company, and you can feel it every day. We’re in the middle of an exciting transformation to drive more innovation and speed, and while that has meant making some tough decisions, those decisions are always grounded in our core values. Employees and customers are consistently kept at the center, and there’s a real sense that doing what’s right guides how we operate and where we’re going as a company.

Cons

Decision-making can sometimes feel slow and unclear, as it’s not always obvious who has true ownership or final say. In a few areas, especially HR, leadership can feel more oriented around selling and positioning our products than around deep, hands-on practitioner experience, which occasionally creates a gap between strategy and the day-to-day needs of employees and managers.

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Workday Response
3w
Thank you for your feedback. We are proud of our culture and the success that we have achieved because of the hard work and dedication of our Workmates. Thanks for your contributions, your transparency, and for being an integral part of the Workday team during your time here.
4.0
Mar 31, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great people, benefits, culture, and pay. Lots of "workmates" with long tenures (10+ years). I truly wanted to retire from Workday!

Cons

Leadership changes freaked a lot of people out. Things felt unstable within the org for the last year (2025). The culture shifted from one that focused on employee growth to adopt all AI at all costs, and do it yesterday! It was extremely stressful to learn so much, so quickly, and create your own use cases and custom workflows - then to ultimately be laid off despite significant contributions.

1
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Workday Response
2mo
Thank you for your valuable input. At Workday, we pride ourselves on fostering a transparent workplace, maintaining the highest ethical standards, and promoting innovation. It's heartening to hear about your positive journey as a Workmate. We continue to be committed to delivering exceptional experiences for our Workmates.
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