Are we having layoffs in first week of November, I’m hearing a lot of rumors about it!
They panic-hired for a future that never came, and then they panic-fired. All big tech companies have done this; Workday is no different. Corporate leaders are chosen by investors, and most big tech investors prioritize short-term gains over long-term sustainability. If that weren’t the case, Workday’s leaders would not have so recklessly laid off valuable employees—many of whom would have furthered their much-touted AI ambitions.
They severed limbs like medieval barber-surgeons, mistaking amputation for treatment.
https://www.techtarget.com/searchhrsoftware/news/366618914/Workday-layoffs-nearly-offset-last-years-hiring
Tech profits and valuations are unsustainable now that the era of near-zero-bound interest rates has ended. Layoffs are a symptom, a signal of desperation. Companies like Workday scramble to adjust to this new reality, yet their response is always the same: reactionary, erratic, and increasingly ruthless. They will cut again, and each time, the human toll will matter less.
Tech investors demand high valuations at all costs. They will force Workday’s leaders to do their bidding—or replace them with those who will. But the era of sky-high tech valuations is closing. No matter how much blood they draw, these investors will not get what they want.
Employees are no longer the heart of Workday’s culture. As always, actions reveal the truth that words try to conceal. Workday now revolves around short-term investors. Yet, soon enough, even they will lose—just as every workmate will.
Sustaining an employee-centered culture, as Workday's founders professed, requires courage in the face of adversity. Workday's leaders have demonstrated that they were never truly committed to that principle, despite their workmate-centric platitudes. Shakespeare put it best:
There are no tricks in plain and simple faith;
But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,
Make gallant show and promise of their mettle;
But when they should endure the bloody spur,
They fall their crests, and, like deceitful jades,
Sink in the trial.
— Julius Caesar, Act 4, Scene 2.