back to article Workday talks up AI agents platform that will reap rewards of staff cuts

Workday has confirmed that AI did indeed cost the job of colleagues that are leaving the organization following a restructuring plan cooked up by executive head chef Carl Eschenbach. How so? The money the org expects to save will be ploughed into its Agent System of Record platform. The HR and finance SaaS application biz said …

  1. ecofeco Silver badge

    Sorry, what does Workday actually do?

    Does Workday actually provide anything of value to anyone? Beside the board of grifters, that is?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sorry, what does Workday actually do?

      For a rock star to make it in tech they'd have to be a good grifter. They need tech skills not musical instrument and singing skills.

    2. andy gibson

      Re: Sorry, what does Workday actually do?

      It provides very irritating adverts on Sky Sports F1 every time there's a break.

  2. EricM Silver badge
    Stop

    This news story should serve as a wake-up call

    to reality-minded and disaster-averse customers and investors ...

  3. FirstTangoInParis Silver badge

    Workflow

    Perhaps Workday can stop kicking about with AI and employ some people who give a rats end about how the user interface works for employees of its corporate customers. Not just some thrown together rubbish that would confuse anyone. Such as putting a button that ends the workflow long before the workflow should end in direct line of sight at the bottom of the screen and the button to go to the next logical step at the top of the screen where you wouldn’t look for it. And no “are you sure” dialogue and no ability to undo the big mistake you’ve just made.

    Total Ratners.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Workflow

      You just don't understand disruptive design clearly.

      We also have internal tools developed by our apparently wonderous dev teams that follow highly detailed specifications determined by the UX team which are released to fanfare and look like the interface was fired at the screen with a shotgun, the English written by a dislexic 5yr old and the workflow copied from a wet market butcher in Wuhan.

      Alignment seems to be a dirty word and QA is something for rank amateurs.

      Suffice it to say that criticism of these fantabulous new toys is considered heresy by the managment team.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Workflow

        Went over with a manager once to a user to get their response from testing. I took notes, said we'll look at it and make chances so it works how the users want it to. As we walked back the manager said to me "She was quite negative. Pointing out all the issues". I had to explain to the idiot that's what testing is all about, you listen to their concerns and change them, not just dismissed them as "being negative".

        I left not long after and from what I heard, they didn't listen to what users wanted or needed.

    2. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Have an upvote

      for using 'Ratner'.

  4. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

    The same company...

    The same company that asks you to upload your resume, AI parses it incorrectly into mangled segments, expects you to spend the next 30 minutes cleaning it up, and then instantly sends a rejection using the same broken AI?

    Yeah, this will go well.

    1. UnknownUnknown

      Re: The same company...

      Is there an AI Agent for Board member?

      It doesn’t particularly take any skill, domain knowledge, require a moral compass, the ability to demonstrate truth and honest …. or need a soul.

      1. SomeRandom1
        Thumb Up

        Re: The same company...

        "It doesn’t particularly take any skill, domain knowledge, require a moral compass, the ability to demonstrate truth and honest …. or need a soul."

        Those are pre-requisites for such positions, and ideal for replacement by the fancy guessing machines.

  5. The Central Scrutinizer Silver badge

    CEO assures investors he'll plough headcount savings into risk-management enterprise product

    wtf does that actually mean? Like, in actual English?

    1. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge

      wtf does that actually mean? Like, in actual English?

      More subscriptions, fewer low-rung meatbags (tending toward zero) leeching off those subscriptions seems to be the underlying jist. There's some bollocks lurking behind that about managing the risk landscape of multiple vendors different AI agents. A pile of corporate buzzword bingo, and it probably won't work well but who cares.

      1. david1024

        Re: wtf does that actually mean? Like, in actual English?

        Hiring is down, and folks are cutting subscription services. So he's showing how you can continue to pay for their product by example. Quite in character for their (workday's) war on employees... I mean, I spend easily 5x-10x on keeping up with their systems vs what we had before. But hey,they were cheaper on the P.O.

    2. abend0c4 Silver badge

      It sounds like he's noticed that an HR company may not have a bright future once humans have largely been eliminated from the workplace and they've outsourced the development of their alternative business plan to the underpants gnomes.

  6. tailsito123

    Long time reader of el reg, please highlight the simplicity of an llm agent

    An LLM agent is literally someone writing a pargraph as a system prompt and consistently prepending it before any inputs.

    That's it

    So in a paragraph workdays best and brightest came up with a pargraph

    To replace every worker

    Please highlight the simplicity of LLM agents in the future so that people realize what these corporate gluttons are really doing.

    If you need an example of agentic workflows use ollama and prepend a system prompt to your message, congrats you made an agent in 5 minutes

    Something that can be done by anyone in 5 minutes is not IP or even something worth an NDA it's a hussle at best a hoax and at worst a con.

  7. steviebuk Silver badge

    So

    Carl Eschenbach, another CEO cunt. Would rather please the share holders instead of fight for the employees. As long as he gets paid his big bonus, fuck everyone else in the company.

    Cunt.

    1. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge

      Re: So

      Sociopath tends to be a required personality trait for any CxO position. See also president, SVP, VP.

  8. tin 2

    They have something like 20,000 people looking after a website which is fundamentally a load of text boxes wrapped in web 2.0 nonsense? Wow.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Don't worry

      That 20,000 will soon be downsized to TWO 16 year old interns who will naturally be doing it for free.

      That's $880B savings right there ( That's what is being cut from Medicaid in the USA)

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    re: CEO assures investors...

    Bollocks...

    Any savings will go towards a new corporate jet/mega yacht or some expensive real estate under the guide of 'a place to meet clients.

    Very soon these corps will be nothing more than the C-Suite and the janitors. Their fancy offices will be rented by the day/hour.

    How am I coming up with that idea?

    Just look at what the President elongated muskrat and his stooge, Donald Rumpsteak.

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