Workday lays off staff as it looks to AI for growth

More evidence this week of the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the tech job market as Workday revealed it is shedding 1,750 jobs - 8.5% of its workforce - because the company is restructuring and looking to AI for growth and efficiency gains. 

Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach disclosed the layoffs in an SEC filing. In a memo to staff included in the filing, he said: “As we start our new fiscal year, we’re at a pivotal moment. Companies everywhere are reimagining how work gets done, and the increasing demand for AI has the potential to drive a new era of growth for Workday.”

Workday joins a list of tech firms who have reported in recent months that they are trimming staff numbers and looking to AI to deliver efficiencies. Salesforce for example, has said it is laying off 1,000 staff while also planning to hire 2,000 salespeople for its new AI products. Similarly, Dropbox laid off over 500 staff last year, citing lack of growth in its core cloud storage business and a shift to AI-driven initiatives. Last year, Intuit announced it would lay off 1,800 staff members and increase its investment in AI. The list goes on. At the time of writing, 42 tech companies have laid off nearly 11,000 employees so far this year, according to layoffs.fyi. There’s no indication of a let-up in these trends any time soon. 

Product managers are being hit hard by these trends. Routine tasks have become easier to automate, AI models can process customer data, predict trends and suggest product improvements without human intuition and companies increasingly rely on data science and AI-driven insights instead of traditional PM decision-making.

MTP has examined how extremely difficult the market is for any product manager on the hunt for a job, with recruiters reporting large volumes of applicants chasing too few jobs. But while AI is replacing many traditional product management tasks, it is also creating opportunities for those who can adapt. Stuart Winter-Tear, Head of Product at Genaios said: “There's so much that will not be able to be automated, and that's what folk are going to have to really specialise in now… Product is not just about one thing, it's about understanding the context, the business situation, the trade offs and particular constraints and threats. AI can only do it in a very sandboxed way.” 

Everything wrong with the product management job market. And how to fix it

Lessons learned from a 6-month journey to land my next product job

Product management in the age of AI: Friend or foe? It’s complicated