The Adult is Back in the Room
The "Sales-Led" era is over. The "Engineering-Led" era has returned. And for once, that is good news for us.
If you felt a disturbance in the Force last week, it wasn’t just the market reacting to the news. It was the collective sigh of relief from every Workday Architect who has spent the last three years cleaning up after a salesperson.
Aneel Bhusri is back as CEO.
For the last few years, Workday was run by Carl Eschenbach. Carl is a world-class operator. His job was to scale revenue, sell more SKUs, and make the stock price go up. He did that.
But for those of us in the trenches—the people actually configuring the Business Processes—the product has felt… drifted. We got more acquisitions (HiredScore, Evisort) and more “AI” marketing fluff, but the core object model felt like it was taking a backseat to the deal cycle.
Aneel is not a sales guy. He is a Product Founder. He is the original architect.
He didn’t come back to referee a QBR. He came back because he believes AI is a bigger shift than the Cloud, and he knows you can’t survive a platform shift with “Shelfware.” You survive it with Engineering.
Here is what the Department of First Things First predicts for the “Aneel Era” (and why we are bullish):
1. The “Vaporware” Pipeline Will Slow Down
Under a Sales-Led regime, the roadmap is driven by “What do we need to demo to close the deal in Q4?” This leads to features that look great on a slide but break in Production.
The Shift: Aneel is an engineer. Expect the roadmap to get boring.
The Win: “Boring” is good. “Boring” means fixing the performance issues in the calc engine instead of launching another half-baked “Talent Marketplace” widget. We might get fewer new toys, but the toys we have might actually work.
2. AI Goes from “Marketing” to “Native”
Workday has been shouting “AI” for two years. But mostly, it’s been bolt-on copilots and acquired tech stacks (like Sana Labs).
Aneel’s mandate is clear: Native AI.
The Shift: He is going to force a refactoring of the underlying data model to support AI natively.
The Risk: This is going to be painful. He might break things to fix them. Expect forced migrations to new data structures in late 2026. But it’s necessary surgery.
3. The “Partner” Crackdown (We Can Dream)
Founders are protective of their code. Hired CEOs love Implementation Partners because they drive revenue. Founders hate them because they bastardize the product.
The Prediction: We might finally see a crackdown on the “Consultant Industrial Complex.” Aneel knows that if a partner hardcodes a solution and it breaks in 6 months, the customer blames Workday, not Deloitte.
The Hope: If Aneel starts decertifying partners for bad architecture, I will personally fly to Pleasanton and buy him a beer.
4. The “Founder Mode” Reality Check
A professional CEO tries to keep the stock price smooth. A Founder CEO doesn’t care about next quarter; he cares about next decade.
The Impact: Expect Workday to be more honest about Technical Debt. They might kill off legacy features faster than we want, because Aneel isn’t afraid to force modernization to save the platform.
The Verdict
The party (Sales) is over. The renovation (Engineering) has begun.
For the Department of First Things First, this is the best possible news. It means our obsession with Architecture, Data Governance, and Fundamentals is now perfectly aligned with the vendor’s new direction.
We aren’t just shouting at the clouds anymore. The CEO is finally listening to the architects again.
— Mike
Director HR Tech | Croc-wearing enthusiast
P.S. To the Sales Rep who just promised my CHRO that “AI Agent” will solve our dirty data problem: Aneel is watching you. And so am I.
I am so hopeful for this course correction. While I am happy for a new innovation like AI, I would love to see it be responsible and realistic.
For us, we are in a Workday Sweatpants era to get our back end cleaned up to facilitate the new era ☺️