Reddit devs are losing their minds over terrible Applicant Tracking Systems like Workday and iCIMS. Let's dive into the UX disaster of modern tech recruiting.
The tech market is tough right now, and if you're out there grinding applications, your keyboard is probably begging for mercy. The absolute last thing you need after getting ghosted for the 100th time is dealing with a brain-dead Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Recently, a frustrated dev on Reddit went nuclear on Workday (WD), and oh boy, the community brought out the pitchforks.
The thread was beautifully titled: "Fuck you WD" (sitting at a spicy 4000+ points). If you've applied to any enterprise company, you know the drill. The biggest pain point? Applying to 50 companies means creating 50 isolated Workday accounts.
And let's not forget the classic ATS loop of hell: You upload your beautifully crafted PDF resume, their janky AI parses the data completely wrong, and then forces you to manually type your entire life history into their forms anyway. It's maddening.
The comment section was a goldmine of shared trauma. Here’s what the devs are saying:
Take 1: "You think WD is bad? Try iCIMS!" A lot of veterans jumped in to say that while Workday sucks, iCIMS deserves a special place in hell. At least Workday tries to parse your resume (even if it's dumb). iCIMS, on the other hand, makes you upload your resume and then immediately asks you to copy-paste the exact same information into redundant little boxes. It's like living in 2005.
Take 2: The Single Sign-On (SSO) Dream vs. Reality Someone asked the golden question: Why the hell can't they just make one unified login for all companies? A knowledgeable wizard dropped a truth bomb: Workday isn't a centralized SaaS like Facebook. It's enterprise software. Companies buy the license and deploy it themselves, often on their own private vps or infrastructure. Company A's Workday instance doesn't talk to Company B's. Indeed tried to unify this years ago and ended up messing it up completely.
Take 3: The Password Manager Nightmare Because you have to make a new account for every company on the same base domain, your browser and password managers (like 1Password) absolutely lose their minds. They have no idea which credentials to autofill for which company. It's an absolute UX disaster.
As product builders, you might wonder: How does such a terrible, redundant UX survive for so long?
The harsh reality: Candidates aren't paying Workday. HR departments are. HR cares about compliance, data silos, dashboards, and filtering out spam. They don't give a single damn about your carpal tunnel.
The lesson here? In enterprise software, the buyer is rarely the end-user. But if you ignore the end-user's experience entirely, your brand becomes a massive meme on Reddit. To all the devs out there raw-dogging these applications: stay strong, swallow your pride, and keep grinding. We'll survive this tech winter.
Source: Reddit - Fuck you WD
