At Workday Carl Eschenbach Says It Still Takes People

When Carl Eschenbach stepped in as CEO of Workday in early 2023, AI had just begun reshaping the software industry with unprecedented force. While many legacy companies were scrambling to understand what generative AI meant for their future, Eschenbach, a former Sequoia Capital partner, saw an opportunity to accelerate Workday’s long-term vision: to be the definitive system of record not just for people and their paychecks but for AI agents and the digital labor they perform. “We’ve been managing our clients’ most critical assets—their people and their money—for two decades,” Eschenbach said. “Now, we’re adding digital workers to that mix.” As AI agents become fixtures in the modern workplace, businesses are facing a new operational complexity on how to manage non