VMware Reviews

Pros

- Great engineers, a lot of smart and very talented people
- Open communication at engineer levels
- Interesting and challenge projects, sense of as part of a big thing
- Feeling of a community

Cons

- Politics all around, especially at senior management levels.
- Too much chaos at Sr. Director to VP level, causing lack of stability to build long term plan/roadmap.
- Fairness in performance evaluation and promotion.
- Brand new senior leadership not trusting front line managers and engineers.

Advice to Senior Management

It used to be a great place to work, with great culture and participation from people. There are a lot of talented people around. Trust people and they can do amazing things when enpowered. Bring the stability back, so that people, both management and engineers, can build their career and can have longer terms product planning.

Pros

nice environment, good people from human position

Cons

sometimes it looks like leads of team act in purpose to create more obstacles for daily processes or more bureaucracy

Advice to Senior Management

listen to employees concerns and ideas directly not through the leads

Pros

Excellent technology, great benefits, good pay. Excellent vision from Paul Maritz.

Cons

The middle management layer is crippling the operation. The top leadership (Paul Maritz) is great, but by the time you get a couple layers down the level of competence really falls apart. Change for the sake of change has become a common philosophy in some departments (ie. Support), even when the change brings about a net negative effect. There seems to be a complete absence of understanding of the business at the VP-Director layer that makes working conditions nearly intolerable.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on the middle management layer, and get that straightened out so that the company can march harmoniously to superstardom. The existing layer of VPs and Directors is mentally vacant, and making the company look incompetent to both customers and employees.

Pros

Company is doing well in the market and hence revenue numbers have been great. Bonuses and hiring have reflected that. The company tries to do a good job of trying to build community with beer bashes and company events but at 9000+ employees there are some scaling problems.

Cons

Scaling issues galore. Company is growing but the back office process are lacking. Lots of silos between groups and departments. Very management heavy.

Advice to Senior Management

Spend some time cleaning up process and putting in systems to help scalability. Throwing $$$ at problem will not fix things that just need to be addressed with fundamental changes at how we approach problems.

Pros

New Industry to learn and gain experience

Cons

Too many management internal changes

Advice to Senior Management

Work more closely with engineers and non management professionals

Pros

The environment is very casual with t-shirts, shorts, and "flip-flops" being very common. Everyone there is highly knowledgeable with different strengths. Very collaborative. Good benefits (not the best I've had). Free snacks and drinks for employees with Friday afternoons usually catered. No micro management.

Cons

Customers can be very demanding and stress levels can rise quickly. Training is also not as available as it used to be and sometimes it feels like you learn how to "bandage" things. I think this to be a problem of the company's accelerated growth.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide better advanced training and provide adequate labs.

Pros

Most of the top engineering talent is still there
Few teams have challenging work
Excellent senior management - so the company is in good hands and will keep doing well financially
Overall benefits are good
Helps build a strong resume
Can get by working for 4 hours a day (and responding to emails)

Cons

Inept, non-technical, political middle management that lacks genuine ambition
Boundaries, jealousy, hatred, and hostility among teams and organizations
No room for career growth, unless you suck up to the right people in your organization
Inefficient processes/systems and arcane style of working
Pay is ordinary (now that stock options have vested.)
HR is by far the most incompetent that I have ever seen
Quality of work is going down

Advice to Senior Management

Figure out the next wave of technology where there are engineering problems to be solved. We've already built almost everything for the cloud era. It is okay to focus on cloud from a business standpoint, but there isn't enough technical challenge remaining there. Certainly not for 14000 employees. The moment we no longer need to solve a hard problem, we lose top talent, the hiring bar drops, B & C grade people from other corporations start coming in, and before we know it, we are just another corporation.

Pros

Great benefits including 401k, stock grants, donation matching, funds for education. Some on-campus celebrations and activities, free snacks and drinks, beautiful campus with cafeteria and gym, room for personal growth.

Cons

Can be stressful - so many products and releases to manage. Reasons behind some managerial decisions seem to be purely political.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep letting employees innovate. Keep morale up by continuing to provide perks and by helping us make products we are proud of.

Pros

Hot company, lots of cash coming in the door, lots of things they want to do

Cons

Politics overtake innovation. There seems to be a layer of management that isn't very intellectual, but are good at talking

Advice to Senior Management

Lay off people who are verbose, but lack content knowledge. Make your staff take aptitude tests

Pros

Tremendous technological thought leadership, the VMware brand awareness and reputation is very good even with customers complaining about price. The core products are very solid in their capabilities. Many smart and passionate co-workers who really enjoy what they do. Executive management has done a great job of navigating the company into the cloud space.

Cons

New company acquisition integration plans need to be developed, Sales and Consulting organization having difficulty in migrating to solutions sales with the wider portfolio of products. The corporate culture is in disarray with all the new blood especially as you move away from Palo Alto. The management layer is too heavy in the middle and outside of engineering teams, meritocracy is being replaced by yes men.

Advice to Senior Management

As the company has grown, there is too much middle management. This layer is often lacking leadership skills which is hurting morale. The recent departures of personnel, while expected with the vesting of the IPO options, has resulted in a good level of brain drain. Many of the wrong people are leaving due to stunted opportunities. Open dialog with the ability to challenge ideas is decreasing.