VMware Reviews

Pros

- great products
- great energy
- great products

Cons

- poor IT management
- CIO hires his buddies and doesn't cultivate an environment that promotes within
- CIO buddies that are hired don't know anything either
- IT does a extremely poor job of recognizing the talent they already have

Advice to Senior Management

- If you hire a Director, let's make sure there are actually people reporting to the person.
- Stop handing out VP/Director titles like candy to external hires that were not even Senior Leadership potential in the company they left. BS!
- Hire leaders that have a track record of success in other companies. Don't make me name names.
- Focus on learning more about the talent that exists within the IT organization. Who knows. You may actually find out you have some very talented leaders in hibernation
- Stop handing out $150K+ salaries to every IT engineer that you hire. It is demoralizing to everyone
- Do 360 reviews. Find out who isn't performing and who is. Treat it with importance, not a checklist item. If things were working right, all the idiots would be gone. Guess what, they are still there.
- I can go on forever, but it will never change....

Pros

Great products and industry leadership; most employees are proud of the brand.
Many talented people to work with; people are generally respectful of others
Fast growing company offers relatively more advancement opportunities (depending on how well you can navigate through the chaos)

Cons

company going through growing pain; lot of internal system/process not in place, yet it's now a 10,000+ people company; Chaotic place to work at; employee morale very bad in certain groups; some talents may not get best utilized here if you are not in the right team. it's not a place for everyone.

Pros

Leaders in Virtualization & Cloud computing

Cons

Ab sense of strong leadership among too much of intellectuals

Pros

Virtualization technology leadership, future of the virtualization technology is bright.
The cloud computing and could infrastructure is the future, good to be with the leader.

Cons

- Non mature middle management
- lot of management by pleasing the middle level management rather the doing the actual work
- lot of non-professional politics at the director/sr director level

Advice to Senior Management

- find out the real value added by the directors and senior directors.
- regular 360 feedback about the director/sr directors from the overall group which they manage.

Pros

* There are excellent opportunities to work closely with technical leaders, which is a uniquely educational experience.
* At least within some groups, ideas live and die by their own merits (and not based on, for example, the seniority of the idea's champion).
* At least some first and second line management is competent, providing feedback when asked not only during the semi-annual performance review process, but on a task-to-task or week-to-week granularity as well.
* Great promotion potential for good engineers.
* Salary and benefits are competitive.

Cons

* Leadership does not seem to be proactive about providing feedback.
* Promotions don't always seem to make sense; the people who deserve promotions seem to get them, but so do some of the people who don't. Relatedly, management (at all levels) does not articulate the rationale for management.
* Product management doesn't consistently communicate the reasoning behind decisions, making it hard to understand their point of view or to take initiative on issues that would be potentially cut-and-dry.
* Inter-product relationships are still being developed; there isn't, yet, good sharing of information or resources.

Advice to Senior Management

* Replace the "360-degree" review system with something that actually works; employees should be able to both give and receive clear feedback about performance.
* Buckle down (nicely); we're grown ups. When we make a mistake, tell us. When one of our co-workers makes a mistake, tell them. If it isn't clear when someone is doing something wrong, the problem won't go away.
* Similarly, provide a simple way to provide feedback when we feel you've made a mistake. I understand that the ability to provide anonymous feedback has a variety of problems, but it's hard to feel comfortable providing critical feedback in a direct manner.

Pros

Some very good people and some good teamwork. Nice gym. Modern green buildings. Interesting products to work on. Global sites function better than head office.

Cons

Upper level management scrambling to make an impression on superiors. Everyone "managing up" and trying to impress the boss. Customers and developing good software is lost in this process. HR at the low end of competence. Politics high in Palo Alto.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on customers and getting great products out. Trying to get promoted and impressing your superiors at VMware will not help the company and eventually there will be problems. Retain your good talent. Treat employees like the intelligent people that they are.

Pros

Cutting Edge Products
Biggest Market Share - Virtulization/Cloud
25000 Partners w97% of fortune 500 as customers
Internal communication platforms are great for collaboration

Cons

Fast paced environment with a very entrepreneurial feel, which is good and bad. Travel policy is a lot less lenient than the consulting firm I came from.

Advice to Senior Management

Haven't been here long enough to tell but it seems like upper management leaves the micro managing to you and they worry about the macro. They are very interested in your professional growth and will let you know when you've done a good job.

Pros

- great people, the smart ones are still here
- the vision is amazing, very few can make it as far as we have and even fewer have the focus we do on completing that vision

Cons

at the lower ranks, it's not clear the right people are getting promoted. With more and more people, it's just harder to get stuff done. More political boundaries and fewer end to end accountability.

Advice to Senior Management

There was a time when getting stuff done was what we held people accountable to. Now it's about "smart thinking" but the actual execution is almost an after-thought. Time to hold everyone (including GMs and VPs) accountable instead to the goals they set out to do.

Pros

Market Leader and Young-thinking company

Cons

Too many levels of mgmt: it will be better to low level the management pyramid

Advice to Senior Management

Too many levels of mgmt: it will be better to low level the management pyramid

Pros

- Company making money through cash cow virtualization platform
- Stock has been growing
- Company riding cloud wave, vision set by CEO
- Several new products are being introduced

Cons

- Poor quality of management
- Nepotism (VPs/GMs hire their own friends)
- Good people are leaving as they are being overlooked

Advice to Senior Management

- Promote good management talent from within
- Hire new talent from top companies and schools
- Please discourage nepotism