I recently left VMware after almost 10 years. Jeez I am so glad I got out when I did. Some very talented people I know were either laid off this past year, or they left due to things getting toxic. Favoritism is rife.
Any career progression or promotion opportunity within VMW comes down to this. If you are in the right circles and good friends with the hiring manager or director, then you'll know you'll get the job before even applying (that is a mere process that has to be undertaken). External candidates can forget it, even if they are more qualified for the role. The hiring manager would rather have people they know already. You could argue this is human nature. The result of this at VMW is that top talent is leaving, and external talent comes in at the lower tier.
The reality of the situation is that they make acquisitions every year, and the recent Pivotal acquisition means the inevitable slimming of numbers. I feel sorry for the people at Pivotal, they don't know it yet but there will be huge cuts.
People are just numbers to VMware leadershop. Just like the share price is all about numbers. They don't care about people at all. One particular VP openly admitted this to me before I left.
You can be a rockstar at VMW when you are helping them hit their numbers. If you are in sales then you'll know you are doing well if you get invited to Presidents Club. This is a lavish event in places like Dubai or Italy, that the top sales people get invited to. The people that worked hard to actually help close the deal in customer success, engineering, professional services, or the SE folks, they don't get recognized.
Do yourself a favor and check LinkedIn for the number of people that have left VMware in the past 12 months. Look at where they are going. AWS, Google, Oracle, Rubrik. Want some examples?
VP of Global Cloud Sales, now at AWS.
SVP/GM, Storage and Availability BU, now at Google
VP of Engineering and Product Management, now at Google
SVP/GM Americas, now at Rubrik
VP of Sales Strategy, Planning & Operations, now at Rubrik
The list goes on and on. They have shifted from a technology company to a cloud sales company. The VMware Cloud on AWS solution is great for AWS. It solves the short-term. Customers move the problem from on-premise to the cloud. But it's still VMware, just very expensive. Why did they want to move it from on-premise in the first place? Cost. But wait, now it's running in an AWS data center, doesn't it make sense to move those workloads to native AWS? Databases can move to RDS or Aurora. Everything else to EC2. Customers an lay the foundations for a cloud native future. Whether VMware like it or not, this is the way. Being middleware of the cloud is terrible.
So by February 2020 you'll hear a lot more about the layoffs. To those impacted, don't be down about it. Go to one of the companies I mentioned and grow your career!!