We (VMware) are at a point where management promises are not resonating with the employees because confidence is not present. We have lost our culture and trust in management for 3 main reasons:
- Words are no use when we speak them but do not practice them. At some point you will reach fatigue with your employees and audience.
- Management has proven their inability to listen to the employees or show integrity.
- VMware technology has become irrelevant to the current world condition and direction.
Let me now explain:
We speak integrity and equality, customer love and transparency but everyone internally knows about the ongoing racism and favoritism in at least some parts of management. The reality of Sales Teams overtaking other teams and treating them as anything but teammates has been ongoing. The culture of promoting and rewarding individuals who put themselves first and not the interest of the company or elevating leaders to more senior roles after what can be seen as failure to deliver is damaging to the motivation of employees who have integrity. How do you expect the employees to drink the cool aid when you prove that it is wastewater in reality?
Regardless of how you look at it and what you compare our technology to you will quickly find that compare to our competitors and the market we are either irrelevant or fail to show/proof adequate value. Why would a customer want to spend money on our technology when our competitors are offering it for free or when our support is non-existence? Why would someone pay VMware to purchase AWS services when they can purchase AWS services directly and get priority? Or sign up for Azure AVS when native Azure what they see as their ultimate destination? If I was a customer who migrated their infrastructure on AVS, right next to native Azure, and was suffering from hefty prices I had to pay both MS and VMware and getting inadequate support from VMware, I would probably ask myself "Why not eliminate one vendor and just migrate to native Azure, I will save money and the support I am getting wont be any worse"... Maybe this is what our "Partners" aka competitors know and want when they offer their partnership with us. Cloud and SaaS is where the industry is going and we are late to the game!
The way I see it, it is evident that VMware's future is not so bright, and this is what many of us employees can clearly see. Either we are going to get bought by one of the big players (mainly for our customer base) as it has been rumored or we are going to be bought by an investment company. Either way, many people who predict this outcome are waiting patiently for just that and/or a package on their way out of the company. This is unfortunate and painful to watch, specially for those of us who have been VMware fans for a long time.
I predict this to take a while to come to action but likely in the next 12-18 months. The question would then be who will be buying VMware and what packages (if any) will the management payout to employees that are being let go. Keeping in mind that most of these employees are diehard fans who have been around for a while... only time will tell!