Thread regarding VMware layoffs

Btw, out of curiosity, what band is assigned to Solution Engineers in Broadcom?

@Broadcomguy: feedback on any/all points here?
Today VMW has generous perks I suspect will be reduced or eliminated to match Broadcom including:

1. 22 days off before vacation days:

US Public Holidays off: 11 including New Years Day, MLK Jr.’s birthday, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, 4th of July, Labor Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving (2 days), and Christmas.

EPIC2 all company holidays: 4 (2022: March 14, April 22, August 12, October 14)

Winter Break (whole week of Christmas to New Years): 4

3 personal days

2. $1,000/associate/year gross for wellbeing reimbursement (can be used on almost anything except alcohol, dr-gs or firearms).

3. $3,141/associate/year matching gift (which was doubled in 2020).

4. $150/month max cell reimbursement (including phone lease plans).

5. $25/month for internet service

Thanks

I'm seeing a lot of talk about 50 miles being the cut-off for remote work, is that a hard limit? I'm in NJ and the closest office to my home is in Mellville NY at a touch under 50 miles, but in NY metro traffic that's a greater than 2 hour drive.

Would I be expected to commute 4 hours each day?

What if you are directly tied to billing revenue? Services and TAM? If they let you go someone needs to continue those engagements paid for….it doesnt make sense to layoff those who are tied directly to revenue

@Broadcomguy: great insights, thank you!
Would you agree with this projected headcount math?
Based on Broadcom $32B rev / 20K employees = $1.6M rev/employee
VMW $13B rev / “target” $1.6M rev/employee, then VMW headcount could shrink 38,000 to 8,125?

There is work from home IF you live 50 miles or more from an office.

There are a lot of (c) contractors within the organization, across all BUs. Any insight on these positions? Same three options or cut?

@gambler, as a new hire your cost basis for VMW shares is already locked in. It's the average closing price of the preceding 45 trading days from the last day of the month of your hire. You will get that price.

When you get your # of VMW shares based on that price it will be eventually converted to Broadcom shares at the conversion rate of 0.252 (per the FAQ they issued this morning)

What about TAMs

what does "service business" mean?

Saw some questions on services business, Hock is not interested in services at all, margins are too low. Expect to see the services business transitioned to HCL and other partners this is the approach taken for CA and Symantec.

Here's what I don't understand. As a new hire, I accepted a $ amount of RSUs because the current market had vmware undervalued in my opinion; meaning I knew that I would make more money there as the # of RSUs is determined at hire. With the move to Broadcom, the unvested RSU are transferred dollar-for-dollar, correct? There won't be a conversion to the $142 sale price as I understand it; which means my RSU dollars don't buy nearly as much broadcom stock so I'm out financially from what I had been planning on (risk, yes- I'm aware but it was my gamble). If I'm asked to stay; what's the recommendation on making up that difference?

Lots of great information. How do services work? VMware does $1B+ yearly on customer-facing services.

I have VMW RSUs to sell. Do I sell now or wait for either a) $142.50 in cash or b) 0.252 shares of Broadcom stock? Advice please?

any insights on professional services?

This is super helpful. Thanks!

What are the odds that a decent portion of the business operations roles (HR, finance, legal, etc.) will be retained? Broadcom is about to see a large growth in employee population so they will need more bus ops support. But even if I'm optimistic, I would say 2/3 of bus ops is gone. Worst case is 9/10 is gone. Realistically, maybe only 3/4?

What happens when Broadcom has a product and the company it’s acquiring has a product. Does the company it acquire lose out?

Post from TheLayoff.com

Broadcom is a very stats type of company and your own stats as well as the groups average is easily made available to you and it updates every 24 hours or so.
The annual performance reviews by your manager is based upon these stats.
The ratings are

1 Exceptional Exceeded Expectations to be given to 20% of employees with 150% bonus payout. Possible additional RSU'S

2 Meets or Exceeds Expectations to be given out to 70% of employees with 100% bonus payout and normal stock RSU'S

3 Below Expectations to be given out to bottom 10% of employees, 50% bonus payout with no RSU'S given for that year.

This makes you work hard to stay out of a 3 rating as there are normally only good employees left after Broadcom cuts.

No one from the C-Suite will survive and none of them want to work at Broadcom. They will receive generous severance packages and will leave happily. Hock’s model is not to retain executives, he will find someone that reports to your current C-Suite and retain that person. He wants people they can be directed; not visionary leaders.

Don’t worry about your current C-Suite. Based on the purchase price they will all be making life altering money and will never need to work again. There kids will never need to work again either!

Awesome post and thanks a lot for the valuable information!

I just want to ask how boardcom will handle VMW's global sites, like we have ~1000 employee (mostly engineering team) in my country where boardcom doesn't invest much.

This is what you all get for refusing to use Dell Laptops in favor of MACs.

According to levels.fyi, the pay at AVGO is not very good even after the bonus and stock grants.

To say that Broadcom pays well is misleading as the same levels are VMware pay much better than Broadcom and is on the lower end here.

@guy who wrote steady paycheck and boring work / you are right on the money!

Please accept the reality of whats about to happen, and please stop day dreaming of vmw staying independent. You can and likely will be a separate legal entity under Broadcom, but not independent. Sellers don't write contract to include innovation clauses. Best thing VMW can and should do is to enforce generous severance payouts - Broadcom is typically very generous in that already. All we care about is Opex being low...

There are only two reasons Broadcom would be intetested in an asset. Ability to Cut fat and strategic synergies. They are not acquiring VMW because they want vmw to get innovations awards.

Broadcom has 20K employees and 32B+ in revenue. If VMW adds 13B in CY 2023, expect to have no more than 10K employees left 18 -24 months aftet close - and that's a generous estimate.
I understand it's denial phase, I went through the same.
But sooner you accept reality and as--s your indivdual situation the better it is for you. If you are in Horizontal functions, its a good market, before recession hits, get out there and get a good job. If you can time this to perfection, collect big severance check, good for you,

Best of luck tomorrow and I wish this transition be the best thing for you!!

VMware HQ campus’s is leased from Stanford, to retain the real estate VMW must exist as a separate entity. They are probably conditions for innovation and growth tied to the lease.

If you like boring work and a steady paycheck working on stale tech with no innovation, then Broadcom is for you!.. until your product stops making money.

Work good enough to be noticed so that management never considers you a rank 3 and you will keep getting those RSUs.

Broadcom expects to generate $1 million per employee so that 34k will turn into a fraction within a couple years.

Was there any notice given to the employees who were laid of for CA and Symentic ? I read in some news article that last day in office was on in late Nov but employees were not officially terminated till Feb ?

This fu----g sucks. My WORST nightmare come true. I worked at Oracle, which was AWFUL. VMware has been the best company I've ever worked for. The people, the laid back atmosphere and so on. And now this stupid company is gonna come in and fu-k it all up. Please.... PLEASE do NOT Buy us. Go away, and leave us alone

Appreciate the info provided here but the rosy TC figures are based on the stock market bo-m over the past decade. Those days appear to be over ymmv.

10K views in a day. Corporate Comms Brigade is obsolete.

@Broadcomguy - thanks you for all the info. This is very, very, very useful... Thank you!

Guys, no promotion freeze and no salary freeze. But expect no free loading and spoonfeeding as well.

Also, as I said in my earlier post, promotions are hard to come by. Level 3 to level 5, that's typically done at GM level, so no problem. Promotion to Senior Mgr or above Principle level is very extremly tough, so if you are more career oriented rather than focus on W2 pay, you will struggle here... as money can make you happy to a certain extent!

8 yrs ago we were told that our salaries were higher than Avago but bonuses were lower, so naturally we all thought Avago would freeze our salaries - didn't happen, but bonuses did go up. Then RSUs initial grant went up and cherry on top due to stock appreciation anyone at principle level or above became a sure millionaire, multi millionare in many cases...

As for working hard: I imagine you guys work hard at VMW as well. No draconian measures for making you work hard (like I have heard at Amzn) but you won't be twiddling your thumbs as you have to show results. I think there's fear of unknown - things aren't as bad at Broadcom. Let me qualify, it's easy for me to say, as I am now used to sub standard tools, no desk phones, no admin, buying stationary out of own pocket etc. Sure, its a pain, and at times you get frustrated, but when you make comfortable 7 figures, all is forgiven :) I am
Just being honest here... you have to figure out what's important to you!

Broadcom has most casual performance review system. Sure, there's forced ranking, bottom 5-10% get 1/2 the bonus and limited RSUs. Also bottom ranking doesnt automatically means PIP, manager's decide. Just dont be the bottom 5/10%, which is true at any company.

If you want to earn a living rather than just pass time, you will do fine at Broadcom. And if you make the cuts, likely you will end up making a lot more money here than vmw...

Good luck guys, and again, don't worry too much about things you can't control!

Does Broadcom put a promotion freeze after acquisition?

Can you speak to how they make engineers and managers work really hard? It is through brutal performance reviews, 360 feedback, or something else entirely?

Thank you in advance. And thank you for this post!

If the deal goes through the closing date will be early November when Broadcom starts its new fiscal year.

Post from TheLayoff.com

If you are important and not within 50 miles of a Broadcom office you will get a work at home contract. It happened to a lot of us in Europe and some in New Hampshire when Broadcom started to close smaller offices.

This is what you get when you leave a tech nerd at the helm with no business instincts or vision . I blame it all on the current c-suite with the exception of Zane.

Oh let’s not forget the Frenchie we have running sales. Walking snooze fest. Thanks for the “inspiration” JP!!! … bunch of id--ts!!!

How does Broadcom view data analytics teams? Most data teams don’t seem to produce a lot of tangible business value but VMware keeps them around so leaders can get some reports from time to time. What’s the risk for these teams and if they are a product analytics group would they continue to be part of engineering?

Loved VMware's culture and campus. Also, an ex VMware and ex-Broadcom told me that there is no such culture at Broadcom. The culture at Broadcom compared to VMware, sucks!

Engineering is top-tier (Band R). Band K is in the middle like PM and the bottom sht tier is Band G (treated like secretaries). Band R gets at least 3x more RSU than Band G and double K.

Octane hated remote and depends on GM too. The mainframe guys said their GM hates remote even more than Hock and they having trouble hiring. If you have big VMware office with top-tier R&D, that becomes a Broadcom office and smaller ones close.

They pay top dollar for good engineers that keep the revenue going. Any bs innovation incubators are out the door.