Thread regarding VMware layoffs

At CA, up until the deal was officially closed, we did hire people in my department (and other departments) and there were still job openings posted.

All the new starters, people that were in their first month, were cut immediately. Only then, also a hiring freeze was officially announced.

In my department we are backfilling because there aren't enough employees to get things done with the number of departures. It would seem like this is no guarantee of employee past the acquisition date, it is simply so that the business does not completely tank between now and then. If you have a VMware offer and nothing else, maybe keep looking while you take the VMware job?

I mean, OP, come on man, you have to at some point get real and subscribe to logic. What do the postings mean? Let’s assume the cuts wont be bad, still, it makes a lot of sense to cut those who dont have experience ie, whom dont positively contribute to the revenue/employee metric, something Broadcom judges by. Overwhelmingly likely that those will be new employees. So saying that the hiring indicates no bad cuts doesnt make sense. Even no bad cuts will still mean cut new employees. Are you saying there will be No cuts at all then? We both know that’s not true.

In addition, 2400 new remote jobs, does that mean Broadcom will retain those and abandon their anti WFH policies? Do you think that such policies are implemented lightly, they just woke up on the wrong side of the bed and decided against WFH and now they are just gonna go “You know what VMware, it’s all good, you can work from home, no problem” and btw when they do that, they can expect their own workforce to want the same treatment. So it’s either WFH for everyone or no one. Againt, let’s smell coffee here, they arent about to change policies that they have had for years for VMware’s sake.

Clearly, the hiring isnt an indication of how bad cuts will be, since any cuts will
mean cut new employees considerably. WFH listings also dont mean no cuts since it would be ridiculously optimistic to think Broadcom is about to change their WFH policy. The only way to explain the listings is that, you guessed it, leadership doesnt care. To them, it’s business as usual, they have to maintain that impression in every way. At the end of the day, the deal will take awhile to close and they cant afford for an order of discontinuing recruitment being sent down the chain of command to be leaked. And I dont blame them. VMware is a big name and many talented people work there, I am not that experienced but even i found a job in a month and I decided to leave. They know that if employees sense what is happening, mass departures will start. They need to retain the company’s value in order for the deao to close. Business wise, it makes sense

Regardless of what the number of postings it, that number will be greatly reduced in the course of the next week as the freeze on non-QC roles comes into effect. I believe the target is to restrict the posting of approximately 50% of those (non sales backfill) roles previously approved.

LinkedIn has the same remote jobs posted multiple times... one for each city they want to show up in a different kind of search. There are literally thousands of duplicates

Thanks, the LinkedIn number doesn’t make any sense as the jobs are posted from our internal website to LinkedIn, so the numbers should directionally match. I am going to assume (although can’t back this up) that roughly 5,300 jobs have been cancelled and LinkedIn hasn’t caught up yet? Either way, agree with the OP, 1,500 or 6,800, it is still ridiculous.

“So is it 6,800 open jobs or 1,500? Big difference.”
Per LI - 6,800 total open jobs, 2,500 jobs posted within this past week, of those 2,500 jobs, 2,400 of them are remote. So 2,400 remote positions have been posted in the past week.
Like another poster said, egregious. This is egregious if layoffs will be bad as people are saying it will be. I find it unfathomable and that was the sentiment of my original post.

When ever there is a buyout or merger, there will be mass layoffs. They look at what projects are profitable. Keep those, and get rid of the rest. When they start layoffs it will be the entire group who is working on the project including the manager. Another words, start applying outside and see if you get lucky with a new job in this recession time or take your chance and wait it out. Your group might not be affected if it's making money and the project is unique and not a duplicate.

CA was a totally different animal than Vmware. CA has a set of niche mainframe and distributed software solutions that cater to a relatively small list of customers. EVERYBODY uses VMware.

CA’s stock price was stuck at $30 a share for more than 20 years. VMware has reverently had a decent stock run.

CA has had about 4 CEOs and endless executive management teams trying to grow the company for more than 20 years with zero results.

CA had seen its employee count dwindle from 24k at its Early 2000’s peak to about 11k-12k by the time Broadcom bought us (I was at CA and continue with Broadcom today). Also that employee count at CA remained relatively steady for a long time. VMware has been steadily increasing its employee count for years. Again, CAs employee count had elevated off considerably through the 2008-2018 time span.

EVERYBODY at CA knew that eventually there would be a big move and NOBODY was shocked. VMware is a relevant software company where many people have good careers and probably expected to continue enjoying employment there whereas not many of us at CA thought it would last.

What Broadcom did with CA was reasonable. What Broadcom is going to do with VMware is egregious. It’s corporate demolition and it should not be allowed.

Don’t be gaslit into thinking “it’s just good old fashioned business”.

These companies get a sweetheart 20% corporate tax rate and every time somebody challenges it the answer is “Yes but they employee so many people!”

How many employees does VMware have? $37k?

After the demolition is complete you’ll all be looking for jobs and Broadcom will continue to enjoy a low corporate tax rate.

Egregious

Don’t

I guess saying “You’ll need to polish up on those people skills during the hunt for your next jobs” is not crabby?

So is it 6,800 open jobs or 1,500? Big difference.

The “did it ever occur to you” and “you might want to report the news correctly” commenters are so crabby and for what? I asked a question and said that my information came from a look at LinkedIn numbers. You’ll need to polish up on those people skills during the hunt for your next jobs

In CA, about a year before we were sold, they cut 800 people who were business critical but were on very high salaries. Looking back now, i believe this was done to lower the salary average across the board and make it more attractive to a buyer.
However it almost worked against them as there was a hostile takeover attempt by BMC that almost went through.

I predict the hiring pause will be announced shortly. While our management may have zero clue what’s to come, it is irresponsible of them to continue hiring. I think they are keeping the jobs open to not start a mass exodus and making it look like business as usual which we all know is not the case.

From what I read here it looks like CA was upfront with employees early on and did stop hiring, the difference there, it would seem like people didn’t panic because they knew the cuts were coming. They also closed the deal pretty quickly, within 4 months, so it probably was easier to manage, unlike this which will take a year.

Also we have 1,500 open jobs currently available and many of them are contract roles, so you may want to report the news accurately.

This is great news for us! Hock clearly is going to allow us to run a non-profit business. Thanks for sharing. I guess this means no lay off and everyone will be retained? I guess he can get to the profitability numbers he mentioned to the press without cutting a single person. Thanks a ton for this great news.

Did it ever occur to you that there is something called g-n jumping laws that don’t allow the buyer to dictate to the company what they can and can’t do (outside of the merger agreement). Did it ever occur to you that CA and Symantec decided to not fill jobs at their own discretion and were responsible unlike our management? Would love for someone from CA or Symantec to explain

There may be jobs posted but that does not mean that people will actually will be hired (especially for director and above positions).

Agreed. My department is still hiring and anyone joining would want to be incredibly desperate for a job to accept.