Thread regarding VMware layoffs

"I don’t think regular employee should blame herself/himself, for what is coming ! Most of the people did their best . No this is not our fault. I won’t blame anyone either"

I certainly won't blame regular employee. I would blame the senior leadership (probably the top dozen or so, including past leadership) as they created layers upon layers, constant re-org, and spent too much energy on things that majority of us do not care (e.g LGBTQXYZ, D&I). Play the last 5 VMworld keynotes. How many turned into $1b business? Their job as leaders is to not let the company became so bloated that even scavenger believe they can do a better job. Do not forget that not too long ago our share price was near $140. Broth comb did not really pay 50% premium.

Whomever wrote this must not have been in this business long. ALL of the companies that I have worked for bought other companies for whatever product they could add to their portfolio. Facebook, Google, Apple, Oracle, and obviously VMware all buy other companies. It's far easier to simply buy a fully developed product that has a customer base and proven business viability versus making your own.

Just wanted to add on here. Our DE&I initiatives have gone too far. For example, most don't realize it yet, but your bonus is now linked to whether or not your leaders hit the DEI goal. You are not in control of this but it now will affect your paycheck.

How do you feel knowing that if they don't hire the "right" people, you will in turn make less money.

Beyond this, we simply are mirroring the biden administration. Virtue signaling at every turn.

I think the OP is +80% accurate. VMW got bloated and distracted with shiny virtue signaling objects, and the c-suite is almost entirely B and C leagues. However the other hard truth is that VMW's core business and addressable market is on the decline. Most customers simply cannot build and run their own cloud, nor should they even try. As the core IT infrastructure orgs amongst our customer base become obsolete, so will the main VMW proposition. It was fun and phenomenal while it lasted, but all good things come to an end (or at least they stop growing). VMW is simply an aging cash cow at a late stage in a natural tech business cycle, so no surprise that a Broadcom would make an acquisition and do the obvious.

"80 percent of workers want to work for a company that shows its commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equity"
You get the survey from the same woke group. I'm surprised you did not get 100%.

The world would be a better off we spend less time hyping up and dividing us into race, gender, age, religion. Just get the damn job done and be a good human being. I'm not interested in your race and pronouns. And certainly don't bring it to my children!

I will enjoy knowing that our clueless product managers will be interviewing for new jobs and getting a wake up call

Sorry, but just reading this story explaining different pronouns.

Writing about someone like Halsey with multiple, interchangeable pronouns is one thing, but plenty of people use neopronouns (ze/hir/hirs; ze/zir/zirs; e/em/eir; xe/xem/xyr; etc.), which are less traditional and which a reader might not recognize or understand to be a pronoun.

Don’t you all think this is going too far? Diversity is important, but diverse people should get fired if they don’t perform the same as non-Diverse people.

I am someone that is considered Diverse at VMWare and I hate that most people think I got my job to meet some arbitrary diversity quota. Pointless to say we should be focusing elsewhere now, since our new overlords will ki-l all diversity programs.

Sc--w the D&I sh-t. In the name D&I lot of useless people are getting promoted.
Hire the people who pass the qualification and DONT show favoritism based on D&I. Its utter non-sense. If Vmware thinks of really D&I, they should sponsor or pay for education for talented under privileged folks. But not the D&I enforcement. No body gives a damn for race..Just hire talented people who can make great products and get rewarded. In the name of D&I Raghu and Betsy are making life miserable for many..They should better work properly and they didnt which is why we are in Bcom Sh-t now..

I disagree with your opinion on DE&I. 80 percent of workers want to work for a company that shows its commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equity. VMware would fail to recruit a lot of top talent if it ignored an issue that's important to 4/5 employees (seems like this issue is more important to younger folks who are making up a growing percentage of the overall workforce every year as well). I think VMware has a way to go yet on this topic given how in my experience most leaders at the company primarily hire folks of their same racial background.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/30/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-are-important-to-workers-survey-shows.html

Yes, VMware should focus on making and selling great products, but getting the best people is the best way to do that. I think we'll see a lot of added attrition and less interest from key talent in terms of recruitment if Broadcom does away with most aspects of VMware's "snowflake" culture.

All that said, I couldn't agree more about the issues you mention on titles and management...

Betsy is delusional. Broadcom does not want to know how she built the culture and they don't care about this SJW culture. Years ago people were excited to be working on innovative products and they talked about the technology and solving problems for customers. People were hired because they could help to make great products and no one cared what their identity was, they were accepted for their contriubtion. There were programs to help people learn new technology and contribute to innovation. These days I don't think that most people at VMware know how the products work or what the customers do with them. All we hear about is hiring based on identity and programs based on identity. I bet that even the leadership team can't tell you what multi-cloud means. VMware is a snowflake culture.

The Fictional Hock note sent on the site earlier was spot on as it relates to Diversity. I realize it isn’t Hock replying, but the response is written from his point of view and I think the writer nailed it.

Totally agree with this thread. For example, internal compliance teams were asking everyone to remove gender pronouns from our site. Like seriously??

Plus, we have so many useless programs on tracking DEI. While I agree with the concept, we shouldn't be wasting money on this. Any real customer isn't going to make their product purchase contingent on any of this.

So how does this drive our bottom line? How does this increase our stock price? How is this a good use of company resources?

Part of me can't wait to see all this deadwood get fired.

Betsy makes me cring and I feel sorry for the snowflakes who worship her.

I think the OP has some valid points and from the other posts. So many managers and directors who do sweet F all and must be worried they will be found out. Aside from them so many who have been riding the gravy train, they are likely scared they might get found out once they moved on.

For the rest of the folks who work hard,. Know their stuff, you will be fine, it might hard but you will find something else, maybe even better

This.

The number of programs that we have internally is exhausting. The number of emails that I get a day talking about these programs was too much that I had to filter them out into another folder.

There are also sooooo many "Managers" and "Directors" and event "Senior Directors" that don't have any direct reports. I could easily come up with a list of 10 people in my BU that I don't know what they do and I don't see how they contribute to our bottom line.

There are a lot of people who have been riding the gravy train who are going to be let go, will save $$$$$'s and will not be missed. Unfortunately, it also means that a lot of the rank-and-file employees will suffer too.

Yes. Rightly said. Try to get a job when the market is ok. All execs say all fine and what not.. They will get heavy bonus'es for screwing the people. Any one who listens to them will loose even the possibility of getting a job. If your BU is not vSphere/vSAN/vRealize, you know what will happen. You will be mostly laid off or sold to some other company and they will mostly take just engineers. If you are in the above 3 BU's you will have some more run way and then many will be laid off in 1 year. Bcom is not in the business of innovation. They just want to milk the cash cow will less investment and hence margins. Don't get fooled by Bcom stock getting 2x and very attractive compensation and all.. You wont be there in the first place..

I don’t think regular employee should blame herself/himself, for what is coming ! Most of the people did their best . No this is not our fault. I won’t blame anyone either. Each of us should take care of our future. No one will help us.

Has leadership spent any time promoting skill development and job growth or learning better approaches to working? All that I ever see is a constant bombardment of wokeness and identity politics. I never hear any talk about focusing on the needs of customers or making better products or personal development. It's non stop nothing but DEI propaganda. No wonder we are in this situation.

This is really accurate. I’m all for diversity and equal treatment but have we focused too much on these initiatives and not enough on the business? My pronouns are irrelevant and 99 percent of the people at the company identity as they appear so what does including pronouns in email really do except show the world how “woke” we are? So d-mb.