From everything I've learned about Broadcom so far, it's clear that if they really do acquire us, we'll be gutted. Which s—s, because I actually enjoy my work. It's easy for people who can't wait to leave Symantec - severance will just be an added bonus for them. I don't want that. I want to stay.
But then again, who knows if I'll still enjoy my job once we are acquired. Cuts are not the only changes Broadcom has in store for us, that's for sure.
former ca here, i can relate to the original poster, we were once a great company then ca aquired us and turned us upside down and then shortly after Broadcom destroyed it completely. Enjoy the time that you have, stick together with colleagues, ca employees did a fantastic job finding jobs for everyone. Its going to get ugly, i remember someone saying that on the ca layoffs board when we were in your situation, we were all scared sh--less. Just remember there is a bette life after Broadcom, i dont know of anyone having a wirse job than before. Good Luck, stick together!
All the doomsaying speculation is getting tiresome. Perhaps H.T. will chop up and liquidate consumer. Unlikely as a whole though due to it being a cash printer. Will there be cuts there? I'd expect it. Truth is however that nobody can say exactly what will happen. Symantec is not CA and will be a different experience. Some parallels maybe, but also different.
If you’re in the consumer side, you’re toast. Broadcom only cares about enterprise computing.
Broadcom is like a PE company, or at least that’s what it wants to be. IT is commoditized now and Hock is testing the waters of driving efficiency down to the nth degree.
You can read more about current/former employee input at the CA site here. There’s a lot of noise and nonsense there though. Before Broadcom, CA was like a dysfunctional, close knit family. Many spoiled brats so to speak. So Broadcom was a shock.
Having said this, Broadcom is brutally efficient. There is no culture. You get decently paid, decent bonus, and “ok” equity plan.
Yah IT here sux, but it isn’t as bad as people make it. Hey, we’re in tech industry and folks should know how to deal with simple issues...
Regarding benefits, all I can say is that it’s not as good as CA or other tech firms I worked for. On the surface it looks good but when time comes for coverage on specific items you’ll find it’s not that great.
Major cuts are going to happen to distill the gold that exists in Symantec (ie, what you have that is sticky over 1-3 year deals). Don’t expect innovation here, it’s about how you maintain sticky customer relationships.
People on the Mainframe side of Broadcom are doing quite good as their solutions are sticky.
My advice is if you’re on the Norton side of business, walk, no RUN immediately as you’ll get cut or sold within months. If you’re part of the enterprise side in any role other than engineering....I’d update your resume now. Any “pure Corporate overhead function” will be gone, eg IT, HR, Marketing, etc.
Good luck to all.
Out of curiosity, which development methodology does Broadcom generally use?
From former CA, stay at Broadcom. As always it depends on what you want. Don't expect any compensation at BRCM outside money. You will get a higher salary, if you stay, plus RSU, but that's it. They will expect you to do whatever and feel compensated by that. If this is your kind of idea of a job, you will be fine. It is a job, not a career. And it is all based on profitability. They expect, to make numbers meet, to get a certain amount of earnings per employee. It is an easy calculation: count how much your clients are paying and how many people there are. That's it. If it turns out that to meet the goal you have to reduce 30% staff and you are already overloaded, you will be more overloaded. Period.
In CA they used the existing managers: most were pruned, and the ones being left are managing many more reports. Be it in sales, support or anywhere. Sometimes this creates dysfunctionalities, like a manager having under his wings 4 different products with people scattered all over the world.
Yes, upper management will be the first to go. With good cash, but if you hated them, you may feel even happy.
Everything that will cost money or is considered redundant is sc-apped: the whole IT internal department was sc-apped (now if you have a hard problem you need to open a case with a bot), hr, legal...all apps were moved to cheap alternatives, sales procedures simplified and pressure put on people to "do it yourself", etc. Very basic, very frugal and stressful, believe me.
Whether this will work or not, it is something to know because it is too early, but believe me, it is putting extreme stress on the people left. And we want of course, this to be successful. Prepare for this.
Companies are not better or worse. Depends on people working there.
You do know that we are currently in the process of being gutted correct? There’s a 2k headcount RiF coming within the next two weeks with another round to follow after that.
At least being acquired by Broadcom will release whatever is left from this board and executive management chain.