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Really cool place to work with the usual few kinks - Senior Member of Technical Staff VMware Employee Review

4.0
Jul 20, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Absolutely the best and most brilliant people to work with in the area of "systems" research. Awesome technologies. Diverse areas of computer science to learn about and contribute to. Support for attending academic conferences. Rock solid products (routinely we have customers who run our ESX product in production for 3+ years without downtime). A tremendous amount of support in the ESX teams for innovative new ideas (including a yearly internal innovation conference that you can submit papers to!). The company has traditionally taken really good care of the employees and has enjoyed an exceptionally low turn-over rate due to this reason. The usual engineer-friendly perks like games/sports/well-stocked kitchen/gyms. The campus is very beautiful.

Cons

Growing pains associated with doubling the size of the company in just the last year and a half. Compensation for people who have been here a while hasn't kept up with industry averages (not a problem for newcomers). Promotions to Senior MTS, Staff Engineer and beyond are worse then pulling teeth. Inconsistent promotion criteria between groups. First level managers are predominantly novices (first time managers). Some recent churn in upper management has lots of people concerned but I believe it will work itself out.

Explore other reviews about VMware

5.0
Jun 24, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

VMware is a big company but in many ways had a startup vibe. That was great because the resources and infrastructure of a big company were there, but it gave most people I worked with freedom to work on many projects, influence, move around, and contribute in many ways. Plus, many things moved faster than they might at other companies of the same size. Perks were really great including bonuses, events on the campus, opportunities, etc.

Cons

The biggest con is the annual layoff. During most of the years I was there, we were growing like crazy, beating expectations, gaining in stock price, etc. It was always positive and upward. However, every single January, it was known that there would be a round of layoffs, even when all numbers were looking great as they almost always were. Management called it restructuring. But, over the years, some really good people were let go for no apparent reason. Then to add insult to injury, a week or two later, there would be a company quarterly meeting discussing how VMware was doing so well and is still hiring, but they had to make some changes. It always felt dishonest and the sympathy for those let go came across as disingenuous.

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