VMware Employee Reviews about "middle management"

Pros

Learning opportunities, Employee friendly policies, Work life balance

Cons

Middle management favoritism, Frequent management changes and policy impact

Pros

-Pat Gelsinger is the best CEO I have ever worked for -Manical focus on weekly/monthly results -Incredible passion for extending beyond core virtualization

Cons

middle management, mileage varies dramatically

Pros

VMWare is an ethical, employee friendly company. Customers love its products and VMware tries to make sure that a customer is at the center of their product decisions. It's a nice place to work and if you are in the right team, you get to work on cutting edge technology.

Cons

There is a general lack of accountability at VMWare, which is troubling. Middle management politics can get very ugly.

Pros

Competitive salary Macbook has been given to all new employees

Cons

Very poor middle management, the Ethics committee rejects your complaints and lots of office politics. The workforce is very poor technically and I feel this is the worst group of people I've worked in my career.

Pros

Great WLB. Parking lots are empty at 4:30 or 5:00 PM. and folks come in to work not before 10:00 AM in the morning. Industry leading salaries and bonus (but very poor RSUs). The company moves at a reasonable pace and is very family friendly. The office location and campus for the HQ is awesome. The benefits and perks are also very good. The CEO and his team look to be very competent and genuinely nice people. The company has a compelling story with VMC on AWS. Hopefully it delivers on that vision or else the company is in for some real tough times.

Cons

On-prem enterprise software is not a cool technology sector to be in. Because of this perception the company does not attract the best talent anymore. Most of the A level players have left from the engineering ranks to startups or the FANG companies. So co-workers are mediocre at best. Also the company moves at a glacial pace, compared to all the companies working in the cloud - releases in VMware take months to a year. Its anachronistic in this day and age to have a monolithic technology stack. But with such a large installed base it will be near impossible for the company to pivot. Due to all of the above constraints it is hard to get excited about the technology in the company. A lot of the upper management are from the traditional old companies like Cisco, HP and IBM. This does not inspire confidence in the middle management. The company pays well on the salary and bonus front but the RSU's are significantly lower than what FANG pays. Bottom line VMware is no longer a premium destination for employees. Its more in the same league as a Cisco or Oracle. A tier 3 company at best. Go there if you are looking for a stable company and great WLB.

Pros

Unlimited vacation policy, beautiful campus, good cafe.

Cons

Passive aggressive middle management, cisco-style processes, inability to innovate in QE organizations.

Pros

Brilliant Engineers Opportunities to learn - tons of resourceful people you can learn from Benefits - great health plans, great 401k options, and great perks, MSDN accts for each engineer, Safari Books account for each engineer

Cons

- Politics and senselessness rampant throughout engineering leadership - engineers cannot regularly work from home. - New executive team is more focused on stock price than innovation - Segmentation of products - product teams are too silo'd from eachother. - Currently, in the midst of an exodus of great talent from Steve Harrod, Bogamil, as well as middle management. The smartest leaders are leaving...but it doesn't stop there. VMware is losing the most talented engineers to start-ups and other corperations (IMO) because innovation has dried up. Engineers are tired of integrating software and want to get back to building fresh ideas.

Pros

Great culture encouraging on-the-job learning/training. New industry-leading technologies all the time provide a "coolness" factor when talking with peers. Virtualization and cloud technologies are both hot stuff right now. Top management has it right on almost all external fronts. If you have stock, it's up almost every month by leaps and bounds.

Cons

Poor middle management. Most of the managers and directors obtained their positions by cronyism. Little to no chance of promotion or significant wage increase unless as a result of outside educational certification or degrees, or you know someone higher up who has a special spot for you. "Great. What's next?" mentality abounds with little recognition for truly great accomplishments beyond lip service. Surveys have been conducted in the past with honest answers from employees resulting in little real change. There is a major gap in feedback from the lower ranks to the upper management. Self-preservation is rampant in the middle ranks and has worsened with rounds of layoffs in middle management.