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Fair pay, overloaded and disorganized work - Member of Technical Staff II VMware Employee Review

2.0
Sep 16, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Reasonable salary and benefits, especially for living near the Bay Area. More recently, the team and/or manager slowly start to show more appreciation for the amount and quality of work I do. I seem to get along with the team just fine, they can rely on me as much as I can rely on them.

Cons

There's a lot of disorganization. It's incorrectly assumed that we can do more amount of work remotely than in office - it's a lot more casual in office, so a lot more social and less burdensome. I end up staying up late, even weekends sometimes. That said, we have half the desired number of staff on our team. There's a lot of product documentation our team has to follow, but generally with outdated or unclear instructions. Occasionally, I have to get a senior engineer, manager, or our local tech support to try assist me, wasting their or my times with sneaky work-arounds - all this could've been avoided had the documentation been updated before the next engineer works on the product. I also had a random dispute with a hot-tempered engineer who threatened to give me a bad performance review for not updating a specific task I was assigned with - we're not even on the same team. I apologized just in case - only to be scolded more - explaining that I was simply following my manager's advice to hold off on said task. After I brought it up with my manager who promised to talk to this engineer about it, he never did, and then that dispute was dropped. I'm fine with moving on; perhaps this engineer was going through a tough time outside of work, who knows? But it seems there's a bit of unresolved problems across teams that need addressing.

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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