Once was cool, now bloated management just like any other company
Pros
The company is the market leader and is untouchable in the virtualization arena. Some of our customers are rabid fans and you feel like a rockstar at events like VMworld. The name has massive respect to those in tune with technology. The Palo Alto campus is beautifully designed with nice landscaping, modern open-space design, a great gym, and diverse cafeteria with pretty decent food. Beer bashes every Friday is a great social and relaxation event. It's never boring - there's always something to do and the company moves fast (and often in multiple directions), so you gotta stay on top of your game. We have a great, hard-working team we get results. The people in the trenches are not only incredibly smart and talented, but have a great sense of humor and make the workplace atmosphere light and (dare I say) fun. Some managers here are great and will support you, your career, and your projects to the end. Unfortunately, that's slowly going away.
Cons
One word: MANAGEMENT. The people in the trenches are great, but like everyone else has mentioned, it's the management that makes you want to pull your hair out. In the Diane Greene days, management lines were clear and direct but since her departure there have been stacks and stacks of middle managers. The company has grown to be diamond-shaped: A few C-level guys on top, lots and lots and lots senior directors, directors, group managers, senior managers, and managers in the middle, and almost nobody at the bottom to execute. The people at the bottom are completely overworked and underpaid, while important decisions can't be made because of CYA middle managers who don't want to take any responsibility. There has been a "hiring freeze" for the past 3 quarters, yet they have been stacking VPs and senior directors left and right. People who have left are not replaced, so guess what that does? Yup, more work for everyone else. And what happens to those people? They eventually leave too. Egos and incompetency run wild with most middle and upper management. The fact is engineering and product development are the most important teams because they generate the products that make VMware great. Very few middle managers realize this and continue to push for useless programs with poorly developed infrastructure that ends up costing tons of money in the long run because of poor implementation and complete lack of vision. Lines of communication are as clear as mud. Despite the glass offices and conference rooms (that Diane wanted as a symbol of transparency), it is very difficult to get information from one team to another because of lack of processes and workflow. Finally, I am surprised at the lack of IT budget (for instance, the View virtual desktops are painfully slow because they don't have the adequate server infrastructure) and cheapness of the hardware - we're all running POS Dell laptops that suffer hardware failures after 6 months. Can't we afford IBM? Also, I couldn't believe that there is no protection on these laptops. A laptop was stolen from me with some sensitive data on it, and the IT guy said to me "don't worry, nobody can break into your computer since they don't know your password." Uh, I'm sure most 13 year old whiz kids can hack a Win XP password with no problems.
