Great engineering, poor management, software development and career advancement processes are broken.
Pros
VMware has a great pool of engineering talent that are smart, energetic, interesting and genuine. They are some of the best people I've had the pleasure to work with, and the hardest part for me to say goodbye to when I left. The work environment itself is very pleasant. All the facilities are new (campus built in 2007). The cafeteria is nice but occasionally with food that's too quirky even for me (apple pizza? really?). If this were two years ago I would also be able to compliment on the well-stocked free food in the kitchen, however that has been slashed significantly since. The engineering work can be very interesting, if one can find a way to keep the PMs' and managers' sticky fingers away for long enough. The benefits overall are compatible if not better than most companies out there; though it can't be compared to Google, not anymore.
Cons
There is something very dysfunctional about how management is organized and what they're expected to do. They seem to get and give conflicting information every week, most likely piped down from upper management. There is a lot of confusion and constant change in priorities and directions. Engineers find themselves wasting a lot of time doing scoping for a ton of projects that just get cancelled, then revived, then cancelled again. There is a constant tug of war for resources and project prioritazation between and among PMs and managers and the different R&D groups. Communications between groups are very poor, as a result there are grudges held between managers, a lot of back and forth dealings so that the focus shifts from what's best/right for the company to individual agendas. It's very sad to watch this when VMware has such a great potential of engineering talents to carry out the projects. Career advancement process is also confusing and not communicated well to engineers. There isn't a consistency on the set of objectives each engineer should meet in order to advance to the next level. Often times it seems to rely more on how far the individual's manager is willing to push for it, rather than the merit. No one knows what it really takes to be promoted. It got to be very demoralizing. There are some good managers in the company, but they seem to be the exception rather than the rule. Managers are expected to manage huge complex projects as well as their teams; many can't handle such responsibility and therefore end up dropping the ball one way or another. Often times it's the subordinates that have to suffer such consequences.
