As much as VMware has been transforming technology wise, they still fail to address a lot of the toxicity in the management chain and culture
It is still very much about who you know, kissing up, not rocking the boat and conforming. The hierarchy is also complex making transparency difficult , there are people who I would say can get away with socializing and not doing much work which can have a severe impact on the morale of those who do it
Then there are the talkers, those who are put in lead positions which actually shouldn't be as they know very little about the projects they are leading yet they will be loud and argumentative often at times making incorrect and sometimes foolish claims but they do it in front of management who just think they are correct because the management doesn't know any better
And the last point is that is now mostly Indian, I don't know what breakdown is in terms of the engineering workforce but given what I see I wouldn't be surprised if it was like 80% or something. Now I have had many Indian coworkers over the years some of them good, some of them bad. But the disproportion at VMware especially in cases where one knows somebody from their home province pulls them over and sets them up in a high level position when they are basically equivalent to a new grad just adds to the toxicity
