35
eNPS Score
Q&A With VMware Employees
We believe that software has the power to unlock new possibilities. Our cloud, digital workspace, networking and security offerings form an essential, ubiquitous digital foundation that powers the applications, services and experiences transforming the world.
How employees describe working at VMware
So far this is the best place i have worked in 30+ years of IT
customer service is just awful
Business drive and commitment to results
Review from Sales Dept
ease of use and scalability.
Transparency on process and regular communication and updates.
Review from Marketing Dept
What it's like to work at VMware
- VMware employees generally work 9.1 hrs a day
- Employees at VMware report the work pace is comfortably fast
- On a typical day, employees at VMware have 4+ meetings
- 89% of VMware employees look forward to interacting with their team every day
- VMware employees most often take unlimited paid vacation and sick days each year
- 80% of VMware employees report they are happy with their work life balance
- VMware employees typically get valuable feedback on how to improve at work Once a month
- 85% of VMware employees call their work environment positive
Q&A With VMware Employees
IDX: 0 TOT: 95
What’s the most common reason ppl quit or leave?
Top Employee Response
Their is no work life balance in some departments. You end up working 10-12 hours a day and mostly because of inefficient behaviors and tools
Slow growth
Super confused middle management and everything becomes P0 on the last day ... Some bad promotions ...
What is the PTO policy at VMware?
Unlimited
Unlimited PTOs.
Loose and righteous
What do people at VMware think about the CEO? What do they do well and what can they improve?
Top Employee Response
All employees in VMware Love and have a deep respect for the CEO
Pat is awesome and very personable. A pleasure to listen to. I know things could be improved, i'm just not sure how. That is why i'm not a C-level.
He's great!
How many women are in your team? is it diverse enough?
Top Employee Response
Within the support organization, there is roughly 1 woman for every 20 men (conservative estimate) where a vast majority reside in management type roles and female engineers do not choose to stay for long (max 2 years.) Since 2009, most of the low-level management positions have been filled with women, all hired externally instead of internally. VMware does have programs for women though, one such program is called VMwomen which provides assistance in reporting inequalities, harassment, career planning and program alignment. If you are male, there are 0 programs for assistance. The major problem is that VMware doesn't hire qualified people and have too many incentive programs for under qualified candidates and pushes the vast majority of the work load onto the highest performers which always results in them departing from the company regardless of sex, politics, race, religion or origin. If you are technical at VMware, don't expect your management team to understand what you do.
Ratio is definitely skewed towards men. Most teams in Engineering do not have an even representation of men-women.
Its diverse. But not enough. I think the ration is about 3:1. For every 3 men, there is one woman.
what's your workflow? agile? waterfall?
Top Employee Response
VMware is all over the place and every department leverages multiple methodologies, software packages, and repositories. This is one reason VMware has internal issues with collaboration and is further compounded in their support organization as their support project managers have no practical experience as project managers and none of them are certified/trained. However, VMware tries to circumvent this issue by leveraging the "try before you buy" system.
Agile
Agile + Waterfall
What's the work from home policy like at VMware?
Top Employee Response
Depends on your manager. We have people 100% WFH and other people 0% WFH.
Depends on your position. I work at the office in Austin which is mostly Sales. They do "Work from home Wednesdays" where most of the office will work from home.
Awesome. I work from home half of the week. This was agreed upon hire.
If you could make changes, how would you improve the culture at VMware?
First, you must realize that VMware culture is really three different, conflicting cultures; you have a “engineering/product” culture that drives the business units, a deal-centric culture in the field and a values-centric culture in the operational/finance side. As a result, the EPIC2 values are fairly core to ops/finance/HR, but these are regularly sacrificed for product (usually passion overwhelms community and integrity) and sales (usually integrity takes a back seat to execution) goals. Above all this is the overwhelming culture impact of Dell culture, which is closest to VMware’s sales culture and most distant to ops and products. Not sure there is a lot to be done to improve that.
a lot more open conversations that are candid, honest, and more transparent.
I'd work harder
What benefits does VMware provide?
Food, snacks and ESPP
GREAT Paternity/Maternity leave!!! Health-care, Life-insurance, ESPP, 401k, and many others
All employees have access to the standard benefits that all large companies provide, healthcare, 401k, stock purchase plans, etc. Additionally, VMware provides: - Global assistance programs for women (Note: Males are excluded from these programs and do not have corresponding programs for men.) IE: How to file harassment charges, career development (speaking and work coaching), additional on the job training, special projects for female advancement and hiring bonuses of women. - Product partnership discounts for Dell, Apple, ISPs, cell phone plans as well as VMware product discounts. - Stocked cafeterias on every floor of every center. - Fully manned cafeterias in the corporate campus for extremely low prices. - Free VMware certification vouchers (on your personal time.) - Reimbursement for 3rd party certs/classes (related to your responsibilities and conducted in your personal time.) - Annual bonuses and stock payout if negotiated during hiring. - Many others depending on your role.
What's the company culture like at VMware?
For such a large company, it still has a small company feel. I forget i work for a 20,000+ employee company.
Was better before Dell takeover.
VMware's culture in their support organization is broken and has devolved to the point where every person spends most of their time covering their backs instead of focusing on their work. Not doing so will result in an onslaught of accountability and responsibilities for projects that you may not have even been involved in. Outside of GSS (Support Dept), you will encounter the culture that everyone boasts about, but this culture mainly resides in departments that are profit centers and bring in more money than they consume. This is why review sites always have either 5 or 1 star, 5 if you're in a profit center, 1 if you are not in regards to VMware's cultural breakdown.
How's the office morale?
Mostly good. In our heavily over-worked groups though, it's a little burnt out.
In VMware's support department the morale continues to drop globally due to band-aid like corrections to the systems and tools for the employees. Centers are pitted against each other and each center has their own systems, processes, and tools that are always in development but there is no global cohesiveness which continues to lead to devastating breakdown for both VMware and their customers. Morale has also dropped since the beginning of 2016 due to the massive layoffs which primarily consisted of the highest paid and most technical resources, further leading to an increase in tribal knowledge and concern for further layoffs of Sr. Staff.
Round of layoffs yesterday where they axed entire teams and moved work to lower cost centers. The morale is pretty low here at the moment. They keep referring to the severance packages that they gave people as a "soft landing", which just feels like a terrible euphemism.
how long do employees usually stay at the Company?
I know people that have been here for 12 years. Others that were here for 4 years and are now back after a 2 year hiatus. It feels like people are here for the long haul.
In support; most engineers and managers come in expecting to stay forever but after being overworked for a year, most people burn out and exit the company without notice. - Minimum: 3 months - Enough to go through VMware's technical training program. VMware currently requires these individuals to pay back the training costs if they don't work for at least 6 months. - Median: 2 years - Enough to learn the product very well, then depart for twice as much as a subject matter expert to become an administrator. - Max: 5 years - Long enough to work into the management ranks, then depart for twice as much.
I would say 5 years seems to be the typical tenure.
What is most positive about the culture and environment at VMware?
Top Employee Response
Excellent work-life balance. Most people seem to leave work at work, and everyone is understanding about life getting in the way of work.
Work at home or on the road. Office space available when needed.
I love our Corporate Culture. A Fortune 500 company with the heart of a start up!
What is the best part about your compensation package at VMware?
Top Employee Response
They pay very well and continue to do so to keep us here.
Generous salary with a lot of optional programs
Bonuses
What are some of the best things about your team at VMware?
Top Employee Response
Good breadth of knowledge. Work well together. Complimentary skills.
We hire outgoing, collaborative people who support one another.
desire to learn, perform, succeed.
What do you like best about the leadership team at VMware?
Top Employee Response
Very open to ideas and drive results.
They are accessible, transparent, and open to change.
My direct manager is great, but the leadership team likes building out management rather than adding developers.
What is the onboarding process like at VMware and how long does it last?
2 days for non tech roles
Intense. Official process is about 2 months. Unofficially, 6 months.
What is VMware's policy towards pets in the workplace?
seems flexible about it
Pets are not welcome in the workplace.
How difficult is it to maintain a social life while in your job at VMware?
not hard
vmware is a proponent of work/life balance
How's the vacation policy at VMware?
unlimited
Unlimited PTOs
What part of VMware's business is growing fastest? What part is having difficulties?
solutions and services.
SDS grows fast, CMP rocks, but SDN is a bit slower (H1 2017)
How's the work life balance at VMware?
Decent. If its a planned situation, you can usually get the time away and in emergencies its easy to get coverage. Where it lacks a little is the comfort to ask for coverage on a severe situation long enough to go get lunch.
it is about as good as it gets. There are many chances to be who you want to be within this company
What's the interview process like at VMware?
intimidating but laid back.
1.) Corporate Recruiter: Questions related to specific job-related tasks and your corresponding experiences. The recruiter's responsibility it to weed out anyone that can't meet the baseline understanding of the position. 2.) Team Manager: Questions related to more complex tasks pertaining to the job with a mix of cultural questions directly correlating to that team's culture. 3.) Corporate Recruiter: If you get through the first 2 interviews then you will be contacted by the corporate recruiter with an offer. This is the only time you will ever get to negotiate salary and benefits so make sure to research the position as much as possible so you are not undervalued and underpaid.
What's the office vibe like at VMware?
Top Employee Response
The vibe in every center and on every floor is different based on how the leaders run their teams. Unfortunately, most departments have very poor leadership globally and have even worse communication which has recently (in the past 3 years) led to a lack of company vision from the executive staff and thus a lack of confidence in leadership. At the lowest levels, your counterparts will be the biggest reason to stay as they have a culture that supports each other's development and is the best part of working for VMware due to the level of knowledge each person is required to obtain. The culture dramatically changes when you enter the management ranks and becomes highly politicized, expect 1/2 of your work days and some of your personal time to cover your back with the other 1/2 being meetings that seldom produce any results.
Hard working but casual
What are you most excited about working at VMware?
learning new technologies and staying on the cutting edge of technology.
After working for VMware for years and departing then returning; the levels of work, responsibility, and accountability will increase your punishment thresholds from Sr. Management figures and make you a rockstar in any other company... unfortunately a byproduct of working at this level, each employee must decide between work/life balance or promotion.
How do the current devs on the team act towards new developers that join?
Top Employee Response
Devs within the global support departments are demanding but your counterparts will do everything they can to ensure you meet/exceed their team's standards as they are fully aware that they demand a lot from each person. It will take some time for you to come up to speed (timeline varies per team) to adjust to the demands and culture of that team.
VMware's strength is its developers. Amazingly talented and extremely cooperative. Every new developer is treated as part of the team and is made to feel at home right away. Engineering culture is one of the best in Silicon Valley
Curious about what work's like at VMware?
Anonymously Ask VMware Employees Any Question
Should I work at VMware?
57% of VMware employees would encourage their friends to become coworkers, whereas 21% are neutral and 22% would not recommend working at VMware to their friends.
| 57% | Promoters |
|---|---|
| 21% | Passive |
| 22% | Detractors |
