VMware: New year, new job – you're fired Virtualization kingpin VMware is this month laying off staff again. Exactly how many, the biz isn't saying. It sounds as though mainly marketing staff are being dropped – as much as 20 per cent of that department's employees getting the chop, allegedly – with perhaps around 150 to 200 workers being axed in total, according to …
Yeah. I especially like this one :
Q. How much money will VMware save through this activity?
A. This decision will help to streamline business processes, advance innovation, and deliver better results for the company.
Note how the answer absolutely does not answer the question.
Perhaps if things go smoothly we won't need any underlying hardware or virtualization layers or OSs!
A giant SaaS center in Alpha Centauri should be able to handle all of little earth's paltry needs. Of course the latency will be measured in years but in terms of important information transfer, meh.
Maximizing shareholder value is bollocks of the highest order. What value does shareholders offer to a company?
Can anybody enlighten me, this poor AC, as to why have shareholders is good for a company - instead of your customers and workers? (Salary-leeching damagers excluded due to obvious reasons).
It sounds as though mainly marketing staff are being dropped – as much as 20 per cent of that department's employees getting the chop, allegedly – with perhaps around 150 to 200 workers being axed in total
Well some marketing types must be left as somebody authored the FAQ and you can tell it was a marketing type, it is full of buzzwords, some answers make absolutely no sense at all!
In the case of most companies, they wouldn't exist at all without them - total jobs = 0 for that case.
Now, that's for money raised when the company sells shares to the public. That's relatively rare - most shares are just sold back and forth once in existence. But being able to sell shares from the company to investors is absolutely crucial - like having a credit rating vs being judged as a fraud - should the company need to raise more money (and many do, moreso when times are tough).
I'm not apologizing for the system here - my own company when I started and ran one - worked with my own funding (and as the sole shareholder, I also kept *all* the profits). I put in all the risk, so I got all the gain. I'd like to think I treated my employees well - nearly all of them would tell you so - they're all rich now, except one who embezzled, who was firied than then jailed.
The system is what it is. A company doesn't magically have huge flows of cash raining down on it, believe it or not. Try starting and running your own for a real education. Making ends meet isn't trivial. A lot of these RIF's are a case of a PC way to lose the non-performers. You can't just fire losers these days without a lawsuit, so any other excuse...
You find this out real quick if you put out a request for resumes and read them closely...there's no shortage of people who claim to be good at whatever, but a huge one of those who actually HAVE BEEN good at whatever and produced results - they all still have good jobs.
I know that around the world VMware hires/employs contractors and as such there is no "severance" just being severed (i.e get your shit and don't come tomorrow).
I spoke to one long termer once and he said he was made an FTE after being a contractor for 2 1/2 years. The timer for how the redundancy is calculated is based on your FTE start date, not your first day as a contractor.
Long story short, the severance/redundancy liability for the company would be very low here. I feel sorry for those affected, I know what it's like.
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