At minimum. The deal was announced on May 26th, 2022. However, I have heard the acquisition doesn't happen in a day; it takes months if not years for everything to process. So I'm trying to figure out how long we have before the layoff happens. For reference, how long did it take at CA and Symantec after announcing the acquisition for the actual acquisition to happen, and when were the employees laid off? TC: 150k #vmware #layoff #severence #broadcom
Will layoff of engineers happen though? Broadcom does not have any of the VMware products, does it?
It will. It is called leverage post acquisition
There were no layoffs at RedHat after Ibm acquired it
November 22.
How did you get that number ?
At 12:03 UTC
That’s no way to welcome a new employee. Welcome Master Hock-Tan. I think we have until November.
Broadcom is famous for layoffs after acquisition. But for some long time engineers layoff might be a good thing as you get severances (e.g. early retirement, long vacation then find another job ) If the deal closes in November, layoffs can happen around Christmas / New Year. How broadcom makes money- acquire, combine resources, cut redundant non technical staff like finance, hr, legal, marketing, cut R&D, aggressively selling, raising existing price up, market product to existing customer base like doing a combo sale. hock tan is a master of these things and VMware is a probably good move for broadcom shareholders but not so good for some VMware employees. I am waiting for an entry point for broadcom stock.
If it’s anything like an IBM acquisition, it took about a year for me. Had a new job within 3 weeks and severance paid out 4 months, so I did fine.
How long was your tenure that you got 4 months' severance pay? Was there any minimum like 2 months for new employees?
For those still confused..Hock Tan has reputation in the industry as a cost-cutter. Its certain that there's gonna be layoffs. On what scale is something we still cant predict. From what I read, it might take about 6 months to close the deal.
It will be swift, and it will be transparent, and it will be as early as the moment the deal is sealed. Will be like snapping a finger.
🤣🤣🤣
Good to know, do you think engineers would be okay?
Its simple math. Broadcom's revenue is about 250B for 20k employees. Now they add 12B of revenue and 35k employees! Make your math - in order to continue to have very high Revenue to Employee ratio, they will need to cut about 75% of the new heads! So lets say in the optimistic scenario they will cut 50%. But come on folks, VMW has very low Revenue to Employee ratio and its our management fault. For years they bought companies that doesnt generate enough revenue. The layoffs we had are so minors... like 1k a year... but the next year they hired 2k... VMW is dead as a company we knew, so now everyone has their choice. Nothing to blame Broadcom or Dell... they just do their job exactly as we do our. If we were profitable enough, flexible enough, bold enough in the last years - no one would ever sell VMW
What's your recommendation to the average VMWare employee in this situation?
You know I am this average VMW employee :) Personally I will wait until the deal will be closed and then either I will get severance or offer from Broadcom ( In the case VMW will be merged into Broadcom AFAIK they must give you formal offer ) which probably will include nice RSU number as I heard Broadcom are much better then VMW with RSUs. So then I will accept the offer and try to see how the life will change in terms of WLB, remote work, trips, RADIO etc... - all this nice things which differentiated us from the rest of the companies prior to the acquisition. And if it will be impacted to the bad side - leetcode and adios. This is my strategy for now. All the rest are pure speculations. No one knows what they have on their mind.
> Wouldn't be better to get a few offers ^ if you don’t have to, it’s not worth the stress. Ah, brushing up non-leetcode skills (cloud, a new language, some deeper k8s-fu etc) gives the best of both worlds because those are transferrable skills. Plus, if you are delivering off the charts when everyone’s perf is down due to leetcoding on the side, you might even get a chance to make to the other side of the cut. More or less like how the Dauntless in DIvergent did. Man, I’m constantly quoting dystopic movies; that’s saying something I guess :D
Imagine how depressing can be giving everything, deliver off the charts and still get layoff
It’s increasing the odds. The alternative is decreasing the odds. I’d rather give it my best shot AND brush up my skills too.
Microsoft announced Nokia acquisition in September of 2013. Layoffs happened in July 2014. So probably about a year.