Broadcom Lays Off VMware Employees After Closing Its $69 Billion Acquisition (businessinsider.com) 51
After acquiring VMware for $69 billion, Broadcom is eliminating several positions at the virtualization technology company. Business Insider reports: Employees whose positions were eliminated received an email on Monday, viewed by Business Insider, that read: "Broadcom recently completed its acquisition of VMware. As part of integration planning, and following an organizational needs assessment, we identified go-forward roles that will be required within the combined company. We regret to inform you that your position is being eliminated and your employment will be terminated."
"We would like to thank you for your dedication and service. We want to make this transition as smooth as possible, including offering you a generous severance package and providing you a non-working paid notice period," the email continued. Currently, it's unclear exactly how many employees will be affected by the cuts.
"We would like to thank you for your dedication and service. We want to make this transition as smooth as possible, including offering you a generous severance package and providing you a non-working paid notice period," the email continued. Currently, it's unclear exactly how many employees will be affected by the cuts.
Merry Christmas (Score:2)
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Yeah, somehow these end of year layoffs always seem even more heartless than other layoffs.
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Re: But more profitable (Score:2)
What? They are paying severance & paying off accrued vacation time - they aren't doing this to avoid a paid company holiday?!?!
There are 260 'working days' in a year, even if they were trying to avoid a week's paid time off comiant-wide holiday, it amounts to about 2% of a workers annual compensation.
You don't fire people to save 2% of payroll...
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Yeah, somehow these end of year layoffs always seem even more heartless than other layoffs.
It might be kinder sacking them now, rather then after they've gone into debt spending up big for Christmas,
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Surprised they didn't say that, and GET OUT!
The letter pointing out one's refusal to help develop killer AI virtual machined swarming nanobots seems pointless now...... /a joke/
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They couldn't conclude with "GET OUT!" because they ran out of budget to buy more ink.
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Come on, it's Christmas.
If they want to keep in the management holiday spirit, they should be saying "GET OUT YOU WORTHLESS BASTARDS!"
they were acquisition targets for micrsoft.. (Score:1)
Once upon a time when they gave a shit....
Nothing to see here. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is standard business operation after an acquisition or merger. There are redundant positions such as legal, HR, payroll, etc.. At a minimum you want to eliminate 30% if not ambitiously %60 across the board all the other positions including engineering and especially management. You then build it back over two years, hiring back people or finding new people that better integrate with the new culture and vision.
As much at you want to deny it, 10 to 15 percent of the company makes 90% of the profit/value/product/production. All other people which may still be necessary (like accountants or janitors) are more like interchangeable commodities.
Re: Nothing to see here. (Score:1)
Re:Nothing to see here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. There is no reason to do an acquisition if you can't significantly reduce expenses.
Re: Nothing to see here. (Score:2)
Is it really though? (Score:2)
I mean I always hear about how there are all these redundant positions but at the end of the day if I have X number of people I'm going to need Y number of support staff to support them. On the other hand I can just make everyone
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I mean I always hear about how there are all these redundant positions but at the end of the day if I have X number of people I'm going to need Y number of support staff to support them
The Y staff have their managers changed to those within broadcoms department management structure.
At that point, the broadcom gains Y support staff while vmware loses it. Broadcom runs vmware operations after all.
Now that there are managers (previously vmware management) who have zero employees under them, and are not the ones running vmware anymore (broadcom does this), why do you NOT see those managers as redundant?
On the other hand I can just make everyone in the newly bought company work an extra 20 hours a week on the threat of being fired.
Every one of these managers have no staff. They have no tasks to perform. They have noth
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Why do we all live like this? Probably because we recognize the right for investors to buy/merge companies and hire/fire who they want with the primary goal being to make money. As long as that's allowed this will continue.
I'm not judging whether allowing the above to continue is wrong or right, but that is why many people live in a perpetual state of not being sure if you will have a job tomorrow.
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As much at you want to deny it, 10 to 15 percent of the company makes 90% of the profit/value/product/production.
Unfortunately, most companies are unable to identify which belonged to those 10%, and would very likely kick out a large portion of those in the first round, leaving an empty husk behind.
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As a general rule, do you think developers aren't interchangeable commodities? Aren't all employees basically "interchangeable commodities"?
In the US, even the President is so interchangeable that the position actually expires like a contractor. And its occupants has varied from Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden. Whichever you like(d) or didn't, its undeniable that the US not only survived each tenure but the GDP, DOW, and other key metrics continually rose with each administration.
Re:Nothing to see here. (Score:4, Interesting)
While there may be truth that layoffs after a merger/acquisition are boringly normal, it is worth keeping in mind that Avago (the company that bought and then assumed the Broadcom name) is notorious in the industry for their acquisition playbook:
-Identify a company that Avago believes to have thoroughly "locked in" customers. I recall one Avago acquisition strategy leak about an acquisition expressly declared they gauged they could raise prices 10x and lose no more than 80% of the current customer base, which would be fantastic. They ascertained that 20% of that companies userbase felt they had no choice but to pay whatever it takes.
-Acquire that company, jack up prices to gouge those locked in customers, eliminate R&D spend (why innovate? the cash cow was already made), cut support spending (they are going to lose a bunch of customers anyway, and of those that remain, what are they going to do, complain?). *Every* employee is an interchangeable commodity, and the people that you probably admire is likely the first on the chopping block in an Avago strategy. Those are expensive folks and the only value they perceive is the brand name and products as they exist today.
Basically, Avago acquisition is where tech companies go to get killed off. Anyone who has dealt with a company acquired by Avago has learned that Avago comes to ruin everything.
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Small anecdote, but we had been a very long time Symantec Endpoint Protection customer. Software worked well and did a lot of stuff that we used.
Then Broadcom acquired Symantec and forced us into a cloud-based subscription which was a lot more than we were paying before. The software had gaping holes and features that flat-out didn't work. Software support would advise that we just disable those features!
On top of all that, the cloud-based management portal was so slow as to be unusable.
We went from being a
More Paywall nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
How hard is it to tell submitters "No paywalled stories. Find an open link, or forget it"?
And on that note... (Score:5, Informative)
... here's a non-paywall story link:
Layoffs Engulf VMware After Broadcom Close, ‘Chaos’ For Partners In Sales Trenches [crn.com]
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Thankyou for doing the work of the submitters / editors pleb.
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This is how buyouts always end. So... idea: (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Employees sign an open letter that says "in case of layoffs after acquisition, *everybody* walks. EVERYBODY."
2. Employees make good on threat
3. Employees go across the street and spool up TotallyNotTheSameCompanyWithANewName Corp.
4. New acquisition is basically worthless to new owners because they have a shiny new toy with no instructions and nobody who knows how to actually make it do anything
5. Repeat as necessary until big companies get the hint
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Not a case of acquisition followed by layoffs, but key employees leaving to start TotallyNotTheSameCompanyWithANewName Corp has happened before:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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...do you have any comprehension of just how big and complex the codebase is that results in the Vmware ecosystem?
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Unfortunately, this only works if the employees have rights to their own work, which they generally don't. That code and those patents they did? Nope, can't use them. They have to start from scratch knowing that their former employer is watching their every move for any opportunity to sue for infringement. Imagine trying to start over and not being able to do anything new the way you are used to doing it, no access to approaches or code that you've built over years. Chances are you've already used your
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Your can't walk out with the Intellectual Property, you have everyone but not product.
By email (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: By email (Score:2)
Provide me with the appropriate severance and you can get rid of me tomorrow.
Re: By email (Score:2)
Provide me with the appropriate severance and you can get rid of me tomorrow.
They can get rid of you tomorrow either way. The first thing they tell you in orientation is that Washington is a Right to Work State and we can end your job at any time without notice,
They also say, even though Washington is a Right to Work state, they expect at least two weeks notice from you, and for your cooperation in transitioning your work to your colleagues.
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SOME kind of in-person communication should happen. Zoom call, old-fashioned PHONE call, something that shows there is a human on both ends of the communication.
An email? That's a mass mailing list and one letter. It's as impersonal and cold as it can be.
Offer letters (Score:3)
I have been through multiple acquisitions on both sides and have never seen anything quite like this. Most companies have some fear that they are not going to get the value desired from the acquisition and tread much more cautiously than this. Broadcom must be basing these decisions entirely on the VMWare HR paperwork they have access to. Their working assumption seems to be that many VMWare customers are trapped and Broadcom is going for max cash-cow before they burn the whole thing down. In the not too distant future, software updates will lag, then become minimal to none while license fees will continue to rise.
Microsoft and Amazon are going to be the winners on this.
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Re:Why not redeploy people? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because Broadcom (the company formerly known as Avago) is quite intent on cutting cost. They view VMWare like most other acquisitions they make: A company that is wasting money if they try anything new when they could just sit back and gouge existing customers without spending money on continuing improvements. They don't want to even try to do new stuff. If the time comes when their acquisition is nothing but a husk, they'll just take the profit from that company and roll it into killing the next company that someone actually invested innovation in.
For Avago, trying to innovate is a suckers game. Let those other losers take the hit of 90% of innovation being commercial flops and just gouge the users of the 10% proven successes.
typical behavior, and another reason to regulate (Score:2)
This is a great example of why mergers/aquisitions should be regulated. It does consumers, workers, and the economy as a whole, very little good to have completely unrelated companies merge into mega conglomerates.
If we keep this up we're going to end up with 1 megacorp per continent with 6 ceos, 6 hr people, and 6 accountants globally and 8 billion peasants.
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Several? (Score:3)
After acquiring VMware for $69 billion, Broadcom is eliminating several positions at the virtualization technology company.
Several?
Currently, it's unclear exactly how many employees will be affected by the cuts.
Several!
If they are smart, these were MBAs (Score:3)
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Seriously, keep the engineers and LOSE all of the GD MBAs.
We're talking about Broadcom here. Nothing gets better after the acquire it.
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Kind of like McDonald Douglas taking over Boeing. Eh?