Is VMware in Trouble?
VMware will have the Fresh Prince himself at VMworld. But what about tech talent.
I’ve been looking at the brain drain from VMware over the past year or two. Obviously, the biggest loss is VMware’s rockstar CEO, Pat Gelsinger. Not only did Pat leave VMware’s day-to-day leadership, he abruptly left the board after it was announced he’d stay on for some time. CNBC mainstay, Sanjay Poonen, soon followed (see my interview with Sanjay). It seems like there’s a constant one-way door of executive talent leaving VMware for cloud providers.
However, there doesn’t seem to be a(ny) number of people leaving cloud providers for VMware. While not scientific, I did a query on LinkedIn to see how many people in my network left AWS, Microsoft, or Google for VMware. After a couple of results for each, I couldn’t identify anyone that left one of the big three cloud providers for VMware.
What does this say about VMware solutions or VMware in the marketplace?
That’s a good question. I don’t know if I can fully speculate. That’s the fun of these #CTOShorts. They are meant to provoke conversation and thought. VMworld is quickly approaching. VMware will have Will Smith as a guest speaker. They can still bring the big name to their show. Can they bring the big names (from the cloud providers) to their workforce? If not, why?
I am a former VMware employee in Brazil and VMware is a terrible American company if you put the other American companies to measure. Microsoft, Amazon, F5, Google, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks are better companies than VMware.
It is because VMware tech is antiquated. I also heard VMware sales teams have not received commission checks for over a month now.