VMware Broomfield is hiring!

This would be a great way to learn VMware tech, but honestly the company has gone downhill, especially in support. I wouldn't do it.

I worked at the Burlington location for 5+ years. The last few years have been about cost savings and there has been a huge push to grow the Bangalore and Costa Rica offices. Burlington started off as one of the largest offices, but in recent years was prevented to grow (hiring there slowed down and mostly stopped) and shrunk until it was only around 150 people, and then they closed the office in January (100 or so of us were laid off - a few of us got to stay on and work from home).

That being said, for the last 18 months or so Burlington was going to be the "Center of Excellence" and there were huge plans to become a specialized premier services office. Leadership told us, flat out, that the Burlington office would stay alive & well and would be growing again. The center would NOT close, and in fact we would become one of the most important offices in the world - in relation to the upcoming Premier Services offerings. And then the office was closed

This was a complete failure in leadership. Burlington was the most tenured office - there were guys there that had worked in VMware for 6-12 years. How can a new engineer possibly support Premier Services? As a customer, I dare you to ask for the tenure of your engineer. Not to mention the flat out lies - the plans to be the center of excellence and the promises to grow, only to close the office. Leadership at VMware CANNOT be trusted.

In support, engineers are looked at as "cog-makers". The goal is to finish as many cogs as possible in a day. A "cog" would be a particular ticket or support request. The technical complexity of the issues is not valuable - just how many tickets in a day you can close is.

So obviously I'm biased. The organization is broken, leadership is incompetent, and the workload is crazy high. GSS (Global Support Services) is chronically understaffed and the higher ups area always promising that things will be better (but they never are).

Broomfield is not calling itself the "Center of Excellence" --- keep in mind that last time an office did that it was closed.

That being said, the job is a great spot to learn and gain experience in VMware products and working in several production environments, especially the fortune 500. I would not limit your learning to VMware products though, so you'll be more useful when you eventually move on.

What is a typical day like?

You get in, check your email. You have to work on brand new tickets first and make the initial response (meaning call or email) to your new customers. I've found that I spent most of my time on this part.

If you are lucky, after you have made all your commits, you can work on your backlog of cases. This can involve research, reproductions, log analysis, or actually calling your customers to discuss and/or troubleshoot the issue live on a webex session.

Everyone also has a scheduled phone shift where you take calls from the live queue. Before leaving, this was limited to sev1/prod down calls for about 2 hours, but the time period changes depending on what management wants.

Advantages:

  • You get to learn a crazy amount. This is a great job for early in your career for sure
  • The offices are pleasant. You get free snacks/pop/coffee
  • If you're lucky, you may get to travel to other offices like Cork, Costa Rica, or Bangalore
  • You'll feel like you are becoming a master of the products that you support
  • You will become a troubleshooting and problem solving expert

Negatives:

  • Leadership fails. They lie to their employees
  • Workload & headcount. Always falling behind in headcount means the workload is crazy
  • Opportunities for career growth. At the end of the day, GSS is a support organization. This means that VMware's goal is to make it as cheap as possible so they can pocket the difference in profit. Premier Services may be the only exception to this, for now. But even there, the workload is crazy.
  • Getting raises and promotions is very difficult. You have to be your managers "showpony" and have managements favor for this to happen, even if you have great metrics. Although it seems that Broomfield does promote faster.
  • High turnover. Engineers in other offices rotate out quickly so you'll find that you are working with a lot of new people. I've heard that recently in Broomfield the turnover is high as well, but I'm not 100% sure?

Alright, so at the end of the day, it's a job. If you do decide to take it, you'll learn a lot and you could definitely grow in your career there for a few years. Just make sure you are OK with a never ending backlog of tickets and you don't take your work home with you - and you'll do fine! :)

Feel free to ask me anything if you have any questions about what it's like to work in GSS. I'll give you a frank response as an ex-employee :)

/r/vmware Thread Link - vmw.re