Although Broadcom — which had absorbed the VMWare workforce on acquiring the latter — had never hidden the need to deal with redundancies to make VMWare more profitable, the recent layoffs are adding to the uncertainty in the atmosphere.
Since the announcement of the deal, in May 2022, Broadcom had been open about chasing a goal of making VMWare, the multi-cloud services firm, profitable by $3.8 billion, which would entail addressing the duplication of various jobs in finance, legal, human resources, information technology and facilities.
The layoffs are worrying not just for the existing employees, but also customers and partners. After all, those who have received layoff notices were amongst the thousands of VMWare employees who had only just been absorbed by Broadcom. Some seem to be receiving offer letters to join Broadcom, while some are receiving layoff notices. Naturally, the employees feel they are being treated as capable of being disposed of at will.
Even the offer letters that were mailed post closure of the acquisition deal last week were not received by many VMWare employees. Therefore, there was no way for these employees of knowing where they stood, and the VMWare management seemed to have no clarification to offer either.
Even the partners are not sure how they are or would be benefitting from this acquisition. With several clients being stalled due to the acquisition there is even more uncertainty. Customers are left wondering how the situation will impact the prices and quality of VMWare offerings.
