Memories from VMware’s Hosted UI

http://blog.chipx86.com/2016/02/02/memories-from-vmwares-hosted-ui/

by chris_wot • 10 years ago

43 5 10 years ago

blog.chipx86.com

raesene4• 10 years ago

A very interesting post. To me this illustrates a couple of points very well.

1) VMWare likely have no idea what they lost when they cut this team. Once teams just look like just a number of people to be re-located to save costs, there tends not to be consideration of the value of a long-lived team with the experience and team spirit that this post talks about.

2) If you're an employee of a large corp, never ever stay out at a role out of "company loyalty", it's a mugs game. Not to say that that's true for all companies, but large ones seem to have a distressing tendency to treat people as numbers to be valued and shifted and cut, and loyalty shown by the person to the company means very little in these circumstances.

toyg• 10 years ago

Company loyalty died in the '80s; however, loyalty to your team-mates is another thing. Not everyone can quit a reasonably-secure corporate job to live on ramen for $amazing_startup, nor are you guaranteed to bond as much with the next set of colleagues (in fact, chances are that you won't, since it usually gets harder as you age).

pkaye• 10 years ago

I find that when a company grows beyond 150 people, there starts to be a disconnect between the CEO level and individual workers. That is when these sorts of problems come up and the culture changes.

rogerbinns• 10 years ago

BTW 150 is a common value for Dunbar's Number - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships.

walterbell• 10 years ago

It is no small feat to create this kind of culture in any large organization. Even more impressive is that the culture was defended during a decade of changes in personnel and corporate priorities. It is fitting that a team which brought cross-platform interop to the developer masses would achieve cross-company portability of their culture.

For those lucky enough to find such an oasis as their entry point to the corporate world, please know that even though your experience may have been atypical, it can be replicated as you move into future leadership positions. It only takes one cultural existence proof to transform a collective industrial race to the bottom, into a contagious race to the top of human possibility.

One reason why industry veterans appreciate open-source is that they can have an ongoing role in the long-term evolution of their software creations. As operating systems increase vertical integration with cloud services, device owners need Client Neutrality. Products like VMware Workstation can set boundaries that reflect the goals of device owners, rather than OS, cloud, advertising or hardware vendors. Workstation team members may find kindred spirits in open-source projects attempting to follow in Workstation's pioneering footsteps.

Memories from VMware’s Hosted UI

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