41–50 of 83 posts
i cannot believe it. > projecting revenue in the range of $1.17 billion to $1.19 > billion, compared with $1.25 billion expected by analysts. > VMWare shares fell 15 percent they're still talking about 1.2 BILLION in revenue. it's never enough ...
i cannot believe it. > projecting revenue in the range of $1.17 billion to $1.19 > billion, compared with $1.25 billion expected by analysts. > VMWare shares fell 15 percent they're still talking about 1.2 BILLION in revenue. it's never enough ...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
i work for riverbed. before their opnet acquisition in december they had about 1600 employees. now they have more, but i don't know if the new size is supposed to be public or not. my team building exercise was last week and it was 3.5 hours of go-karting in burlingame and a catered lunch. we had the rest of the day off. it was the first team building exercise my team did in my 12 months here, unless you count things…
Heh... it's funny/nice to see someone mentioning riverbed as an example of a "big company". I laugh because I was there when 150 counted as a huge headcount and the SF office had to move to fremont street (and before there was a south bay office). I left when it rapidly grew to about 600 or so soon after the IPO.
now i work down in the new sv office, which has become nearly full within just a few months.
I shorted VMW just before the close today via puts. It was only 2 contracts and the strike price was at $90. I was going to bet more, I usually go in a position with 10 contracts, but I have some financial obligations coming up so I didn't want to risk too much. I have a few friends that work there. They are happy, but they say that the company lacks any sense of urgency. After Maritz left and more recently Steve Her…
Go figure; company goes public, company goes stagnant. Seems like a common theme in the industry.
While this is of course a sad event, it is not a reflection on the strength/weakness of VMware. Actually for a lot of my time here, we've had "carte blanche" in terms of hiring. The challenge was finding enough qualified people. I do think with the recent slew of acquisitions, the company may have grown too much too fast and is needing to reorganize hence this announcement.
From what I heard, the company is still planning to grow its headcount in 2013 from where it is today. It is also engaged in a massive expansion project which will triple the size of the campus in Palo Alto. It would not be undertaking such a massive and costly effort if a permanent downsize is being envisaged.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Yeah that's why that whole "job creators" / "we built this" routine doesn't really register with me. That's 'cause you probably never built a business from scratch. Believe me, not one person who has labored to start, launch and run their own business would make the comment you have. Not ONE. These kinds of statements only come out of a certain place and this is the same place that confused revenue with profit. Thi…
If you are working to build a company in the US, you are building on top of MANY layers of the US infrastructure. Security, transportation, lights, banks, credit are all things in which the American public is invested, in the public interest. And any company of size depends on individuals besides the founder to do its work. It is not accurate to pretend that you are 100%, solely responsible for your own success, with…
> It is not accurate to pretend that you are 100%, solely responsible for your own success, without any other contributing factors.
I don't know of any entrepreneur who thinks this way. Not one. Your success as an entrepreneur depends on a myriad of factors external to you. The roads? The power grid? Transportation? Banks? Please. Stop it. It hurts.
How about we all stop and thank Spain then? Without the Crown investing in expeditions that led to the discovery of the American Continent you wouldn't be enjoying that cup of Starbucks Coffee.
Oh, yes, let's also thank our governments for starting wars. Without WW1 and WW2 you might not have penicillin, radios, planes, cars and a bunch of other things you enjoy today. They were brilliant! Too bad they had to kill a hundred million people in the process.
Crazy, right?
Right.
My advise to anyone buying into this kind of thinking is simple: Go start a business. Learn what it takes to actually earn your keep from scratch and even create jobs and be responsible for the livelihood and well-being of families besides your own. Succeed. Fail. Learn. Rise-up and succeed again. Then come back and see what you think of these ideas. I'll bet you a donut you will not think very highly of them. That's the power of reality.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah that's why that whole "job creators" / "we built this" routine doesn't really register with me. Let's call it what it really is, an extremely well-designed (I have to recognize) machine to generate as much money while employing as few people as possible to maximize profit. Now what they're doing with all that cash, I'm still wondering to this day. If someone has a sensible answer to that question I'd be really i…
> Yeah that's why that whole "job creators" / "we built this" routine doesn't really register with me. That's 'cause you probably never built a business from scratch. Believe me, not one person who has labored to start, launch and run their own business would make the comment you have. Not ONE. These kinds of statements only come out of a certain place and this is the same place that confused revenue with profit. Thi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
and small companies don't fire people?
In big companies good people can end up being laid off because they happen to be in the wrong team/group/project and some clueless bean counter decides that's the business that needs to be eliminated. As far as large companies go it gets a lot worse than VMware though they seem to have lost direction somewhat. The problem of largeness is that decision makers are so far removed from the decision they can't possibly ma…
Why do they have to be clueless? Projects are never failures? They could cut a terrible project and still end up laying off good people. Is that a bad thing?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I deal with them as a customer and I will tell you that everything you say is exactly the way their customers see it. We're begging to find a reason to move the rest of our stuff off VMWare. Their technology is dull and pedestrian compared to what some vendors are bringing in. They are very good at what they do but every time I talk to a person in the company it just feels like they are in maintenance mode and are bo…
What are the things you're migrating to ? I'm voting for VirtualBox, but I guess you could go with kvm which has slightly better performance in my experience. Care to share where you're moving to ?
I don't believe these people are being fired... at least not all of them. Take a look at a report from 2 months ago[1]. 600 people from VMWare are working on Pivotal, if those people don't count on VMWare's books anymore, that would be a reduction in headcount. Also, the Chicago Tribune[2] article is better than the BizJournals one. One key point in this article is that by the end of 2013, they expect to hire 1000 ne…
https://blogs.vmware.com/console/2012/12/the-pivotal-initiat...
EDIT: Although he's now the Chief Strategy Officer at EMC, so maybe that's good. http://www.emc.com/corporate/emc-at-glance/exec-team/index.h...