VMware to cut 900 jobs

At big companies, if it is done right, the upper level management may ask for input from 1st line managers as to who they should fire. Also, my last company, all managers had to rank their underlings, and those at the bottom had a chance of being trimmed if there were layoffs.

Many big companies will listen to those first line managers, and almost any upper-level manager is aware of their lack of knowledge about the leaves of the management tree.

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 like a halloween or christmas party.

i've never had to do a tps report. the closest thing we have would be updating our internal wiki every week with a weekly status.

we get to wear whatever the fuck we want. i got teased about going out for interviews when i wore a button-down shirt on laundry day instead of an ozzfest t-shirt with a massive screaming demon head on it (i thought it would be unprofessional; silly me). that's not to say that you get made fun of for wearing button-down shirts; i only did because i pretty much only wear t-shirts to work. i'd say about 3/4 of my team wears button-down shirts or the female equivalent. most people wear jeans. shorts are common in the summer. some people wear flip-flops year round.

the idea that all big companies are going to be bad or even just worse than small companies is just silly. yes, there's shitty large companies, but there are also shitty small companies and shitty medium companies. but that's because of a bad or incompetent management team, not because of the size of the organization.

They are doing a lot of expanding after they bought all the land around Hillsview, so it would be kind of bad if they started to cut really deeply, a lot of their buildings would be empty.

With the firings-by-another-name coming up, expect the politics to get nastier. We'll see the middle managers who don't do very much to turn on the ones that do, leaving an even greater dearth of brilliant coders.

Large and small organizations can both have politics, can see drastic restructuring when business changes or a major client makes a change (drops a product, demands a change, ...). Large companies may insulate somewhat against capricious changes, though non-operational circumstances (particularly mismanagement or liquidity crunches of the holding corporation) can cause sudden and drastic changes (Borders, UAL, American Airlines). Small companies can have cash-flow issues as well.

There's very little that's assured in life. Death and taxes you can count on.