Broadcom

I worked at VMware, not Broadcom; I had been laid off as a result of the acquisition.

There were a few great SWEs I worked alongside who were incredible people that I'd work with again if I got the chance. One of whom was practically second-in-command to our manager, and he helped fill in a lot of learning gaps that I apparently was supposed to get in onboarding but were never run through with me (see cons). He and a lot of the team members were very reliable.

I had a good working relationship with the most recent manager, who even tried to hire me back.

I worked at VMware, not Broadcom. I had been laid off as a result of the acquisition.

There was a lot of poor onboarding training. The instructions for setting up the dev environments were not up to date or functioning correctly. This also included some of the docs to help with the product. As mentioned, another great SWE had to help me with a lot of these gaps. Had I been given better documentation, he wouldn't have had to waste all his time to help me.

I also don't think I was able to grow in the cloud industry whatsoever. Oftentimes, I confuse myself with what our product actually does. I manage to get by with a random explanation, but still don't know the important details. This is especially bad for future cloud companies I would potentially apply for, though at least I can go for any other tech company.

I had been working at VMware until they were acquired by Broadcom, where I was laid off. I found out the reason why was because I was a remote worker, which is a poor excuse given my situation. When COVID hit, we had no choice but to work remotely. In fact, I did prefer in-office, even insisting to my manager to work onsite when there were no more pandemic restrictions. I was unfortunately put in the broad category of "remote worker = lazy worker," as the Broadcom CEO alluded to after the layoffs.

It strikes me as ignorant, in my opinion, to make such a generalization without factoring in COVID or screening the remote workers who really do want to work in-office. This to me was salt in the wound.

There was also a bad work dispute that wasn't handled by the manager when he promised. A specific (unnamed) staff SWE wrote to me about an unfinished task I had. My manager flat out told me to move on to this other higher priority issue. After I explained to the staff SWE, and told him this was according to my manager, he got riled up and wrote angry messages to me, including threatening to mark me down on all of my future code reviews. I tried apologizing just to calm him down, and said I'd try talking back with my manager again, but he followed up with more arguments.

After discussing with my manager - who was even part of the same thread - he agreed with me on how unusual that behavior by him was, then said he'd definitely do something about it. He never did. Whether this staff SWE had a bad day or personal issues that affected his behavior, this was still totally inappropriate and unprofessional conduct. And why take it out on me if he knew my manager made the decision on my behalf?

The manager should have taken action (he ended up leaving for another company), and the staff SWE should have controlled his temper.