

At VMware, a Firing Is Still Reverberating  - bootload
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/technology/09vmware.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

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snorkel
Ah, the pitfalls of being acquired. You can't resist that sweet acquisition
cash but at the end of the day the devil gets his due. If you are ever so
fortunate to be acquired then just face it, you are not going to like your new
masters, so just cash out and leave.

~~~
michael_dorfman
...and make sure you actually get your cash. Say no to "earn-outs", and check
to make sure there are no hidden conditions in the deal. (Sadly, I speak from
experience...)

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mattmaroon
"You need to think differently when a company gets as big as VMware."

How many Googles do we need until this school of thought dies?

~~~
jrockway
Enough so that everyone with a brain works for one. Then these companies won't
be able to hire anyone, and then they'll go away.

------
helveticaman
Well, at least Joe Tucci isn't making more money because he fucked a founder
over.

~~~
MrRage
He fucked a founder over...and over...and over...

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time_management
1980s-style "business" people haven't adapted to the "new" reality of
technology, where individual people, talent, and culture matter more than the
business-on-paper.

To them, a business is a collection of assets-- real estate, IP, cash-- and
relationships between external entities and the corporation. The people--
employees and managers-- are relatively interchangeable, in their minds.
They're surprised to find out that firing the founders and replacing top brass
might cause a company to collapse, and that the company culture actually
matters in a non-PR context. This is when the MBA types put on their WTF face.

~~~
biohacker42
High tech companies really should be partnerships like law firms and medical
practices. The only reason they are not, is because tech firms _do_ produce a
product that can be copied and sold.

So high tech firms occupy this strange space between a 50's style manufacturer
and a service type partnership.

~~~
gaius
There are other reasons. For instance, it lacks granularity; if the only
statuses are "partner" and "employee", there's not the flexibility of options
grants. People are willing to suffer as the low status and long hours as
employees in law firms and accountancies because of the guaranteed payoff when
making partner, tech is a lot riskier. At partnerships the partners typically
bring in the bulk of the business, a tech company would have a very hard time
hiring talent if it were run along those lines. Not to mention that the
partners have an unlimited personal liability. A law firm doesn't require much
capital and doesn't risk much either. A high-tech company often needs to (do)
both.

A high-tech _services_ company could be run as a partnership, as Accenture was
for many years, but they turned themselves into a public company so they could
use their stock as acquisition currency.

~~~
time_management
I agree with you that a law-firm-like structure would not work in tech, but
I'll disagree on one point.

 _People are willing to suffer as the low status and long hours as employees
in law firms and accountancies because of the guaranteed payoff when making
partner, tech is a lot riskier._

Most "white shoe" law firm ("biglaw") associates aren't set on making partner.
First, the odds are pretty miserable; about 5-10% make it, and it takes almost
a decade. Second, junior partners are ridden a lot harder than senior
associates, because they have more to lose. Partner firings, while not common,
occur often enough that there is no "guaranteed payoff", because a junior
partner might be axed before becoming senior. As for the "low status" of a law
firm associate, this is true in some ways and not in others. For example, a
first-year law associate is going to be expected to do a lot of grunt work,
and work 55-65 hours per week. On the other hand, he's likely to have staff,
if not a personal assistant, and a salary over $150k... not bad for a 25-year-
old without work experience. The grunt work exists not because the associate
has "low status" but because, frankly, so much of the law-in-practice is
bureaucratic, precise, and uninteresting. This is especially true at high
levels in corporate law, because clients would prefer to pursue the low-risk,
precise, and boring routes (settlements) over the "fun" and unpredictable part
of law, litigation.

The reason young attorneys are willing to endure years of pain in biglaw is
that, in law and banking, reputation matters a lot more than technical skills,
and the only way a young person can distinguish himself in these industries is
to grind out years at a prestigious firm. They suffer because the name on
their resume is often perceived to be worth the upfront pain. Of course,
another reason for people to put up with 4-7 years of biglaw is that there's
also a huge stigma against quitting or being fired; unlike in tech, it's _not_
okay to say you left a law firm job because you weren't learning anything from
the work and wanted to try something new; you're expected to have the social
skills to handle this internally, without resorting to leaving the firm. This
stigma is less pronounced in finance during bad economic conditions, because
it's known to be a volatile industry. However, law firms never admit they are
laying people off for economic reasons, always claiming their layoffs are
performance-based firings, saving face at the expense of let-go employees.
Goldman Sachs, the "creme de la creme" investment bank, did the same in
2007-08 (scumbags).

In technology, people evaluate a job based on what they will learn rather than
the reputation of the firm. There's also much less of a stigma inherent to
leaving a job for more interesting projects. For these reasons, and many more,
a biglaw model (thankfully) will never work in tech.

