Who would you work for?
Google, which has been battling Facebook for talent recently, is facing an attack from another source. VMWare, the server and PC virtualization company that went public this summer, is hiring all the engineers it can find. Ann Winblad, a general partner at venture capital firm Hummer Winblad, recently quipped:
“As much as we all love [VMWare CEO] Dianne Green, we have to figure out a way of stopping VMWare from hiring all the engineers in the Valley.”
VMWare (VMW), despite a recent slide in its stock price, has a hefty market cap of over $31 billion. Too bad they can’t virtualize the engineers! Who would you rather work for: Google, VMWare, Facebook — or someone else? (Take our poll below the fold.)
10 comments so far
10:51 AM PT
Is there a large amount of employee turnover at VM?
Are they planning a new product that requires additional engineering manpower (or womanpower)?
What’s the underlying reason for this increase in hiring?
Just curious.
11:41 AM PT
I’ve heard that Google hires people they don’t need in order to keep the talent locked up.
Has anyone else heard this?
1:51 PM PT
eh
3:53 PM PT
Minor point - it’s Diane Greene (the current post has her name misspelled)
See http://www.vmware.com/company/leadership.html
7:35 PM PT
Amit, VMware went public and has a ton of money right now. They also have a lot of momentum in the virtualization space. I attended VMworld 2007 and it was crazy, there were something like 10,000 people there from all over the globe. There will be one in Europe soon as well. Right now, its a race for VMware to lock-in customers before the juggernauts that are Oracle, Microsoft, and to a lesser extent Xen and Citrix, steal market share. Check this out: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2215817,00.asp
11:19 PM PT
[...] battle it out with Facebook and Google for the Valley’s top engineering talent, according to GigaOm. Combine the boom in the number of local startups with the growing companies’ endless thirst [...]
1:11 PM PT
Why would anyone work for facebook except for the money (if they offer any at all) and because they cannot work for google or vmware ?
Clearly facebook does not have any aura at all, the people who are fascinated about it are the business people who expect to cash in something from the users that will fly the next day to another site.
1:47 PM PT
VMware is hiring left and right. It will not go a long way with such a stupid recruiting effort.
9:33 AM PT
If we say (and I think most folks would agree), that virtualization and server consolidation are mutually beneficial, then where does this leave all of the server manufactuters, i.e., DELL, HP, IBM, SUN, etcetera?
Why bother spending money on several types of boxen when you can just consolidate your apps on one physical box, and virtualize your old physical servers into ’software’ servers?
Furthermore, would it then be safe to say that virtualization and server consolidation could pose a serious threat to sales of server hardware?
Food for thought, or not?
9:03 AM PT
“virtualization and server consolidation could pose a serious threat to sales of server hardware?”
Not exactly. While server consolidation means less servers, it also means bigger, more powerful servers, in order to take advantage of efficiency. The larger OEM’s like this trend, as it gets them away from competing with smaller server vendors and white box makers. Also, virtualization sales create a need for more centralized storage, such as SAN’s and/or NAS.
These combine to improve bottom lines for HP, Dell and IBM.
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