Pros
-Your customers absolutely love your core product -Headquarters and satellite locations are very nice, although I was field based -The technology side is almost unparalleled. You will get few chances in your career to sell a product this solid -The vision is amazing and inspiring. If you need to be inspired by a company's strategy, this is a good opportunity. The execution is still catching up to the vision but it is truly impressive. -Positive culture. Healthy lifestyle is encouraged here, as is work-life balance and I really do believe that it is not just lip service. They will pay your gym membership.
Cons
-The company is transitioning from being a rising star to being the next Oracle or Microsoft. As management has changed to Pat Gelsinger's team, the company has come to resemble EMC even more and is more execution driven than vision driven. Because we are typecast as "just" a hypervisor company, it is very difficult to sell what VMware now does to customers who are less than progressively minded from an IT perspective. When people think, "Oh, VMware must be easy to sell" they do not realize that the hypervisor and core platform is commoditized and the only way to make any significant sales is to have a customer that understands the cloud computing journey VMware is evangelizing and buys the adjacent products, etc. -Quotas are completely out of control. The norm the entire time I have been there is missing your quota. As long as you are clearly doing your job, etc, this doesn't seem to result in imminent firing your life as a sales rep will always be behind the 8 ball or subject to the 6 month quota cycle. -VMware has been in an "awkward adolescence" period for as long as I can remember. Systems, procedures, etc don't always make sense, and the certain key processes that matter to customers are completely broken. These will hurt your sales efforts. This last piece is not necessarily a con, but many of the experienced team members are moving out of individual contributor roles to management or more interesting roles or leaving. This is more a sign that the company is in a state of transition and existing players are moving up or moving out. If you enjoy working for a large, strategic player a la HP, Oracle, Microsoft, then you may like this transition. If you are looking for a large company that still has that fresh startup positivity then you may find yourself out of place here.