Broadcom CEO Hock Tan was unsparing in his expectations about remote work during a meeting with his new employees.

Broadcom is laying off 1,267 Palo Alto-based VMware workers following its acquisition of the company

Chip manufacturer Broadcom wrote the latest chapter in the long story of return-to-office tensions between bosses and employees.

After completing its $69 billion acquisition of cloud computing company VMWare, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan issued a direct order to his new employees about where they must work. “If you live within 50 miles of an office, you get your butt in here,” he told the workers of previously remote-friendly VMWare.

The comments came during a meeting Tan hosted on Tuesday after the merger between the two companies officially closed, following approval from Chinese regulators. Like many other executives, Tan cited in-person work’s benefits to collaboration and company culture. “Collaboration is important and a key part of sustaining a culture with your peers, with your colleagues,” he said.

  • 0xF21DEnglish
    15•6 months ago

    Yup. And I have a couple workstation licenses in need of an upgrade purchase that will probably not happen now. Linux KVM is looking more appealing.

    • aard
      4•6 months ago

      For workstation there hasn’t been a need to use VMWare for over a decade now, if you’re on Linux. Server side, if you needed live migration you had a reason to stick with VMWare - but that also should’ve been solved about a decade ago. Pretty much the only two excuses for still using VMWare infrastructure are “it’s old infra, and we don’t really have the time to migrate away from it” or “our ops team is too incompetent to handle anything else”

      • 0xF21DEnglish
        6•6 months ago

        For Linux yes I started using KVM and it works just fine for my needs on a workstation.

        For Windows hosted VMs I preferred VMWare Workstation. It has a workflow that worked for me and I found it compatible with a wide range of guests. Linux guest support in HyperV is a joke. Virtualbox sucks for professional use because the functionality locked behind the extensions they force you to download is an invitation for Oracle to begin harassing for licensing with the threat of a software audit if you’re big enough a target.

        I don’t mean for this to become a Linux vs. Windows thing. I have reasons that I need to use Windows. Though that’s not to say I’m not pushing for more Linux. Windows 11 is a big enough reason to ditch windows.