<story><title>Broadcom lays off many VMware employees after closing acquisition</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/broadcom-vmware-layoffs-employees-face-job-cuts-acquisition-2023-11</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>FirmwareBurner</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;I have an engineer write some very basic manual SQL data mapping code.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do people usually have the SQL language so well memorized that they can pull it out of their head on command? I swear to god I&amp;#x27;m not the only engineer who regularly goes to the cheat sheet.</text></item><item><author>gwbas1c</author><text>&amp;gt; VMWare has A LOT of fat to trim&lt;p&gt;Oh, VMware is the 2nd shortest job in my career, primarily for that reason.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t want to say much in a public forum, but my best lesson from working at VMware is how to sniff out an incompetent engineer early in a job interview: I just ask coding questions that a VMWare engineer would get wrong.&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;p&gt;I have an engineer write some very basic manual SQL data mapping code. If the candidate really pushes back, or just can&amp;#x27;t figure it out, I move on.&lt;p&gt;I ask a question where the engineer should use an enum instead of a string. If the engineer uses an enum, I move on.</text></item><item><author>alephnerd</author><text>Broadcom&amp;#x27;s strategy is to remove sustaining engineering or deprecate product lines with limited uptake by F1000 customers.&lt;p&gt;Also, VMWare has A LOT of fat to trim. I&amp;#x27;ve worked closely with teams and alumni of Broadcom&amp;#x2F;Avago, VMWare, CA Technologies, and Symantec, and honestly, the cuts Broadcom does are pretty reasonable.</text></item><item><author>rilindo</author><text>As a public cloud engineer, it feels like this is a mistake to cut deeply right when cloud repatriation is starting to be a thing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JeremyNT</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Do people usually have the SQL language so well memorized that they can pull it out of their head on command? I swear to god I&amp;#x27;m not the only engineer who regularly goes to the cheat sheet.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think the key insight for you here is that there are many jobs where the &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; technical skill used is SQL. You probably &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; know this stuff like the back of your hand for such roles. Old, slow moving, large companies have &lt;i&gt;many&lt;/i&gt; people doing this sort of work.&lt;p&gt;Contrast with a generic &amp;quot;developer&amp;quot; at some startup who uses SQL as only one part of much larger and more complex applications.&lt;p&gt;As a &amp;quot;developer&amp;quot; you have to deal with so much obscure syntax in your life (actual programming languages, shells, dockerfiles, kubernetes yaml, helm, god knows how many 3rd party APIs, ci&amp;#x2F;cd definitions, other rando DSLs...) that you won&amp;#x27;t be able to keep everything in working memory.</text></comment>
<story><title>Broadcom lays off many VMware employees after closing acquisition</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/broadcom-vmware-layoffs-employees-face-job-cuts-acquisition-2023-11</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>FirmwareBurner</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;I have an engineer write some very basic manual SQL data mapping code.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do people usually have the SQL language so well memorized that they can pull it out of their head on command? I swear to god I&amp;#x27;m not the only engineer who regularly goes to the cheat sheet.</text></item><item><author>gwbas1c</author><text>&amp;gt; VMWare has A LOT of fat to trim&lt;p&gt;Oh, VMware is the 2nd shortest job in my career, primarily for that reason.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t want to say much in a public forum, but my best lesson from working at VMware is how to sniff out an incompetent engineer early in a job interview: I just ask coding questions that a VMWare engineer would get wrong.&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;p&gt;I have an engineer write some very basic manual SQL data mapping code. If the candidate really pushes back, or just can&amp;#x27;t figure it out, I move on.&lt;p&gt;I ask a question where the engineer should use an enum instead of a string. If the engineer uses an enum, I move on.</text></item><item><author>alephnerd</author><text>Broadcom&amp;#x27;s strategy is to remove sustaining engineering or deprecate product lines with limited uptake by F1000 customers.&lt;p&gt;Also, VMWare has A LOT of fat to trim. I&amp;#x27;ve worked closely with teams and alumni of Broadcom&amp;#x2F;Avago, VMWare, CA Technologies, and Symantec, and honestly, the cuts Broadcom does are pretty reasonable.</text></item><item><author>rilindo</author><text>As a public cloud engineer, it feels like this is a mistake to cut deeply right when cloud repatriation is starting to be a thing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SoftTalker</author><text>As with any language, developers who use SQL a lot do memorize it. Maybe not every bit of it but all the commonly used bits. I used to write SQL and PL&amp;#x2F;SQL every day at work and I got to the point where I rarely needed to consult the manual.</text></comment>