Broadcom, a Silicon Valley chipmaker with six decades of history under its belt, is laying off more than a thousand employees after finalizing a blockbuster acquisition of cloud technology company VMware.
According to a WARN notice filed earlier this week by company vice president Jill Turner, Broadcom will lay off 1,267 employees at VMware’s Palo Alto campus starting in January 2024. The full extent of the layoffs is not clear.
“This will not result in closure of the entire facility, but will only impact certain employees selected for layoff,” reads the letter submitted to the state’s Employment Development Department.
Broadcom announced that it acquired VMware in a landmark $69 billion deal, which was finalized earlier this month after securing a key regulatory approval in China. As part of the deal, Broadcom is set to move into the 100-acre VMware campus—which has been largely dormant due to the company’s flexible work policies.
Integrating VMware’s 30,000-odd workers into the broader fold, however, may prove to be a challenge for the chipmaking giant. In the months after the deal was announced internally, Business Insider reported discontent among VMware employees—many of whom were concerned about its new owners’ cost-cutting and push to end VMware’s longtime remote work policy.
The fears over losing remote work, at least, seem to ring true: Broadcom CEO Hock Tan announced this week, according to an audio recording obtained by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, that “remote work does not exist at Broadcom.” Employees within 60 miles of a Broadcom office must come into the office.
Impacts from the deal have seemingly also bubbled up to VMware’s top brass. Company president Sumit Dhawan’s departure was announced a day after the layoff notice was filed, the latest high-level VMware departure after the exit of three senior vice presidents around this time last year.