Category Archives: VMware

Q&A, user experience, VMware

Q&A: how can I find user experience jobs in the Bay Area?

I’m spending today at the University of Michigan, participating in some campus recruiting.  The morning started off with a networking breakfast with the School of Information, which was great: lots of people who are interested in UX jobs at VMware.  We’re hiring for both summer internships and full-time positions, so this kind of thing is exactly what we need to do to get great hires.

During my talk, I took a lot of questions from the students about working at VMware, what UX is like here, and so on.  Which is great: it gives me fodder for future blog posts.  I’m going to quickly answer one of the questions that I got during that session: how to find UX jobs in the Bay Area.

Working in UX in the Bay Area is truly awesome.  There’s so many tech companies, and lots of them are hiring.  Finding UX jobs can be somewhat of a challenge within tech, because UX jobs can get lost in the general tech hiring that happens.  One great resource for finding UX jobs is BayCHI.  Paid members have access to their Job Bank.  Lots of employers post their UX openings there.  It’s mostly Bay Area, although there are jobs posted elsewhere in California and the US there too.  Many of the jobs are for interaction designers, but researchers and visual designers aren’t left out in the cold.

It’s awesome to see one list of UX opportunities in one place.  It gives you an idea of where the job market is going and what skills are in demand.  For me, although I’m not looking for a job, I still glance over them to make sure that I’m growing my skills in the right ways.  I don’t want my career to stall.  I want to keep improving and moving my career in the right direction.

If you’re in the Bay Area, going to the BayCHI meetings is a great way to network with your fellow UX professionals.  They’re held directly across the street from VMware campus, so it’s pretty easy for me to pop over.  I watch to see what the monthly topic is, and go to the ones that I find interesting.  Most BayCHI talks are excellent, and the networking is icing on the cake.

UX folks: what other resources do you point college students towards if they’re looking for a job?  Other than your own company’s career page, of course.

VMware

intern season is coming!

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Intern season is fast approaching.  If you’re in school, now is the time to consider where you’d like to spend your summer.  A VMware intern from last summer wrote about the top five reasons to love interning at VMware.  Of course, my user experience team is hiring interns.  Check out our intern job description, and ping me if you’ve got any questions.

If you’re studying at the University of Michigan, I’ll be there on Thursday, February 2.  First up is a networking breakfast and information session with the School of Information.  In the afternoon, I’ll be at the engineering career fair.  Stop in and say hi!

Apple, VMware, vSphere

installing VMware ESXi 5 Server on a Mac Mini

One of the things that I’ve learnt about VMware is how awesome our users are, and how willing they are to share their knowledge and expertise.  So it didn’t come as a surprise to me when I came across a detailed write-up of installing VMware ESXi 5 Server on a Mac Mini.  Anyone who’s familiar with our hardware compatibility guide knows that this isn’t a supported configuration, so you’re using this at your own risk.  But I know that there are folks out there who are willing to hack at things, so have fun with it — and I’m sure that the authors of that post would appreciate any tips or insights that you have if you give it a go.

As for me, I’ve been wondering about updating the Mac Mini that serves as my home server.  Is this enough to push me over the edge?

user experience, VMware

giving back more than we take

This morning, Paul Maritz sent mail to all of VMware talking about where we’re going in 2012.  There’s a lot in it, and I really like seeing this kind of honesty and transparency from my CEO.  In it, he added a core VMware value: giving more than we take.

In my year-plus at VMware, I’ve been doing a lot of that.  I’ve spent a lot of time mentoring others on my team to help them improve their research skills.  I also created VMware’s first internal user experience conference, vUE.  I’ve also just started a series of UX tech talks (which probably deserves a post of its own), the first of which happens at the end of this month.

My goal is to help my organization exemplify user experience excellence for the whole company.  In short, I’m doing two things: modelling user research excellence for my team, and helping our user experience team come together to share expertise and identify areas where we can collaborate and build a better VMware-wide user experience.  As a side effect of these efforts, I want to create a community for our user experience professionals across the company.  This is also part of giving back: I want to build a lasting user experience community where awesome user experience people want to work.

There was a lot for me to like in Paul’s memo.  This particular piece resonated with me because I feel like I’m ahead of the curve.  It’s awesome to see our CEO recognize the importance of efforts like mine.

VMware

every time a smartphone rings, an IT support guy gets his wings

Some holiday cheer from your friends at VMware:

It’s possible that I find this video so funny because it was filmed on-campus and because I’ve had meetings with some of those people in those conference rooms.  Even so: it’s three minutes gently poking fun at It’s a Wonderful Life.

By the way, for those of you who are in the Bay Area, did you know that the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto always plays It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve?

iPad, Mac, View, VMware

VMware View Client for Mac available now

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Ever since I joined VMware last year, one of the top search hits for this blog has been “vmware view mac” and variants.  Today, I have great news: there is now an application to match that search.  Yes, VMware View Client is now available for the Mac — and it’s also joined by a View Client for Linux, an updated View Client for iPad, and a View Client for Android.  For more details, check out Pat Lee’s blog post.

To download the new View Client for Mac, start here.  That’s got the download link, the readme (yes, you should read the readme!), and a forum for providing feedback to us.

Go forth and download!