Close your pie ho-e.
While there is plenty of things to point out about our mgmt team, one thing they MUST DO is keep the company running and cannot speak about things that are not in stone/done/finished/closed. Literally, they cannot say "this will happen, on this day, with this many layoffs, in these depts, etc" Because they don't know for sure.
They know there will be changes, and at this point probably have some ideas of where they will be, but nothing is for sure. He-l the deal might not even close. And that has to be kept in your mind as an exec.
My last acquisition (smaller company than VMW) we at Sr. mgmt level knew for 2 or 3 months before the employee announcement. Our employees didn't know until about 30 days prior to public announcement. Why?
Simple, the purchasing company is doing due diligence. Going over the books, looking at the products, reviewing the sales process, reviewing the staffing levels, making plans for partners, going through the legal process with the .GOV entities, looking at all contracts, customer break downs, support, geo locations, physical assets bothing land, hardware, cash, etc, and of course legalities around employees, their local laws, contracts, etc. etc.
Here it is a public company being bought so they had to announce it. I think it would be better (for employees) that it wasn't even publicly announced until 30-45 days out. But that goes against SEC rules here in the US and as bad for investors.
Besides, what if once a week Raghu or Sumit does a current status update and comes out and says "As of today we know 40% of you will be laid off. And these 2 BUs are probably going to be sold off"
The next week: "we decided to change the BUs sold off. No longer the 2 we just mentioned, but now its the third. And HR and EUC will be impacted big by the layoffs"
Then 2 weeks later "EUC leads in ARR and financially we can't move them because we need ARR and cant cut them deep, now we are thinking we cut 10% more from Core, and get a few percent from the EMEA teams to make up for it."
Week 6: "Forget what we said. The numbers are now clearer......"
See the problem here? That type of cr-p with weekly or monthly updates going on for MONTHS on end would ruin the business by ruining the people. YOU MAKE NO ANNOUNCEMENTS UNTIL IT IS WRITING AND SIGNED OFF ON.
So please stop thinking with different mgmt on our end this would be any different. It wouldn't. Pick the greatest CEO, presidents, VPs from any of your past experiences and they would be in the same boat these people are... We are frustrated because we see our execs have also ran the company into the ground and now we see that pain along with this acquisition pain. Any exec you think would be better would be looking at 10's of millions of dollars in CIC payments to make this a success. They would not blow that for your comfort.