I don't believe these people are being fired... at least not all of them. Take a look at a report from 2 months ago[1]. 600 people from VMWare are working on Pivotal, if those people don't count on VMWare's books anymore, that would be a reduction in headcount.

Also, the Chicago Tribune[2] article is better than the BizJournals one. One key point in this article is that by the end of 2013, they expect to hire 1000 new employees.

This all sounds like shuffling around of people and trimming a little fat, and has nothing to do with VMWare possibly doing badly.

[1] http://www.thevarguy.com/2012/12/05/vmware-confirms-pivotal-...

[2] http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-vmware-resu...