Which one is better in the long run: testing in Microsoft or development in VMware?

A2A I've never worked in any of the two companies, but what I've heard is that it is very hard to move from a testing position to a development position. VMWare is a reputable company which does some pretty amazing stuff, so I would definitely take their offer. Obviously location, salary, etc may play a role in your decision.

Your question sound like you already made up your mind on joining Microsoft. If you are planning to go M.S, I recommend Microsoft, as this sounds like a short plan and in a short plan Microsoft is better. Why Microsoft ? You had a better work-life balance so you get more time to prepare. Microsoft gives insight into more technologies than VMWare. You get a chance to meet and work with some of the smart people in the industry. You can explore more about corporate life and understand it Why VMWare ? You learn more on the developer role than a tester role. You explore more in VMWare than in Microsoft. I heard only in Redmond branch Microsoft had very good teams, in the other parts of the world they had very few good teams(not sure of Canada). Even though VMWare doesnt have a vast footprint like Microsoft, they are one of the best in their cloud solutions. Coming to benefit in the long term, ask yourself which role excites you more, Partner manager of Microsoft or corporate vice president of VMWare where both pays you same. Ask your self, that should answer the question.

My personal belief is that a good tester can become an awesome developer because a testing role teaches you how clean and modular code should be written so that the resulting software has least number of bugs, is readable and maintainable.      A typical Microsoft interview tests you for each of SDE, SDET and PM role, and offer you the one  that matches the skills you demonstrated. So, Microsoft believes you would be an awesome tester. If you work at Microsoft, you would get immense technology exposure, talented peers to learn from and experience of working on very large code bases. At MSFT, one can now contribute to any product across Microsoft if one is interested in. Moreover, Microsoft is also slowly moving to combined engineering roles i.e there would be no testers and each developer would be responsible for the whole software development life cycle.     This all looks very promising but I would still recommend you to take up the SDE position at VMWare as that would benefit you in the long run in terms of skills and further opportunities. You have the flexibility of changing your role to that of SDE but that again depends upon a number of other factors.

Well I would say it will be wise for you to join VMWare, its a reputed company and other offer you have can not offer you much learning on technical front while being in test. Anyways its not as hard to move from test to dev but it is not easy and you might have to compromise in future for moving from test to dev. I would take VMWare if i were at ur place.