In a clean new Ubuntu 13.10 virtual machine, trying to use a multi-threaded "make" (i.e. with '-j 4' option for instance) in a shared directory makes the vmware-vmx process take 400% of the CPU and none of the make processes progress. They all seem to hang on their first compilation task.
Using only a single thread works.
With an older VM (Ubuntu 11.04), the same test eventually hangs in the same manner, but this is not instant - a few files are compiled, and at some point make stops progressing and vmware-vmx hangs using 100%l CPU per make thread.