(NB: adapted from this Ask Ubuntu thread -- tested to work with Ubuntu 16 LTS branches and Ubuntu 17.10)
Unlike using VMWare Tools to enable Linux guest capabilities, the open-vm-tools package doesn't auto-mount shared VMWare folders. This can be frustrating in various ways, but there's an easy fix.
Install open-vm-tools and run:
sudo mount -t fuse.vmhgfs-fuse .host:/ /mnt/hgfs -o allow_other
L1 cache reference ......................... 0.5 ns
Branch mispredict ............................ 5 ns
L2 cache reference ........................... 7 ns
Mutex lock/unlock ........................... 25 ns
Main memory reference ...................... 100 ns
Compress 1K bytes with Zippy ............. 3,000 ns = 3 µs
Send 2K bytes over 1 Gbps network ....... 20,000 ns = 20 µs
SSD random read ........................ 150,000 ns = 150 µs
Read 1 MB sequentially from memory ..... 250,000 ns = 250 µs