It appears that when you install open-vm-tools on Ubuntu 16.04 for VMware Workstation the HGFS mount is never created. To get your shared folders to show up we need to perform a few steps.
We need to create the /mnt/hgfs folder.
sudo mkdir /mnt/hgfs
To mount your shares temporarily run the following command.
sudo mount -t fuse.vmhgfs-fuse .host:/ /mnt/hgfs -o allow_other
To persist the mount you will need to edit the /etc/fstab file. Add the following line.
.host:/ /mnt/hgfs fuse.vmhgfs-fuse allow_other 0 0
Reboot the host to verify persistence of the mount.
Link Share
ln -s /mnt/hgfs/shared-directory ~/Desktop/Name-of-the-folder