I don’t know who this guy is, but bless him! This worked for me: https://blog.bchoy.me/post/2018-09-11-vmware-ssh-bug/
Put this in your ~/.ssh/config
Host *
ServerAliveInterval 600
TCPKeepAlive yes
IPQoS=throughput
He has a link to some discussion about the IPQoS parameter — which fixed it for me.