<p>I'm a VMware user and far too often I use keyboard shortcuts while programming. However, this has proved to be quite distressing as sometimes the VMware gets hold of it and turns off / pauses (<kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>Z</kbd>) the virtual machine.</p>

<p>Is there a way to disable keyboard shortcuts on VMware? Has anyone here ever found a workaround? </p>

I use AutoHotKey (are you running VMWare on Windows ?) to disable certain shortcuts. You can find this tool here:
http://www.autohotkey.com/
It's open source and I quite like it. Can be used for automation tasks, but you can also have it respond differently to different windows. With some AHK scripting, I think you should be able to fix your problem.
The site had got loads of tutorials too on writing handy scripts.
Good luck.