Rackspace?

BGraves

Anyone worked for them doing hosting admin/engineering work? If so, any input on them as a company?

And...anyone happen to know of a kickass IT job in the ATL, GA area? Starting my job search so figured I'd ask

UnixGuy

One of the biggest cloud companies in the world. I have no experience with them but people who work for them seem to be very experienced/well trained.

joelsfood

I regularly chat with several rackspace employees, including a couple who left there and then went back. I don't think you're likely to go wrong working there. They're all out of San ANtonio offices though

phantasm

I know a few people who work there and they all really like it. Looking through the open jobs for Rackspace in IT nationwide they have a bunch of spots open. Three pages worth actually. Most are in San Antonio but you may be able to WFH depending on the team. Or if you wanted to relocate they may help with that.

SteveLord

Know a guy who use to work for them for 3 years as a senior engineer. He calls it one of his best work experiences to date. He use to work for the state like me and I always regarded him as one of the smartest people I knew whet it came to Networking, Security and Linux.

And I believe he largely worked remotely from here in Iowa with them.

Mitechniq

There is a possibility you will have to do some type of hands on build, mostly associated to a LAMP stack. This is even before you get an interview.

BGraves

Hey all,

Thanks for the replies and info! I was looking at a remote position for wintel/hosting admin.

I admit I'm a little weak on the IIS/SQL/Clustering aspect of the job so was wondering if I should invest some time learning before I pursue it.
Good to know they aren't a terrible place to work, guess I'll fire up some vm's and start working through some of this stuff.

Appreciate the feedback!

RHEL

I've had various encounters with them from at the beginning of my career where I interviewed with them to a few years later when recruiters have jumped all over my LinkedIn profile due to my participation and success on TrueAbility contests, to even most recently, even one of their senior hiring managers personally sent me a video message.

ive found them to be somewhat unreliable in making interview times or even calling back. They've constantly tried to sell me on relocating, or interviewing for completely different roles. However, this had just been my own experience. They are rated as a top employer for a reason.

My own personal opinion is that their "Racker culture" is a bit cult-like and geared toward younger, customer-service oriented Linux geeks who value wearing flip flops to work, high fiving each other in a cramped open office type environment while eating pizzas for breakfast more than a market salary (they pay pretty low!). I picture time being spent equally diving through an endless queue of support tickets and making paper airplanes to toss around the office.

Many people would love such an environment. Personally, I prefer internal IT support, in my semi-private cubicle, with a moderately corporate and professional environment. To each his own...

Krones

I know a guy that works remote for workspace on the devops team. Overall, he says it is a good gig and the pay is decent. He does have to spend some time locally every quarter in the office. So for his role it's not 100% remote.

chmod

What are exactly they positions they have?

phantasm

chmod wrote: »

What are exactly they positions they have?

https://uscareers-rackspace.icims.com/jobs/search?ss=1&searchCategory=8730

JockVSJock

RHEL wrote: »

I've had various encounters with them from at the beginning of my career where I interviewed with them to a few years later when recruiters have jumped all over my LinkedIn profile due to my participation and success on TrueAbility contests, to even most recently, even one of their senior hiring managers personally sent me a video message.

ive found them to be somewhat unreliable in making interview times or even calling back. They've constantly tried to sell me on relocating, or interviewing for completely different roles. However, this had just been my own experience. They are rated as a top employer for a reason.

My own personal opinion is that their "Racker culture" is a bit cult-like and geared toward younger, customer-service oriented Linux geeks who value wearing flip flops to work, high fiving each other in a cramped open office type environment while eating pizzas for breakfast more than a market salary (they pay pretty low!). I picture time being spent equally diving through an endless queue of support tickets and making paper airplanes to toss around the office.

Many people would love such an environment. Personally, I prefer internal IT support, in my semi-private cubicle, with a moderately corporate and professional environment. To each his own...

I live in San Antonio (SATX), they are the only big IT company here. They have trouble recruiting locally, because SATX isn't a highly educated nor a tech city, therefore they have implemented Open Cloud Academy to try and home grow talent. However they are still some issues with that, so they try to recruit nationally and have a hard time selling SATX to relocate. However Rackspace make a big deal that its tough to pass the various interviews/screenings, however I believe they screen out alot of good candidates.

I agree with RHEL, in that I'm not for the nerf gun shooting, wearing sandals to work geek cult-culture. I prefer a much more mature, mellower atmosphere to work in.

Here are some pics of their facility known as the Castle: From just a sneak peek, Rackspace looks like just an average... Photo-photo.112325 - San Antonio Express-News

A number of folks I know here who have either interviewed and/or worked for them say that they underpay, however a number of those folks got the experience and bounced to a way-better paying job. And a contractor that I worked with reported that the supervisors wanted to be "best-friends" with you and you had to report in on what you were doing on your day off in case they needed to you come in and work...?

BGraves

Whew, thanks for all the replies and info! Very helpful!
The more I hear about it, the less interested I am :S I'm also on the more mellow/mature and pay appropriate side of things
I was only interested because of the possibility of remote work, guessing maybe I need to continue looking elsewhere!

Appreciate the feedback and info all! Thank you!

JockVSJock

Wanted to post this.

I believe there are some super talented folks who work there. For example, here is a guy that who's blog I've discovered when troubleshooting various Linux issues: https://major.io/

With that said, I've never worked in an IT environment where fellow techs were willing to give back to jr employees, such as mentor, coach and/or train to build you up, not tear you down, so it might be worth it to work there.

On another note, some of the folks who did work there, said they got great training.

UnixGuy

Agreed with Jock.

Let's not ignore the fact that you will get priceless experience working there.