Rackspace Employee Review

Current Employee – been working at Rackspace

Pros – Job:
- Constant challenges and interesting problems to tackle
- Autonomy to take ownership of issues without micromanagement
- Real sense of purpose/satisfaction in a job well done
- Great experience builder
- Lots of opportunities for free education and certification (MCITP, RHCE, Cisco, CompTIA, PMI, etc)

Culture:
- Most people really want to be there and care deeply about customer service
- Basically no dress code for technical folks
- Values-based culture that places focus on getting things done the right way, both in terms of correctness and in terms of morality, you could say
- Quarterly team outings

Compensation:
- Decent salary for certain positions (especially given San Antonio costs of living)
- Good benefits (health, dental, vision, disability, stock purchase program, FSA/HSA, etc)
- Good vacation time (17 days per year for new employees, 22 days per year for employees with 5 year tenure)
- Flexible scheduling (no nickel-and-dime-ing of time off for doctors appts, etc)

Cons – - There is a lot of tribal/institutional knowledge that is not centralized (common problem with rapid-growth companies)
- A few too many middle managers that don't seem to contribute much besides sitting in meetings
- Lack of solid process controls, over-reliance on hero employees to fill the gaps left by poor planning/implementation
- Some positions are under-compensated in terms of salary. However pay seems to start low and ramp up, for example I make almost 80% more now than when I started a couple years ago.
- Not enough focus on holding individuals accountable for their performance. It's a great environment for self-motivated, high performing individuals to get the job done without micromanagement, but lazy/inept folks can fly under the radar for far too long.
- Not enough focus on retaining top experienced people, however based on recent evidence this seems to have been fixed quite a bit in the last few months.

Advice to Senior Management – - Pick a consistent vision and stick with it.
- Seriously evaluate the quality of middle management and rethink the manager count (one manager for every 4-6 people in some departments is FAR too many).
- Make sure there is sufficient staffing and training to support new initiatives and products.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend