Rackspace Technology FAQ

Pros

good benefits package, decent flexibility

Cons

transitioning US jobs to India

Pros

I struggle to think of one.

Cons

- Once epic company culture was Kevin's capital to get the company back on the NYSE and is now completely gone. - The company was renamed to Rackspace Technology but they haven't invested in developing any technology since OpenStack 10 years ago. They have no product, the only value the company has is the sum total knowledge and experience of its employees. - ... and employees, particularly most of the experienced ones have now left the company - my team has had ~80% yearly employee attrition rate for the past 3 years - employee retention was so bad 3 years ago that it forced the company to change its internal marketing strategy. On one of the slides shown in an all hands session was a photo of 4 senior Rackers taken a month prior. 3 of the 4 for had left by the time of the presentation. At this point the company switched to using stock photos exclusively. - some reviews mention life-work balance but in my experience people are routinely "volunteered" for overtime both in day-to-day and holiday cover - salaries well below market level - one of the constant feedback Rackers have been giving is that there's not enough personal development time. In 2019 the SLT has announced with fanfare a new programme of 52h/year for PD. Then someone in the audience asked if that was on top of the 4h/week that was already in place. It wasn't. Turns out that the Chief People Officer wasn't aware of the 4h/week. So in the end the response to employees' need for more opportunities to upskill was to cut these opportunities by 75%. The programme was still advertised as a great success internally though. - Given a problem to solve you will be forced to use the most basic solution possible. That's because your manager will need to to be exchangeable with any of your colleagues so if there's someone on your team that doesn't know, say, Python you will not be allowed to code a Python script, you'll have to do things manually. We called this approach the Least Common Demotivator. - While other IT companies will offer multiple benefits, Rackspace has a novel approach to this issue. There once was a time when the company offered free drinks, snacks or gym memberships. These are now gone. Some time ago they instituted a "common framework" for benefits across all offices. Under the guise of making access to benefits fair they eliminated all of them. So, the Amsterdam office has no onsite gym? That's unfair, we'll be closing the onsite gym in London. And then they open a new office in, say, Bangaluru with no employee benefits at all.

Advice to Management

The prompt for this textbox was "Share suggestions for how management can improve working at Rackspace Technology". That's the thing, I don't believe the management is capable or interested in doing that.

Pros

Decent dental insurance and PTO time

Cons

Sub par health insurance and 401K match compared to other technology companies. Constant turnover at all levels. Burn and churn mentality from management.

Pros

Despite massive attrition recently, there are quite a few fantastic people that remain. Benefits are also very good, including generous PTO, parental leave, and sabbatical options

Cons

The pay is WAY below industry average and the compensation plan for sellers is awful. Leadership is a revolving door, support has declined and continues to do so, everything is being offshored, and everyone is just a number and completely disposable

Pros

There is still a very small number of Rackers remaining who understand what the culture used to be like and are trying (in vain) to look after what remains of the customer base.

Cons

When I joined we had an amazing team of high performing diverse individuals who worked hard to support customers. Unfortunately by the time I left of the 8 people in my original team I was the 6th to leave. Let me be clear these were not underperforming sales people who the business was managing out, quite the opposite in-fact! All have moved because of the toxicity of the culture brought in by the IBM management team and the lack of any understanding they have of the current market. To describe these managers as dinosaurs would be offensive to a species that existed for millions of years only to be destroyed by a completely unavoidable event. No this lot are actively and knowingly destroying a once great company under the so called guise of "transformation and best shoring". There is nothing transformative in moving skilled labour to lower cost parts of world and then being surprised in the obvious customer satisfaction drops. This however is not the biggest issue with the "New Rackspace" which is (as described in a number of previous reviews) the Toxic culture. I accept that is a strong word but in this scenario maybe not strong enough. I have heard of senior management making comments such as "well just fire him then" and "drive to his house if he doesn't answer the phone". The obvious response they will offer is that change is painful and people cant hack it but that assumes the people who have left haven't progressed their careers (which they have) and their replacements are stronger, which there aren't any so that also can't be the case. All in all it is a real shame that a once brilliant company has been totally ripped apart to fill the pension pots of some IBM old boys and a few of their mates.

Advice to Management

Stop adding unrealistic counter reviews, they look silly.