Hey Rackers, how are things going? Hearing conflicting reports. Rumors of selling off some BUs, an empty Castle, and some groups killing it.
It feels like to me that support leadership is scrambling to make better use of fewer and fewer people. There has been a steady stream of people out the door this year.
Not just support. Other BUs aren't getting backfills for churning talent. A whole lot of implied "do more with less" or "work smarter not harder". It's getting grim. Lots I know have attrited out. Those that haven't are looking hard and will, myself included.
Friends have told me the castle is empty. Much of the public Cloud work has been handed over to contractors in IT and there are very few rackers working on their Cloud stuff.
I've heard the same about contractors. It's not just Public Cloud. Other BUs are following suit. And the Austin office is a ghost town when I visit. Used to be burgeoning. Now it's empty. Too bad.
Outsourcing to Mexico is a strategy they are taking. Takes two Mexico admin for one US racker.
They just bought Datapipe another managed services / bare metal company with colo. aging tech there too
The datapipe buy is not a good sign, regardless of how it's being spun. They have a toxic culture, and operations are chaotic. I remember when RAX leadership would proudly proclaim that they bought companies for talent and technology, never to buy customers. Times change. This feels like when Dell bought Perot, and RAX leaders pointed out (correctly) that it was a fading company buying another fading company. Looks like RAX has accepted its fate on the long tail.
Respect. ✊🏻
I think part of why they purchased DataPipe is their Gov and Compliance Management businesses. Takes a long time to establish that. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.
When a once good company starts focusing on declining markets, the beginning of the end is nigh. I'm expecting an announcement any day that RAX is buying a mainframe business. But they'll always have board shorts and karaoke!
😂