A couple of weeks ago I heard a story that was something extraordinary. Posted below, in its entirety, it’s a message from Derek Remund that he wrote and sent out to every Racker in the US:

Hello Rackers,

As many of you know, two weeks ago today my wife and I had to evacuate our apartment at 5:30AM due to a fire in the unit below.  That fire eventually destroyed the entire building, leaving us and three other families without homes or possessions.  Investigators have now determined that the cause of the fire was arson.  Our place was on the top floor: http://c334921.r21.cf1.rackcdn.com/apt-rear.JPG 

Since that day, it feels like we’ve been swept along by an overpowering current.  It seems like it’s only been maybe five days tops, rather than fourteen.  So much has changed since then, and we as a family have so much to be thankful for.

Ever since I started here two and half years ago, I’ve known that Rackspace is someplace special.  Now I know that beyond that, it’s the Rackers that make it special.  The caring, concern, and support Jessica and I have received from you all in these last two weeks is incredible.  Honestly, trying to take stock of it brings tears to my eyes every time.

I originally began to list out many individuals and groups for “thank yous” in this email, but to be honest there are so many of you that I don’t think I could do it justice.  To each of you, please know that you have our deepest thanks. 

The donations of food, clothes, household goods, gift cards, etc. made all the difference for us while trying to recover from the fire.  They’ve allowed us to focus on finding a new home, consolidating what little we had left, and solving the thousands of little problems that cropped up when we suddenly found ourselves without any of the things we took for granted.  Without them, much of our energy would have been spent just figuring out the day-to-day.

Also, a big thank you to my leadership for all contacting me to tell me to take all the time I needed to sort things out.  Having these two weeks meant that my wife didn’t have to go it alone when figuring out where and how to live.

Finally, a special thank you from our dog, Charlie.  The food, treats, toys, and doggie beds have helped him settle into the succession of new homes we’ve had since April 4th (my in-laws’’, two hotels, a temporary furnished commercial apartment, and finally our new home).  Charlie is very thankful:http://c334921.r21.cf1.rackcdn.com/charlie.JPG

I’m back in the office now, and I hope to be here around 80% of the time over the next month or so while we work on setting up our new home.  Those of you who work with me, just let me know if you need anything.

Thank you all so much,

Derek and Jessica Remund

The interview process at Rackspace is thorough (to say the least), and I’ve had many candidates share that it is “really, really tough, but fair and incredibly eye-opening”. Our candidates go through a technical screen with a recruiter, which is then followed by a technical phone interview with a high level NetSec administrator or engineer. If they pass through those steps and demonstrate that they’re top-notch, we conduct a live interview of up to four hours that includes a panel of up to eight Rackers and some pretty intense white-boarding.

With the new assignment, I’ll admit that I was a bit apprehensive at first; however, in order to get an in-depth understanding of our netsec teams, I leaned on my fellow Rackers and had the fortunate opportunity to shadow both a senior member and a new hire on every team on all three shifts. Network security at Rackspace is typically divided into smaller teams for second and third shift, though first shift isn’t usually more than 15 people. The teams are mostly guys who really know their stuff, though we have some fanatical netsec women in senior level roles as well. Employees range in age and background, as we have a strong mix of both US born and internationally born employees, and everyone has something to learn from another team member.

Being a newbie to the field, I wasn’t sure how I’d be received by the teams, but every team assured me that they were excited to help me learn. I quickly saw that not only is this group incredibly talented, but senior members want to help less experienced and newer team members become masters while continuing to learn and grow themselves. Not once in the three weeks that I was shadowing did I see a team sitting in silence with their heads down. Rather, teams were working on tickets, talking across cubes or sending IMs with questions and drawing out diagrams of issues and possible solutions. There certainly are some quieter workers, but their input is equally valued and frequently sought out. The team dynamics change from shift to shift and team to team, but within every team, there was a distinct energy of excitement to learn, conquer challenges and grow as a group.

After my shadowing sessions concluded, I took a few minutes to draw out a very basic network to see if I truly grasped what the teams had showed me. I wandered up the stairs to some of our senior engineers and asked them if it made any sense at all. After a few seconds, the guys on the team looked at me with smiles and confirmed that yes, though it was a pretty basic, it made perfect sense and I’d have my CCNA before I knew it. They also encouraged me to stop by any time with questions, no matter how simple they seemed. If this is the support I’m receiving from the teams when I’m not even a netsec team member, I can only imagine the levels of support and fanaticism that team members give and receive from one another on a daily basis.  Fanatical support and our commitment to greatness isn’t just something we extend to our customers; these are core values that we extend to our teammates and co-workers as well.

Rackspace promoted the value of “treating each other like friends and family” and really working as teams to accomplish tasks throughout the entire interview process. I immediately felt this vibe when I arrived for my face-to-face interview with the recruiting team. Random people said hello as I walked through the building, the panel was open to questions and feedback, and the overall interview experience, though challenging, was a great experience. This was the first time that I truly felt that maybe this core values thing was the real deal with Rackspace and not just a bunch of corporate marketing, and I truly think that it is something that can only be explained so much until candidates need to really just experience it. Being brought in for a face-to-face interview changes everything.

My first few weeks at Rackspace were quite the blur of getting lost, trying to memorize so many new faces and a lot of celebrations. I’ve been here about 6 months now, and I still feel like I find a new area, conference room or ping pong table every other day, and I am definitely still meeting multiple new people every day. I’m sure that will be the case for quite some time, as Rackspace continues to expand at incredible rates. Through all of this, I feel that I’ve been incredibly blessed with the giant group of people here who are my co-workers. Just about half of Rackspace’s current employees relocated from somewhere outside of San Antonio; we know what it is like to be new to the area, to be new to the company and to feel entirely scared out of your mind.

Friends and family at Rackspace isn’t just a core value or saying; it is a lifestyle. I’ve had dinner with co-workers, cook-outs after work, purchased concert tickets and found plenty of great places to eat due to co-workers suggestions, received a welcome basket from the company and have been given plenty of advice on how to deal with being home sick (video calls work wonders!). There are forums and groups in which new employees are encouraged to become involved, and they are genuinely an instant family.

In the six months I’ve been a Racker, I’ve yet to see a request for help go unnoticed. Someone in the company is always there, and usually, it’s quite a few people, not just one. As it turns out, when employees are fanatical about support, it doesn’t just apply to our customers.

The Evolution Championship Series (Evo for short) represents the largest and longest running fighting game tournament in the world. The tournament actually has it’s roots as far back as 1995, but was officially named Evo in 2002 and has grown ever since. The scene has gotten so big in the world of Esports that it is not uncommon these days for players to have sponsors who help them get to the tournaments around the world and in turn the players represent them.

Racker Mawutor Amesawu came onto the Email & Apps team and quickly found friends with a similar interest in fighting games, but it was his knowledge and excitement that got the group of Tim Hammer, Beau Bailey, Nolan Iriarte, Tom Mitchell and myself playing Street Fighter IV together daily during lunch, after work and at the local arcade.  Thursday nights are reserved for “Fight Night” where we go to the arcade to compete with top players from the San Antonio area or get together at someone’s house and practice late into the night. We have even put together a tournament for Email & Apps where lots of Rackers competed, but in the end it was Tom who came out number one!

The Team has named itself the 8 Button Brawlers (8BB), a callout to the eight-button controllers that are standard in this kind of tournament.  Over the coming weeks and months, stay posted for more updates from the team as we train, travel and compete in Evo 2012.

The 8 Button Brawlers are:

Keenan Sherfy – DWhisker

Tim Hammer – HammerIX

Nolan Iriarte – beatnikz

Mawutor Amesawu – TrueWu

Tom Mitchell – ThatGuyMuscle

My story is an unusual one. And my pathway to Texas and reasons for my move certainly made me stand out among all the other candidates.

I graduated from the University in Virginia with a degree in Computer Engineering. During my summers before that, I held internships at Sprint Nextel in Northern Virginia and Bombardier Transportation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I wanted to enter the network operations field, but never really found a good point-of-entry for my first job after school. I ended up being employed at a major mortgage broker located in the Northern Virginia/DC Area because they claimed to offer a rotation program that would give me a wide range of experience. I was even promised that I would get a rotation with the network operations team. At first, I enjoyed my time there, but once the second rotation came around, I didn’t get the network operations position. The same happened again with the third.

I also had my qualms about living in the DC Area. Aside from things like the worst traffic in the nation, rent as high as Manhattan, a terrible and expensive mass transit system, and a very closed, quiet, and not-too-friendly culture of people, I finally realized that I would never be happy there. Worse, I knew that I would never be able to get ahead in the area because of the very political and bureaucratic nature of pretty much all the businesses there. I knew that I would never be able to afford my own home because the real estate was too expensive. I was living paycheck-to-paycheck on a very generous salary for an entering engineer into the IT industry.

After I got word that I was not going to be permanently placed in the network operations group at my then-current employer and six months of searching for a new job elsewhere, that tore it. I was ready to start over. I gave my two week’s notice with no clear future in sight, but I knew with my qualifications that I’d be able to find something in another city. The question was where did I want to move?

Lucky for me, traveling is one of my hobbies. In fact, within the last four years, I’ve flown to 40 different cities located in North America and Europe for business and/or pleasure. And I knew with 100% certainty that my next home would be in Austin, Texas.

I had been there before and had so much fun every time. Austin is a burgeoning capital of technology, and I was so impressed by the huge amount of state pride that everyone had in Texas. Lone Stars EVERYWHERE! There always seemed to be a special event or festival every weekend in Austin, and people who lived there were very physically active, really friendly, and welcoming. The community fosters a unique “Keep Austin Weird” culture, making it a very exciting and dynamic place to live. Best of all, it was a lot more affordable to live there than the DC Area, and I could actually afford to get my own apartment close to Downtown Austin.

With that, I packed my bags and threw the rest of my worldly possessions in a U-Haul attached to my Nissan Altima. (Texans still like to make jokes about my little car towing that much stuff 1400 miles. About ten seconds after crossing the Texas/Arkansas border, I learned that they love their pick-up trucks.) I got oriented a lot faster than I thought; I got three job offers at three stellar technology companies in Austin and settled into an apartment after only ten days of arriving. After that, I knew I had made the right decision. Sure, I still do miss my friends and family in the DC Area, but I really have no regrets at all and even pat myself on the back for making such a big, positive change in my life.

With three job offers that were extended simultaneously, I had a lot of options. However, out of all of them, Rackspace Hosting seemed to have the best culture fit for me personally. On top of a competitive salary and great benefits, Rackspace has a work-life balance and adheres to its core values. This is not a place that has core values for the sake of impressing customers or fulfilling a fake public image. These values are what have defined us as an industry leader, and I was so happy to find a place that is focused more on performance than bureaucracy and paperwork. Since joining Rackspace, I’ve been more than just a Network Security Administrator. I’ve helped with recruiting, happy hours, special events, and even big industry events like SXSW. I’m great friends with all my coworkers, and I’m happy to be part of a company that has helped me adjust so quickly to a city where I had no friends or family when I first arrived. I’m thrilled that I chose to become a Racker.

The drive through Palm Springs was perforated by Scott’s Hawaiian music pumping through the speakers.  Even at this early hour, Andi, Wayne and Jordan have their laptops open.  These guys never stop coding, compiling and cloud-building; in the case of Andi, not even to sleep it seems.  As the guys worked well into the early hours of the morning (and through them) it occurred to me that they don’t think about what they do as work.  The decision to hop into an RV and drive thirty-plus hours through the American West, eyes down to their laptops the whole time was … fun.

It’s a stark reminder for me that Rackspace is a fun place to work, no doubt, full of remote-controlled helicopters and go karts in the office, but it’s ultimately a company poised to redefine what computing technology will be in the future.  We’ve placed a heavy bet on  OpenStack and for all the right reasons:  we know open, collaborative communities produce better work.  We know that when you give something worthwhile away, it comes back to you tenfold.  We hire the best and brightest and we know that they will deliver, hand in hand with our partners across the industry (Red Hat we heart you) and beyond (what up, NASA?)

Time for more coffee and Hawaiian music.  Keep up with us on twitter at @RoadStackRV and join the fun with #RSRV.

This morning began the first leg of the RoadStackRV tour, a sort-of hacker version of On the Road.  Seven Rackers (including yours truly) headed out from Castle this morning with the intention of crossing the American west in a mobile home, arrive in San Francisco and spend a week partying with developers and thought leaders at the OpenStack design summit and conference.

The RV isn’t fancy, just a standard vehicle made extraordinary by the people driving it and the idea it represents.  The trip is chance to get face to face with customers and developers that are changing cloud computing forever.  It’s a crazy idea, but it’s full of heart and purpose. Then again, so is OpenStack.

The trip has already been very “Rackspace.”  There’s a Wilson Electronics  cell signal booster duct taped to the side of the RV, and (after a quick stop at the electronics store) three engineers are unboxing and building a mobile wi-fi spot.  Meanwhile we’ve got some phones tethered and there has already been talk of hacking the RV’s radio.

You can continue to follow us here for more blogs, pictures and videos.  And keep an eye out on twitter for @RoadStackRV (#RSRV).  Stay tuned for more updates on the geekiest road trip in America!

The question is not whether or not working remote is actual work, but more so, is it working out for me?

Again, the thoughts contained here are not based on anything except my own experience. So if you decide to take a job working from home and it does not work out, you cannot blame me.

If you want the short answer, then yes, I think it is working for me. Not to say I wasn’t worried, especially after spending three weeks down at the Castle. Spend a few days working with a mall full of fellow Rackers, and you will quickly understand why so many people want to work for Rackspace. Work there for a few weeks knowing that you will be working from over 200 miles away from your co-workers, and you will start to doubt whether or not the whole remote idea is worth it.

Starting out, I most likely expected things to be different than what they are. I thought it would be hard to keep my office door closed, but thanks to my great wife and awesome son, that is not the case. I thought it would be hard to stay focused, but thanks to the amount of work that needs to be done and the volume of work, that definitely has not been an issue. Quite the opposite, in fact. I thought that if I was out of site, I would be out of mind, at least as far as my co-workers are concerned. Again, not the case. In fact, the thoughtfulness of my co-workers has probably been one of the best experiences. I mean, how many times have you had a pizza just show up on your doorstep because some guys 200 miles away didn’t want you to feel left out? Probably not many.

Some of this is getting into the things I want to talk about in the next post, but they were worth mentioning.

Here is the deal: if you are reading this post because you are thinking about working remotely, there are definitely some things to consider, at least with regards to you personally.

How is your work ethic?

If you are a slacker, or if it is hard to stay focused, then working remotely may not be the best option.

You may remember a while back we brought you a series of stories about unique team names that Rackers give themselves.  Well, today we’re back with more tales of “What’s in Name?” but this time it’s all about Austin Teams!

Red Dwarf

When we started with our project, we knew the name had to be related to the stars in some way or shape. We were building something that bolted on top of nova, the openstack compute product. We originally went with blue dwarf, and found out its a “hypothetical class of star” (as reported by the always true wikipedia), so that was not necessarily fitting, and some could even say had a negative connotation. So we decided to change the name to avoid the “hypothetical-ness” of the product we were building. At the same time we wanted to pay homage to a awesome british from the early 90s. Hence the decision to name it red dwarf. and to throw in a toaster, cuz who doesnt like toasters?

“I Toast, Therefore I Am.”

Team LEAF:

The first shift linux teams in austin used to be called:

LEAF – Linux Emerging Austin Firstshift

Our symbol was the fern leaf or aya:

The AYA or fern is an African Adinkra symbol of endurance and resourcefulness. The fern is a hardy plant that can grow in difficult places. “An individual who wears this symbol suggests that he has endured many adversities and outlasted much difficulty.”

The Flying Toasters:

What is a Flying Toaster?

The Flying section of our team name comes from an homage paid to the Windows OS. If we roll time back to the early days of Windows, we will remember a screensaver which displayed animated images of flying toasters traveling across the screen to prevent image burns on the monitor. While we could have pulled the full name of our team from this screensaver alone, we chose to have a wicked-badical double meaning in our name, which will be explained as follows:

A Cylon was the robotic enemy of the human race in a science fiction series named Battlestar Galactica. Due to the fictional war between the robots and humans, a creative nickname was assigned to the Cylons by the human military. That nickname, Toasters, was a symbolic representation of how the humans were superior to the Cylons because the Cylons were just machines. This section of our team name harkens to the reality that machines would win any type of war against the puny human race and we all know it, deep down inside. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

There you have it. We are the Flying Toasters, we are fierce, and we also heart Windows so much!!!