Why I’m a Racker

One of the questions I hear most often from technical people working at other companies is: “Why should I work at Rackspace?” It’s a simple question and one that many Rackers are very passionate about.

In my previous work, personal growth was not a high priority. This meant that if you wanted to learn about new technology, attend conferences, or be active in the community, you needed to do it on your own time. At Rackspace, learning and communication with the technical community is encouraged. Training is offered internally for many topics and external training is available for various certifications. If you’re looking for training outside the technical realm, that’s available too.

Rackers know that personal growth is paramount. At Rackspace, the sharing of knowledge is highly encouraged and rewarded. If you don’t know how to do something, speak up and someone will get the resources you need. New strategies and techniques are shared rapidly within teams and this knowledge spills over into other teams or departments very easily.

This leads into one of the aspects of Rackspace that should interest many technical people: we have lots of experts. Many of the people who maintain popular open source applications already work for Rackspace and we have many other experts scattered in various areas of the company.

If you’re unsure about a particular piece of software or hardware, there’s a good chance that someone at Rackspace could spend the better part of an afternoon explaining the intricacies of it with you.

Rackspace also encourages experts to share their knowledge with the community.

You’ll find many Rackers writing technical blogs, submitting patches to open source projects and participating in online discussions. This allows us to not only make connections with the community, but to make connections with our customers. Our community involvement makes us more approachable and gives us an idea of the solutions that our customers want.

I stay at Rackspace because I’m able to do what I do best and I’m constantly learning from the knowledgeable Rackers that surround me each day. It’s the most unique, challenging and rewarding work environment that I’ve ever found and I work diligently to keep it that way.

Thanks for stopping by our talent portal. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter if you want to chat more. You can find me as @RackerHacker.