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The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

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Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#51

Post by stingraycharles »

Hippocrates wrote: post #50

My company used Rackspace back in 2013. It was my first gig where I was "managing servers" and "deploying to production". The rest of the team was as inexperienced as I was. We paid extra for the support services that entitled us to unlimited 24/7 human support. Whenever I was stuck on an issue with deploying, scaling, crashing etc. my boss would say "try calling support." Initially you'd get a first-line operator bu…

I’ve had a similar pleasure in the early 2000s. It may seem absurd, but from a business perspective it makes sense: so many support questions fall into a gray area of “this is really not our business because the customer doesn’t know X, but without solving it they’ll be unhappy”. It makes sense to just say “fuck it, we’ll help them with anything, as long as they’re paying”.

It’s a similar approach as we take at my current employer. If you’re using our database products, even if you’re stuck doing basic python stuff, don’t know how docker works, or an absolute noob at AWS, we’ll help you. The time we spend is cheaper than losing business, and enterprises love it.

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#52

Post by tdees40 »

ferdek wrote: post #49
tdees40 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in markets. No, you cannot just fail to deliver. I'm also not sure how the ETF thing would work. If it's 1% of the ETF you're going to hedge out the position using a giant notional. It doesn't work.

Official SEC document regarding regulation SHO describes both illegal and legal cases when you can "just" fail to deliver [0]. Market makers which also happen to have hedge-fund branches are having the most flexibility in this. [0] https://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/regsho.htm

So it may not be illegal in all cases (although it is in many cases), but how does failing to deliver close out a short position?

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#53

Post by michaelt »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #45
tmountain wrote: post #39

I visited them during the peak of their success and they had a giant stainless steel slide in the middle of their facility that had been given to them by the German government. It was steep and twisty, and I inquired about the liability of having it. With a grin, a staff member told me that several employees had broken bones using the slide and that there was an active lawsuit in progress with a former employee due t…

> that had been given to them by the German government Really? that does sounds unlikely to me. Are you sure they didn't say "We got it from Germany" meaning it was imported from Germany rather than given to them by the German government? [edit] infact I wonder if the slide wasn't by German artist Carsten Höller: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carsten_H%C3%B6ller#Slides

According to [1] the slide was built by Wiegand Sports [2] who design and make slides, from small children's slides to 'spectacular event slides' - including indoor slides for corporate offices, malls, museums etc.

So this is a slide made by an established manufacturer.

[1] https://www.expressnews.com/business/local/article/Resolutio... [2] https://www.wiegandslide.com/en/products/slides.html

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#54

Post by helsinkiandrew »

michaelt wrote: post #53
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that had been given to them by the German government Really? that does sounds unlikely to me. Are you sure they didn't say "We got it from Germany" meaning it was imported from Germany rather than given to them by the German government? [edit] infact I wonder if the slide wasn't by German artist Carsten Höller: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carsten_H%C3%B6ller#Slides

According to [1] the slide was built by Wiegand Sports [2] who design and make slides, from small children's slides to 'spectacular event slides' - including indoor slides for corporate offices, malls, museums etc. So this is a slide made by an established manufacturer. [1] https://www.expressnews.com/business/local/article/Resolutio... [2] https://www.wiegandslide.com/en/products/slides.html

Looks like Carsten Höller slides are Wiegand slides: https://www.wiegandslide.com/en/products/slides/event-slides...

I guess the problem is that people see a slide and think playground/children's toy and that they are inherently safe, but the size of them can lead to trouble - there was one in the Tate Modern Gallery in London a few years ago that had to have safety personnel at top and bottom.

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#55

Post by teekert »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #43
tmountain wrote: post #39

I visited them during the peak of their success and they had a giant stainless steel slide in the middle of their facility that had been given to them by the German government. It was steep and twisty, and I inquired about the liability of having it. With a grin, a staff member told me that several employees had broken bones using the slide and that there was an active lawsuit in progress with a former employee due t…

Would a "use this slide at your own risk" sign be enough to prevent any lawsuits?

This is so a US thing. In my country an adult is just expected to be able to look at a slide, judge it as dangerous, have te freedom to do it anyway, receive medial help if needed, feel the shame, experienced a learning moment. Get laughed at, Laugh about it.

In the US there is always a lawsuit and it's someone's fault. It always feels like a not-so-nice place to be. Then again it makes for great lawyer and medical series. Lots of emotions.

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#56

Post by patchorang »

tmountain wrote: post #39

I visited them during the peak of their success and they had a giant stainless steel slide in the middle of their facility that had been given to them by the German government. It was steep and twisty, and I inquired about the liability of having it. With a grin, a staff member told me that several employees had broken bones using the slide and that there was an active lawsuit in progress with a former employee due t…

I interned there around the same time. The office was an old mall. Apparently, there had been a shooting in/near the mall, which led to people not going and the mall going under. Rackspace bought the mall and converted more and more to office space as they needed it. If I recall correctly the slide was from the old food court balcony area down into the main floor. I agree, it was a very cool office.

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#57

Post by Dave3of5 »

Companies and the products / services they produce have a lifecycle. Some are very long, tech companies tend to be shorter. Rackspace, I suspect, is past the harvesting stage and now in the maintenance / slow burn stage.

How long this goes on for is anyone's guess. They may turn into the Oracle of VPS providers and somehow keep going on for decades even though what they sell isn't really of great value anymore.

I think it's untrue to say the whole company is dead especially with the head office reduction as an example. Moving support to offshore is common in tech now so I guess they are just doing the same as everyone else.

Also note that companies that have a large data breach are often the most secure companies you can buy from after they have taken corrective measures. They know the pain of not being secure and are willing to spend money securing. That brand new tech start-up probably doesn't really care about security at the moment as they think they have higher priorities.

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#58

Post by webmobdev »

mutant wrote: post #4

Former customer here, when I migrated off of Rackspace in July, they couldn't manage much of the infrastructure, firewalls, switches and netapps were all managed by scripts, automations, and clueless engineers. I don't blamw the engineers, I blame management

That's one of the first lessons old schoolers learnt about web hosting when the internet boom began and busted - The oldest web hosts are the most reliable, but always keep an eye for change of ownership. Rackspace, Pair, Slicehost, Linode etc. were some of the really popular and good ones in the small and medium segment (Rackspace, ofcourse targeted enterprises) during this era but now ALL of them have been bought by someone else for their brand value. And yet, the new buyers didn't understand or seem concerned about the values behind the brand that made it so respected, and so all these brands have suffered under new management (I guess it is too early to speak about Linode yet, as Akamai just bought them).

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#59

Post by zomg »

it's too bad a once great company like rackspace had such a sad, dramatic fall from grace.

i was a customer of webmail.us, which was bought by rackspace in 2007 or so. i waited for things to go downhill, but the integration was seamless, and continued to hum along, with only a couple of issues, for several more years.

before rackspace began their nose dive, i made the jump to fastmail.

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#60

Post by a5seo »

I used Rackspace back in 2001-2002. Made the switch after hosting my JSP web app on servlets.net and experiencing an extended outage with no support. The difference in support was nothing short of miraculous.

I’m inclined to think Apollo failed to understand the investments necessary to make such a business work, and figured they could squeeze costs out of the business without losing value. Funny how these finance types always seem to find themselves suffering from “Black Swan” events every few years.

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