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The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

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

#31

Post by brk »

I had been a Rackspace customer a few times at various roles. I never experienced this "fanatical support" on anything that mattered.

After several outages where we received pathetic root-cause reports initially, and had to push them hard to provide actual data, and clear commitments to shore up their systems, I would describe them as "fanatical liars".

It is funny, just the other day my wife and I were discussing cloud stuff and I said "I wonder whatever happened to Rackspace". Sounds like they've continued their path of sub-par strategy since I last dealt with them a decade ago.

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

#32

Post by kaashif »

ferdek wrote: post #28
koolba wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be tax free? Until the position is closed out it'd be an unrealized gain but there's nothing special about shorting. Gains are not taxed until they're actually realized by closing out the position.

Maybe I misremembered something and cannot find a source now, but I think there was some way to avoid paying tax on short sales when company goes bankrupt and gets delisted. EDIT: See sibling comment. EDIT 2: Am I reading this right? almost 1,800,000 shares failed to deliver just in one day of Sep 22nd? [0] [0] https://fintel.io/ss/us/rxt

If the company actually goes bankrupt and their stock is delisted from exchanges, covering your position becomes much harder since liquidity is greatly reduced.

I think the ideal scenario for a short seller is if the stock loses 99%, stays listed, they cover, then it gets delisted.

I might have that wrong though.

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

#33

Post by dizhn »

opsunit wrote: post #24
skilled wrote: post #20

Rackspace had such a strong reputation during the 2000s, particularly for dedicated servers. I wonder if anyone in their exec team ever brought up the fact that they got their ass kicked by DigitalOcean, and similar platforms when it comes to affordable and simple hosting.

They bought and then shuttered Slicehost in an attempt to occupy that market segment.

DataPipe (another company where tech support was the #1 priority) was also acquired by Rackspace. However I don't know if it was acquired by the original owners or the current org.

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

#34

Post by kaashif »

SteveNuts wrote: post #26
koolba wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be tax free? Until the position is closed out it'd be an unrealized gain but there's nothing special about shorting. Gains are not taxed until they're actually realized by closing out the position.

By leaving the position open forever and taking a loan against the security.

I'm not sure I understand - to sell short you already need to borrow securities, can you actually take loans against a short position that becomes worth something? That's interesting.

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

#35

Post by dsr_ »

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

In a functioning network, firewalls, switches, and NetApps are managed by scripts, automations and clueful engineers.

Once the clueful are replaced by the clueless, or are burnt out, that's the end.

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

#36

Post by ferdek »

kaashif wrote: post #34
SteveNuts wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By leaving the position open forever and taking a loan against the security.

I'm not sure I understand - to sell short you already need to borrow securities, can you actually take loans against a short position that becomes worth something? That's interesting.

You can Fail-to-deliver and never locate the stock that you are supposed to borrow. Or you can short ETF with this specific company in basket while going long on anything else in this ETF.

Everything you own, even your own debt, can be used as a collateral by creating and selling swaps.

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

#38

Post by hzbxks »

sickmate wrote: post #5

>Highly trained people handled the company’s incoming telephone and online inquiries Not sure I can agree with this. Almost a decade ago we had some shared hosting accounts at Rackspace for some very legacy clients (ones that even accounting had forgotten about and not billed them for years). We had an issue with accessing one of the databases to export for handover, and so I got in touch with their online support. T…

rackspace never had a "shared hosting" product outside of a very short lived acquisition of mosso from like 2007-2008....

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

#39

Post by tmountain »

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 to an injury.

I asked if they were going to get rid of the slide, and the response was, “No way, it’s a symbol of who we are. We move fast and break shit!”

I liked that version of Rackspace a lot. The office was incredible (still haven’t seen anything like it), and the service was great. Sad to hear where things landed.

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

#40

Post by hzbxks »

opsunit wrote: post #24
skilled wrote: post #20

Rackspace had such a strong reputation during the 2000s, particularly for dedicated servers. I wonder if anyone in their exec team ever brought up the fact that they got their ass kicked by DigitalOcean, and similar platforms when it comes to affordable and simple hosting.

They bought and then shuttered Slicehost in an attempt to occupy that market segment.

slicehost wasn't shuttered so much as rebranded. rackspace didn't have a viable vm service prior to slicehost.
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