
Rackspace Interview Process - signa11
https://journal.paul.querna.org/articles/2014/04/27/rackspce-interview-process/
======
lmickh
I interviewed at Rackspace a few years back on the ops engineering side. It
was part of a bigger recruiting push they were doing across the metroplex area
I live in.

It involved a similar schedule of interviews across multiple teams in one day.
Only 11 people apparently passed the tech pre-screening to get to that point
out of the whole area. Interview process went great. It included a number of
different fields at varying depths, yet didn't feel over the top at all. It
was a very fair and positive experience. There seemed to be real interest from
several of the interview teams.

Then the offer came. They wanted me to relocate for a swing shift chat support
position at half my current pay even after shift bonuses. I don't know how you
go from discussing Openstack production implementations (back in the
Essex/Folsom days when you couldn't find anyone that knew that stuff) to basic
Linux chat support.

~~~
jimminy
I had this same experience about a year ago.

After going through several screens, I was asked to take an entry-level ops
position, in a completely different metro at a lower pay, while I was applying
for a senior applications role.

My primary reason for applying was the location and type of role, so I
declined. But I've never felt so disrespected by a companies hiring practices
like that.

------
bluedino
The Rackers that I have contact with are generally terrible. Once in a while I
get someone who really knows their stuff, but most of the time it takes me 3-4
'tries' to get an answer to my questions.

>> Culture, not just code

Rackspace appears to employ a lot of non-technical people that have been
placed in technical roles. They don't understand the why's. Maybe their goals
are to be able to train anyone and they don't want people being creative etc.
I know a handful of people that work there that I would have never suspected
they would work at Rackspace doing web or server support.

>> Flexible for multiple roles

This bugs me. Mediocre employees shuffling around from position to position. I
would suspect the amount of people that can perform 'very good' at a number of
jobs inside Rackspace is pretty low. Or any other company, for that matter.

>> Trained

Most of the Rackers at the first and second support tiers are not much more
than script-readers it seems.

~~~
pm90
Ex-Racker here. There are different levels of support available. AFAIK, there
exists a level of support where you talk to devops engineers directly, but I
believe its kinda pricy.

In general, I think you get what you paid for: most customers don't want to
pay a lot for support.

Its true that Rackspace does employ a lot of non-technical people and train
them. I actually really like how they do this: I've worked with many people
who moved from support to developers, and they are not only top-notch, but
understand the pain points of customer-service and help make the offerings
very user and support friendly.

~~~
eip
Rackspace costs roughly 10x of many of their competitors. I thought that extra
cost was for support?

~~~
snowwrestler
When you call Rackspace, you will probably get an entry-level person. That
makes sense, since answering calls all day is an entry-level task. If
necessary, the call will be escalated as high as it needs to go, to meet the
need.

When you call AWS, Digital Ocean, or Linode... just kidding, you can't call
them, at least not without paying at least as much as Rackspace.

------
s3nnyy
I am a technical recruiter in Zurich. We have a tiny Rackspace dev team here
and from what I've heard from the guys here Rackspace has a very reasonable
recruiting strategy.

The take-home assignment is a set of tasks that the candidate can choose from,
which I believe is a smarter way to gauge tech-talent than giving an arbitrary
algorithmic coding task and forcing the candidate to solve it on the spot like
Google / Facebook does.

~~~
chrisper
I might be moving to Zurich in a year or two. How is the tech scene there?

~~~
s3nnyy
Some Swiss IT-highlights include:

\- The biggest Google software engineering office outside California (around
2000 employees).

\- Logitec, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco

\- ETH university

\- Many ETH-spinoff/startups: Doodle, Bitspin (bought by Google), Teralytics,
Archilogic, Fashwell, Getyourguide, Numbrs and I surely forgot many others.

It is a great place to live and is the only place where net-salaries are on
par with New York / SF. Salaries are in the range of 7000 - 10.000 CHF / month
after taxes. However apartments can be way cheaper than in San Francisco. You
find more on Zurich from me here: [https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-
reasons-why-i-moved-t...](https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-
i-moved-to-switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90)

Also, if you have a EU-passport, you can find my email address in my HN-
handle.

~~~
gaius
_The biggest Google software engineering office outside California (around
2000 employees)._

Makes sense, Switzerland is a major tax haven.

~~~
s3nnyy
When they decided to make Zurich the Google tech-hub in Europe I can assure
you that taxes were not the main driver.

One of the big guys at Google at that time studied at ETH and therefore knew
the place is full of talent. Also, the Zurich is more or less in the
geographic center of Europe. So is Munich, Germany, but would a French or
Italian programming prodigy move to Germany? Maybe, but maybe not. The
probability of different people to move to (neutral) Switzerland is higher so
it is a natural place to attract talent from all over Europe.

~~~
chrisper
Hey, I sent you an e-mail, but haven't gotten a response. Not sure if I sent
it at the correct one? iwang -at - fastmail dot net

------
demian0311
I interviewed there 5 years ago. It was a pleasant process and I was impressed
with everyone that I met. My experience was consistent with the article, it
was a 'no bullshit' interview, no Google-style zingers.

------
devnull42
When I interviewed at Rackspace 3 years ago I had 8 interviews. Things have
changed since then but I remember the process really being comprehensive for
both culture fit, technical, and overall just who you are. I used to do
interviews when I was in Support and this article is indeed accurate.

~~~
20years
8 interviews?? All with Rackspace? That seems crazy.

------
mindcrime
Sounds pretty horrid to me. I mean:

 _11:00 to 12:00: Computer Science and Algorithms_

Do you _really_ need a full hour to tell if somebody has a good basic grasp of
CS and algorithms? I can't see it. At least not in the best case. The way I'd
suggest doing it is this: Ask a question that can result in a "1 question
yes". That is, pick a sufficiently advanced / interesting algorithm, and ask
questions about it, and/or ask the candidate to implement it. If they pass on
that, move on from CS/algorithms to something else. If not, move to the 2nd
choice algorithm, and repeat. Do that for a few iterations. This way you only
fill a full hour if the candidate forces you to dig really deep into your list
of topics.

The same methodology could be applied to the other domains as well.

~~~
levemi
If you complain about CS requirements for software engineering jobs your
complaints are going to fall on a lot of deaf ears because people desire
competency. Dunning-Kruger is having its impact felt in these threads. If you
think computer science fundamentals aren't a requisite for software
engineering it's probably because you don't have the experience and skill
necessary to understand what engineering competence looks like.

~~~
madeofpalk
Mindcrime isn't saying CS isn't required, they're saying it doesn't require a
full hour to judge whether they're competent or not

~~~
mindcrime
_Mindcrime isn 't saying CS isn't required, they're saying it doesn't require
a full hour to judge whether they're competent or not_

Yes, exactly.

That said, I should add the disclaimer that I'm referring to fairly general
roles. If you're genuinely hiring for a highly specialized role that requires
more specific knowledge, then that might change the equation a bit. I should
have been more explicit about that earlier.

~~~
levemi
I find it very difficult to imagine how an engineering position wont benefit
from having strong CS fundamentals. If you write code you need to understand
how the code you are writing works. How the libraries you depend on do what
they do. If you run into problems you'll be need to able to think of
solutions. This idea that you'll look up how to do some computer science
algorithm when you need to is ignorant, because you may not know when you need
it.

A lot of the CS fundamentals in interview questions demonstrate an ability for
problem solving and abstract thinking. It demonstrates your ability to handle
coding problems under stress. Resorting to complaining about hard computer
science problems is the exact opposite response you should have. It should
motivate you to improve and learn more, not feel bitter and angry. Likely this
attitude indicates a poor culture fit as well. So in effect asking computer
science question is doubly useful, because it helps filter out candidates who
opt for alternatives to self-improvement and overcoming challenges.

~~~
mindcrime
You were replying to me, but I agree 100% with all of that, and it doesn't
contradict anything I said, so I'm not sure what else to say. I guess I could
just be more clear in saying that, for me personally, I'm not "complaining
about hard computer science problems", I'm just thinking about how to optimize
use of time. Personally, whether I'm the interviewer or the interviewee, I'm
not partial to interview processes that take all day. That and I'm not partial
to asking people to implement difficult algorithms on the whiteboard. My take
is this:

1\. If you're doing whiteboard stuff, keep it high level, see if the
conceptual understanding is there, and move on.

OR

2\. Give the candidate a computer, editor / IDE, compiler, google, etc., and
let them work they way they work, implementing $WHATEVER.

------
djn2817
Rackspace missed my phone interview 3 times in a row...

~~~
cm3
Don't worry, it's not unusual for recruiters to just forget about you, or
trying to get travel expenses reimbursed for a couple months after the
unsuccessful interview process. Given that interviews are free form and you
didn't enter a contractual agreement beforehand, I'd just start looking
elsewhere, while pinging them regularly as long as you're still looking. Heck,
there are firms that return to you 12 months later, especially on Wall Street,
so it's not that unusual.

------
durzagott
I'd never heard of the STAR answering format mention in the article. It looks
really useful and I'll definitely give it go next time.

Does anyone have any real world experience using these kind of techniques?

~~~
bloat
Yes this is pretty common in my area (finance in London). Especially in the HR
interview which is sometimes called a competency interview. You will get
questions of the format "tell me about a time when you persuaded your manager
to do something", or "tell me about a time when you had a conflict with
another team member."

The interviewer generally expects a STAR format answer to these questions.
Typically the candidate would come with two or three good stories in mind, and
be able to tailor them to the particular question - many good workplace "war
stories" would fit one or more of these sorts of questions if you emphasize
different aspects.

~~~
pekk
So interviewees are supposed to read "how to interview" books to know that
they should generate a STAR format answer? What does this have to do with
being able to do a job?

~~~
pquerna
I don't expect a candidate to have STAR response out of the box at all.

I would ask each part of STAR, directly to the candidate.

The goal is to actually understand what the candidate did, less what "we" did.

\- Tell me about a time there was a production outage?

\- What was your role in the team? Were you on call?

\- [ questions about what happened ]

\- How was it fixed? What was your part in this?

\- What did your team change afterwards?

\- How do you think about production outages now based on this one?

------
grifferz
I interviewed for a non-customer-facing ops position at Rackspace UK in 2006
and one stage was them handing me a pack of coloured pencils and blank paper
and telling me to draw what my idea of "fanatical support" looked like.

~~~
hyperliner
If you want a job at Rackspace, a huge proportion of your result, assuming you
are ok competent, would be to completely embody FANATICAL SUPPORT, for
whatever role you are doing, I don't care if it is technical or product or
marketing or sales or legal or operations.

Basically, what it means is that you will do WHATEVER IT TAKES to satisfy the
needs of WHOEVER happens to be your customer. Most times "your customer" is a
real customer, but you also have internal "customers" (for example, the legal
team's customers are mostly internal).

Look at this page and internalize it.

[https://www.rackspace.com/talent/culture/](https://www.rackspace.com/talent/culture/)

A lot of the "culture" component tends to also be kind of cheesy, but I think
that it is a sub-thread of Rackspace that is not necessarily part of the
culture but perpetuated by HR. I have been told that during their "onboarding
week" (yeah, it can take 3 days for the onboarding), people are encouraged to
be silly and wear silly hats. Not everybody is up for that, but many are.

So for you, being in an ops position, be able to know what that is. They are
not asking you to draw a Picasso. They are gauging whether you know what
FANATICAL SUPPORT means for your role and whether you have even thought about
it.

~~~
josephjrobison
Not so sure how FANATICAL SUPPORT applies to "satisfy the needs of WHOEVER
happens to be your customer". I have a client with a $2k a month hosting bill
with Rackspace. Which is small for big companies or startup tech companies,
but a lot for a small non-tech business.

There have been occasions where we've received FANATICAL SUPPORT from
individual techs, but mostly we're stonewalled by being on an infrastructure
plan that doesn't allow for their FANATICAL SUPPORT it appears.

~~~
autotune
They have a page specifically noting what they support:

[https://support.rackspace.com/how-to/cloud-servers-with-
mana...](https://support.rackspace.com/how-to/cloud-servers-with-managed-
operations-support-for-linux/)

Speaking as an ex-Racker, yeah, if your infrastructure isn't listed on that
page and you have something like Tomcat running or Cassandra, or Headless
VirtualBox an dedicated box, it was best effort. If you want externalized
customized support for that client outside the standard tech stack supported
by Rackspace, you need to bring in an external MSP, consultancy, or FTE
willing to take on your tech stack and provide an SLA, and pay for it.

------
jerrycabbage
Rackspace seems to like to hire lovable losers. They claim they are
exceedingly selective, but they never go into details about what traits they
value. They seem to value people who are not as driven as others. Those
that'll hang around for average wages. People who won't be bored and want
something better. They frame this as being 'more selective than Princeton' but
that can mean a lot of things. My friends coworkers were a bit lol. Everyone
was likeable but they all seemed flawed personality-wise.

------
bogomipz
I like that you have a framework for conducting interviews. This all seems
civil, sane and well thought out. This is refreshing. More companies should
codify their process like this. Most of the time it just feels like companies
are just winging it.

Can I ask what the focus of the San Francisco office of Rackspace is? I know
its a large company.

------
marklyon
Did they ever drop the "Strengths Finder" testing? It was the oddest part of
my interview there - they found I'd not taken it before flying out and put the
entire process on pause to have me take it, only to find the results were
incompatible with the desired results for the position they were filling.

------
free652
A whole hour for "10:00 to 11:00: Background and context"? That sounds very
inefficient. Interviewers need to be able to explain the context and
background in about 5 minutes.

------
beachstartup
if you can take multiple people and pull them off their work for an entire
day, while having meetings about the meetings you'll be having, there's not
enough real work being done.

[https://www.google.com/finance?q=rax](https://www.google.com/finance?q=rax)

------
systems
the problem to me seems that those overly technical interviews focus more on
what you know (memorize) than what you can do (learn, troubleshoot)

i guess they are top tier enough to be worth the effort

------
limeyx
just reading all that caused me to want to shoot myself honestly

~~~
jack9
The interview consists of 4-5 panels of 2 interviewers. Each panel is
generally 1 hour long.

I'm already out. The kafkaesque bureaucracy must be epic. I suspected it the
moment I read "Mailgun team (level II or III)." This stratification metric
means the owners lost control of the organization. When you no longer have the
capability to assess and judge your individual employees (nor trust your
management to judge) at any level, let's at least give them some increasingly
narrow vector title so we know who is more competent than someone else in a
pinch. Because our concern is not looking foolish, so we rely more on the
people who get paid more in a vicious cycle of incompetence.

------
joesmo
"We currently use a white board for most of the coding exercises. I am not
satisfied with this because it penalizes different ways of thinking and
communicating."

So ask the interviewee to bring in a laptop (since he'll already have
everything set up the way he's used to). Or buy one for this specific purpose.
The answer is so simple. Instead they choose to complain about it. Any other
solution is wrong. And while you're at it, shut the fuck up while your
interviewer is working on your stupid problems. That will go a really long
way.

Then again, a place that hires someone who can't see this obvious solution is
not a place I want to work at.

