Prós
Many good, genuine people doing their best. A good way to gain entry level experience. The Castle is a fun place to work if you can tolerate constant distraction and noise.
Contras
The company is relationship-based rather than performance-based in most segments. As a result, poor performers who get along with others and don't make waves are rewarded. Innovators who, by their nature, disrupt the status quo with new ideas are often squashed and labeled as negative. In 10 years of performance reviews, there were virtually no mentions of measurable performance successes I'd had. Instead my reviews were simply based on anonymous peer feedback where half-truths and rumors were accepted as fact. Rackspace is at a point of crisis in their values. "Friends and Family" was nice in 2007, but post-IPO it rapidly became a lie. The Company should own up to its new identity as a for profit business and not a buddy-system bro hangout party. After all, you don't fire or abandon friends and family during times of adversity. But a real business has to. Own up to it and stop trying to maintain a mask of fun and pizza parties. Grow into a performance based business that doesn't coddle nepotism and the buddy system.