Rackspace Interview Questions & Reviews

Interview Details – I was initially contacted about the position by a headhunter who after a brief discussion said he would submit my information for the position. About a week later I followed up with him on the phone to check on the status and he was rather rude with me and ultimately hung up on me. Some of that may have been a cultural issue as he was clearly not native born, and English obviously was not his first language.

After that, still being interested in the opportunity I went and applied directly through Rackspace's online job website. A week or so later I received a call from one of Rackspace's internal recruiters for an initial phone screen which was painless and went well. Then a 1:1 phone interview was arranged the following week with the hiring manager who would ultimately be my boss in this position. Again, this was a relatively painless interview, mostly conversational talking through some of my background and experience.

Another phone interview was scheduled for a few days later, this time with two developers who would be colleagues working on the same development team. Again, this interview was mostly conversational discussing my background and experience, and they informed me at the end of the call that I would definitely be moving on to the next step. They were not clear whether that would be another phone interview or video chat, or if it would be in person.

As it turned out, the next step was in fact to schedule a day of in person panel interviews. I received an email from a coordinator regarding scheduling of that interview asking as to my availability on a specific date. Being fully employed currently I immediately put in a request for time off for that date, after which I was notified that there had been a scheduling conflict and all of the people I was slated to meet with would be out off the office that week, and could I come the following Monday instead. Perhaps I should have taken that as a sign of things to come...

After a bit of frustration I was able to arrange to take time off the following week instead, and then proceeded to wait several weeks for that date to arrive.

They flew me directly into San Antonio on Sunday the day before my interview, and put me up in the Courtyard Marriott. There was nothing exceptional about the hotel, but I have certainly stayed in worse places, so I had no complaints. Aside from the frustration around the original scheduling issue for this full day of panel interviews I was still feeling very positive about the opportunity.

I spent the evening in my hotel room preparing for the following day, and caught a shuttle over to Rackspace in the morning. There were two other people in the shuttle from the hotel to Rackspace for interviews. I didn't talk to them much, but from what I could discern they weren't interviewing for the same position.

I walked into the first interview feeling confident, as I was a perfect match for the position based on the job posting. I have interviewed other places where I can tick off many of the qualifications but not all and still come away from the interviews with a solid offer; in this case I was able to tick off every item on the list of qualifications including all of the nice to haves.

The panel interviews consisted of five one-hour slots. Each of the first four rounds of interviews consisted of myself and two interviewers, with the final interview consisting of just myself and the hiring manager.

The interviews were largely conversational, nothing terribly in depth or probing with regard to any hard technical skills. There were perhaps one or two questions that were challenging, but overall I felt I handled all of the questions with relative ease and left feeling very positive about the entire experience.

As I was being walked out by the hiring manager he explained that the panels would all meet the following morning to compare notes and I would likely hear something the following afternoon. Then I rushed off to catch my return flight home which was fairly tightly scheduled for about an hour after the scheduled end time for my final interview of the day.

That was unfortunate as wrapping up that interview felt a bit rushed and disjointed.

I did not receive a call the following day, or the day after that. Three days later, just at the end of the business day, I received a call with an offer.

Reason for Declining – The offer, frankly, was insulting. It was for a lower level position with a starting salary more than $15,000 below what I currently make. As I was expecting to take a step forward in my career, and perfectly met all of the requirements laid forth in the posting for which I'd applied I was quite taken aback.

After further discussion it was made clear that there are additional items they are looking for that were not included in the job posting.

While I am familiar with these items and know enough to hit the ground running, I do not have direct experience with in a professional environment as all of my work to date has been client projects that always have very tight timelines and budgets preventing putting these things into practice.

Because of this, they felt very strongly that disqualified me from being the senior level developer they were looking for.

Furthermore they were unwilling to come up at all in the salary offering, or agree to schedule a short timeline for a future review for promotion to the position for which I'd actually applied.

It's unfortunate. I was very excited about the opportunity, the one I'd applied and interviewed for, and all of the people I interviewed with were great and I would have very much enjoyed working with them. However, after spending many years paying my dues and working my way up in my career I can not justify taking both a cut in title and massive cut in pay.

Thinking that it is acceptable to offer significantly less money than someone is currently making, because the cost of living may be lower in San Antonio, seems a bit delusional to me. Especially if you're ultimately trying to hire someone away from an existing job. Rackspace might be cool, and San Antonio might be cheap, but those two things alone do not justify a huge step backward in ones career.

This outcome turned the entire experience sour for me.

My advice to Rackspace: Include all the requirements you feel are necessary in your job postings, or at least make these clear to applicants at some point during the interview process so that you're not wasting your, or our, time. Also, take a good hard look at your salary offerings, what you're asking for vs. how you're willing to compensate employees seems very disconnected.

Interview Details – Got an Email from HR to schedule an interview but they dint call me due to some miscommunication on the scheduled time.After a week they scheduled an interview and this time Manager called and asked few basic questions but I made few silly mistakes as I was tensed.Hence got rejected email next day

Interview Details – Recruiter missed scheduled phone screen twice. Next technical phone interview with Manager. He was late to the scheduled time by an hour. Bad feeling at this point. Another phone interview with a senior developer. Questions were a mix of technical/behavioral. Onsite was 3 hours. First hour technical with white boarding java and database concepts. Another hour of behavioral with Managers. Last part is tour of facilities and sales pitch on the culture.

Interview Details – Applied online, e-mail reply about 2-3 days later with phone interview a day after that.

Questions were pertaining to Windows based network commands in terminal, troubleshooting process for Lan and Wan.

Was told hiring manager would contact, but have not gotten a reply back in 2 weeks.

Interview Details – Started with online TrueAbility test, contacted by recruiter. Given phone interview that was a series of boilerplate linux trivia questions.

Scheduled for an in-person interview. Answered more linux trivia questions for the first hour, then discussed my experience in depth.

Then an ominously unsurprising and tedious third round of linux trivia questions that were almost verbatim the questions asked on the phone.

Then a tour of the facility which i assume is intended to convey a silicon valley-esque environment but is basically a giant call center.

If you want to work here I'd project a manic veneer.

Interview Details – Applied through referral program. Was contacted through email to set up phone interview. Phone interview was a simple screening process. Passed the phone interview and set up a face-to-face. The process was lengthy, but fun. Three panels of 2 members of the email
and apps team interviewed me, all asking similar questions, nothing too technical.

Interview Details – Was contacted by phone and asked a series of technical questions ranging from basic DOS commands to general questions about server hardware and network equipment. After the phone interview I was contacted and an online test was scheduled; the test was a series of problems to resolve or settings to change in a Windows Server RDP session. After the online test, I was invited to an in-person interview that lasted all day as I met with the department manager and various team members.

Interview Details – The process begins with an initial phone screen during which broad questions are asked such as port numbers for common services. After completing the phone screen, you may be selected to perform a break-fix where you SSH into a server with a list of items to fix. You will launch a screen session for someone to monitor you resolving these issues. The final step is an on-site interview which typically consists of three one-hour sessions with two people interviewing you in each session.

Negotiation Details – I was originally offered a salary that I would have been happy with, but I inquired about wiggle room. The recruiter was able to bring my offer up $2,000 annually.

Interview Details – The interview process was the toughest I've ever been through but it is definitely fair. They want to make sure that you really know your stuff. After the recruiter reached out to me (he was AWESOME!!!) they had me complete an automated skills test on a live system. Hint: Write down all of the tasks that they give you because at the end of the hour the task list will go away but the server will still be up and you can finish your work if you didn't have enough time!

The second interview was a live, technical break/fix session with an actual Rackspace employe. It covered many system administration tasks. Make sure you know Apache, MySQL, file permissions including chmod and umask, how Linux boots up, how to change network settings, how to manage the firewall, etc.

Apparently, I impressed someone because I was asked to conduct several more Skype video-conference interviews from my home and then was asked to join a different team than I initially was accepted to. All told, the process took about a month but I had very special needs concerning my family and they bent over backwards to accommodate us!

I am highly impressed by this organization. I've only been here a few days but I feel like it's already one of the best, if not the best company I've ever worked for, and I've done it all, startup to enterprise.

Negotiation Details – There is not much room for salary negotiation since that is tied to your actual position. There are bonuses available for different shifts and they have many, many perks that make up for any shortfall in the actual pay (like nearly a month of vacation each year when you include Holidays, paid volunteer days, earned time off, etc).

They are willing to help you out with relocation or family travel plans if you are a worthy candidate! They also are accepting more remote, virtual workers which I am taking advantage of following a 2 month training period in San Antonio.