Here is an unofficial, hacked up tour of the Rackspace office in San Antonio, which we lovingly named “Castle” after its predecessor, the Windsor Park Mall.
It has been mentioned before, but worth mentioning again: Rackspace is all about substance over flash. Instead of spending a crapload of money building a new campus from the ground up, our mighty leaders made the decision to buy up an abandoned mall, in a not so nice part of town, and turned it into a kickass office to work in. We saved tons of money, and at the same time we are helping revitalize the neighborhood.
We are encouraged to be green, fuel efficient cars can park in spots closest to the building, and there are also designated areas for people who car pool.
This is the first thing you see through the front door. No fancy reception area. No wasted space.
Panels documenting the process of converting the mall into the new headquarters.
1900 tons of material was recycled during the demolition of the mall.
Nothing fancy, just a big wide open space for Rackers to do work in.
There are break areas scattered around the building for Rackers to meet or just to step away from their desks for a bit.
Fueling stations! Rackers run on coffee, soda, and Mexican food.
More green initiative. There are no Styrofoam or other throwaway cups in the building. We are provided mugs and plastic cups at the fueling stations. When we’re done we just put them in the sink and they “magically” get cleaned.
Rackers can hang work-friendly flags above their desks. I think this is the billing department, by the Benjamins hanging from the ceiling. 5-year and 10-year Rackers also get a special flag to mark their triumph.
Cool posters around the building. This one says “RAX. Public We Are.”
There is a giant chess set in the rally room! I took the opportunity to set up a photogenic moment, but couldn’t find anyone to play a game with.
Company-issued recycling bins, every desk has one.
No paper towels in the bathroom, just a super-powered hand dryer! Yea baby!
There are even these water-saving toilets in certain bathrooms. Push up for number 1s, down for number 2s.
There are lots of these getaway rooms and conference rooms, for meetings and planning sessions and conferencing. There are lots of meetings at Rackspace.
The break room, I think they kept it low key to discourage people from hanging around too much.
The wall of superheroes.
The Rackspace University classrooms where Rackers can signup to take classes in anything from karate to Redhat System Administration.
And there’s still tons of cool stuff I couldn’t show you, but this post is getting quite long so I’m going to stop. But as you can see, I’m pretty fond of the place. I work in the Austin office but try to make the one-hour commute to San Antonio whenever I can. Being in the office just energizes me and reminds me what an amazing company I work for. Go Rackers!
Leave a Reply