Pros
In 2011 growth seemed easy because you weren't confined to a "job role" and so cross-training was expected, learning was guaranteed. With skill growth through diversity of work, I had new ideas and experience that never would have materialized anywhere else. Not only that, but I made contacts everywhere some of which became great personal friends.
Cons
In 2017 teams find any excuse to say 'No' if it falls outside of the bullet point perception of their role. This is an effort to sandbag against being tagged with more permanent responsibility. This has lead to some roles being very isolated, others are devolving into roles contractors could take. I believe this is a business strategy to weed out "multi-skilled talented" employees who will earn more, and fish out to contractors. I think the idea is to replace everyone with contractors because time tracking is devolving to contractor levels. E-mails, meetings, everything must be logged by the hour. You could work as a contractor for Dell make 3x take home, and fill out the same stupid time sheets. At Rackspace leadership poorly manages deadlines. Seems they always involve implementing teams last minute. There's no grassroot vision -- just C level reaction. Major technical projects sprawl together without maintenance periods requiring all hands on deck 110% most months out of the year. Every time someone sets a deadline, it goes south because no leader considers unplanned priority (despite time tracking.) Every engineer stresses out, and does hero 70 hour work weeks. Most of the time, deadlines are met but exhaustion / health issues are regular topics. Apollo was hoped to anchor Rackspace with independence, so our only pressure was customers/growth. Apollo took to their typical strategy of burn-and-turn laying off significant workforce, reducing half the roles to part-time (slashing benefits), removing bonus/equity and 401k match. The layoff and reorganizations probably raised workload 300%. I miss the days of lunch time outdoor grill/pikniks, hangouts with leadership excited about challenge. You worked until 9PM because your colleagues were friends, not because you had to. Now you work until 11pm out of leadership demand or unspoken threat of job replacement, your directors always makes happy hour though! Old Rackspace valued employees engineering, talent, and "fanatical attitudes". It grew the company to $7 billion in worth. The newest money scheme is how do we marginalize all jobs to part-time or offshore work to raise earnings? It's hard for anyone to work 60+ hours in this atmosphere. Teams compete with cross-functional teams in a rough, aggressive and competitive sandbaggy nature. Teams trying to survive the new Apollo machine I assume? I just wan't interested anymore.