Ants on the Melon
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This past week Rackspace held a “Battle of the Bands” contest, and threw a little party for the occasion. There are pictures available for those interested.

It’s good that the company is still doing things like this. I have found it easy to forgot how much better Rackspace is as a place to work than my previous employers. That’s not to say there aren’t things I would change, but on the whole, I would still choose Rackspace over CACI any day.

Working with smart people every day does wonders for my happiness. In previous jobs, I can remember arguing my reasons for wanting to do the right thing for the customer, and still loosing out to management. If only companies understood what that does to morale. Most people want to do good work, and standing in the way of that usually causes more problems than it solves. In Maverick, Ricardo Semler discusses how he successfully created a flat organizational structure; no middle managers, no secretaries. I wonder what would happen if more companies actually thought about the middle management problem.