I think OP meant technological and process maturity, not age.

I worked for a Rackspace competitor in the mid 2000's and can confirm that every business decision in that space is driven by short-term growth and revenue. When I worked there, the pay was terrible (although I didn't know it at the time) and the "servers" were literally rows upon rows of cheap tower PCs shoved into wire shelving. The owner of the company made millions but never invested it back into the company beyond whatever was required for horizontal expansion. (He preferred to spend it on exotic cars and vacation homes.)

There is close to zero long-term thinking in this space and as a result, a decade or two later, cloud providers are eating these guys alive.

Employee in the same space you are referring to, though bare-metal. The wreckage owners can make by thinking of the short-term gains is baffling. We are so behind the curve that we'll never make up for it.

Oh yes, definitely was not trying to argue they were mature because of their age but rather that they weren't in spite of it. Of course that is a fallacy of progress, but you get the idea.

Worked for them in the Herndon DC. Forget the name of their lovecraftian ticketing/control interface (which was always breaking) but it was hands down the worst interface I've ever worked with. Their remote SA team was not very good either. The supply/parts folks serving DC techs earned bonuses on having bad parts recycled into production and the parts delivery was not managed properly. One xmas I saw the same motherboard 5 times after returning it as defective each time. I resigned and was then fired. Only place that ever happened. Was so happy to leave I didn't care but it has come back to haunt me once or twice.

You quit and then you were fired? How did they manage to do that - Virginia is a right to work state, you can quit any time. They can't fire you for.... quitting first?

Eh - this has happened to me. Literally word-for-word: "You can't quit! You're fired!"

I know it seems like it could be right out of a Simpsons episode or w/e but managers can have some pretty backwards egos. The same manager tried telling my colleagues that I had been fired and like 2-3 people were like, "Nope - actually he quit. Thanks for screwing us out of 2 weeks of project hand-off..."

The 4 letter word you are looking for is “core”