San Antonio's Rackspace responds to rumors it's slashing staff Rackspace confirms it will reassign about 90 people

An employee rides an escalator past a giant word find -- that at one time was the largest one in the world -- at the Rackspace Hosting offices Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2014. An employee rides an escalator past a giant word find -- that at one time was the largest one in the world -- at the Rackspace Hosting offices Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2014. Photo: William Luther /San Antonio Express-News Photo: William Luther /San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 119 Caption Close San Antonio's Rackspace responds to rumors it's slashing staff 1 / 119 Back to Gallery

Rackspace Hosting Inc. is realigning some of its staff in a move that will reassign about 90 people to more “customer-impacting” roles and eliminate around 10 positions, the company confirmed Monday.

The cloud storage service company tried to tamp down rumors of layoffs that have swirled on social media sites like Reddit, Glassdoor, and thelayoff.com.

About 86 out of the 6,500 employed at the company’s Windcrest “Castle” were given the chance to reapply for new positions within Rackspace, said Rob La Gesse, Rackspace’s vice president of social strategy.

“They were not job eliminations, nobody got fired,” La Gesse said. “We just need to refocus on different technologies ... We just gave some Rackers an opportunity to find a new position within the company.”

He said most of the new positions would be in “roles that were more customer impacting.”

“At the end of the day, I think it’s like eight to 10 people who may lose their job,” La Gesse said.

San Antonio’s largest publicly traded tech company has lost a lot of lustre lately amid competition in the cloud computing market that in 2015 sent share prices plunging 64 percent. It’s fourth-quarter earnings, announced Feb. 16, showed profits down 13 percent during the final three months of 2015.

RELATED: Rackspace profits tumble 13.2 percent.

A mass layoff based on trouble meeting payroll would be bad news for Rackspace on a lot of levels, such as jeopardizing tax incentives, something the company reported as a risk factor in its annual report released Friday.

The company got $14 million in state enterprise funds in 2007 as well as tax incentives from the city of Windcrest, city of San Antonio, and Bexar County, all of which are dependent on meeting commitments to employ a certain number of people at certain salaries.

“It would affect our entire lease at the Castle,” La Gesse said. “This is nothing like that, absolutely nothing like that.”