I am a Linux system administrator (thats my real job) and I manage over 500 servers for more than 100 hosting companies, I've seen everything, and I can assure you it always depends on the company. There are some companies I would never recommend and others that I would. I've seen companies that worry because a server has a load of 3 and buy another box to distribute the accounts, others have 10K accounts in a cPanel server. Of all the hosting/server companies I know, I would recommend only 4 or 5 (one of those is mine).
