Thomson West Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Thomson West as a contractor for less than a year

Pros – -Thomson West often hires from their pool of contractors for permanent positions.
-Regular employees get an employee picnic, a few little perks upon hire, and various small bonuses throughout the year like a free turkey before Thanksgiving.
-environment is generally positive.
-culture is open to diversity, including diversity in gender identity and sexual orientation.
-Matching funds for donations are available.
-Employees and contractors are eligible for discounted tickets to movies, sports games, and other similar events.
-Employees (but not contractors, temps or interns) are eligible to enter drawings for various event tickets.
-While it's not particularly special, a variety of free tea bags are available along with coffee, decaf and hot water.
-Employees are encouraged to network and given workable channels (via the Hub website) to do so.
-Caribou Coffee and Subway inside building, along with full cafeteria
-TW encourages employees to stay healthy and active: they have walking paths on site, a fleet of bikes that employees (including contractors, interns and temps) can borrow at no cost, and a "free fruit day" each week when every employee can take two pieces of the fruit of the day at no cost.

Cons – - As a contractor, many benefits are not available to me
- contractors cannot enter the drawing for free event tickets and we never get the free bonus gifts like turkeys
- General feeling of under-appreciation among contractors
- too much mandatory overtime
- too much empty "token" gestures

Advice to Senior Management – If I could advise management, I would suggest fewer token gestures and more genuine appreciation (a free dessert card feels more like a slap in the face than appreciation). Also consider productivity studies before deciding on a week of 10 hour days followed by working one Saturday - I have a feeling that productivity declines enough that it's hardly worth it to run your employees so hard, let alone pay for the OT. As a contractor, I cannot comment on benefits or salary levels, although for the amount of work and expertise required of me in addition to a four-year degree being requisite for my position I should be paid more.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Thomson West

Pros – People are great to work with at peer level

Cons – Expect more work from less employees & lots of unfinished work before implimented

Advice to Senior Management – HIRE more people in Eagan MN

Current Employee – been working at Thomson West

Pros – Market leader.
Mature selling environment
Good pay.
Good coworkers

Cons – Product support
Unrealistic about position in market place
Too many reorgs

Advice to Senior Management – Stop reorging and give a plan more than 1 year

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Thomson West

Pros – Intern in the mfg plant. Learned a lot, great company to work for. Leadership team is very helpful and will give you the tools required.

Cons – Interns were not given full time opportunities, intern program was fairly unstructured. Salaries were lower then average for engr students.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Thomson West

Pros – Fast-paced, good facility, good people, flexible schedule, ability to spend some time working remotely, many internal opportunities to change and/or advance career.

Cons – fast-paced, not a lot of upward feedback to management happens, personnel decisions happen slowly, it's cold in minnesota, lots of collaboration with colleagues in Asia which causes some odd hours and strains communication.

Advice to Senior Management – provide a means for employees to weigh in and give meaningful feedback before decisions are made, to help them feel engaged in the processes which affect their daily work life and career paths.

Former Employee – worked at Thomson West

Pros – It was nice to work at Thomson West. The environment and people are good and friendly. Its a huge campus in Eagan Minneapolis MN.

Cons – Slow-paced work. The group that I worked with didnot have much challenging work. The team was very small and I felt bored with what I was doing after a certain point of time

Advice to Senior Management – Leadership at Thomson West is great. I donot have any kind of complains about it. It's going good for the company

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Thomson West

Pros – West is the oldest legal publisher in the US legal system and given its heritage you walk away from work realizing what you have done has directly impacted how legal professionals operate every day. Without the work of the employees at West offering value-add to each and everyone of West's products including their flagship, market-leading product Westlaw, legal professionals would not be able to work effectively.

Cons – The salary compared with some of the other companies based in the twin cities could be improved. Many people leave West to work at places like Honeywell or Target and take on comparable jobs with a significant pay increase. More and more benefits are being taken away and given the current economic climate, employees do not feel as secure in their employment. Since the acquisition of Reuters, there have been annual lay-offs; something that was unheard of prior to the transaction.

Advice to Senior Management – There needs to be better forums for employees to be able to voice their concerns about management - whether direct line manager or elsewhere without fear of reprieve. If you have a Sr. Director as a boss and you want to discuss their management style or express a concern with the VP, the VP should be open to hearing those comments, not dismiss entertaining seeing that employee simply because they are a VP.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Thomson West

Pros – Wonderful customers, excellent products and many many brilliant and hard working employees.

Cons – Abitrary promotions of unqualified people into management and they ruin it for others.... every so often you'll get some moron as your boss - you either move internally or have to spend your day covering your bottom till your boss gets promoted on or fired.... typically they get promoted- but at least you are rid of them.

Advice to Senior Management – Respect your subject matter experts and your intrinsically motivated employees. Get rid of all the middle managers that just spend their days working on their MBA programs so they can advance themselves.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Thomson West

Pros – Great company with good salary compensation and excellent benefits. Working in the 7,000 employee Eagan, MN campus gives you access to many internal job postings if you want to move out of your current position. Many opportunities for advancement if you are ambitious and want to move up in the organization. Thomson University and other company resources offer many opportunities for learning and professional development. Also, the company's physical facility offers many nice amenities.

Cons – If you go to work in the Finance organization, be very careful which Finance group you will be working in. There are many Finance groups within the West organization and while most are good groups to work in, some are not. Be somewhat wary if you are interviewing for a vacant position that internal candidates do not seem to be interested in as there is likely a good reason for this. It is well know within the company that some Finance positions are way overloaded with work load and these positions will offer nothing even close to a work-life balance. You will frequently be working 10-12 hour days as well as nights and weekends and getting little or no compensation for this (i.e. comp time or even praise). In most Finance groups, a Senior Financial Analyst will be working a more reasonable 40-50 hour work week. So if you can avoid working in one of the "bad" Finance groups, you could be very happy there.

Advice to Senior Management – Upper Management at Thomson West is taken care of very nicely with 30% annual management incentive bonuses on top of very nice salaries. However, many important mid-level positions only receive a token 1% annual bonus. This needs to be evened out more so that employees performing difficult work at the mid-level do not become disenchanted with this disparity and leave.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Thomson West

Pros – stable and supportive place to work

Cons – Slow moving large corporation
Focused on software as a means to data rather than software as a product

Advice to Senior Management – Focus more on software as a product