Thomson West Reviews in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN Area

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

Pros

Excellent benefits package, talented developers, professional environment, attempting to go agile on many of the technology projects (aka more natural work approach)

Cons

Stressful experience working with incompetent testing manager who did not have any respect whatsoever from the development manager or project champion....none of the above had a grasp on the true scope of a data migration project, and therefore were not able to effectively communicate to their direct reports manageable expectations.

Advice to Senior Management

Time management of direct reports got out of hand....tracking people's time down to the 2 hr level of granularity backfired on project progress.

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.

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.

Pros

Benefits are reasonable, particularly the health care and dental plans. Tuition reimbusement program is very competitive with what other companies offer.

Cons

They get awards for family-friendliness, but it really depends on your manager. My manager declared that you could either spend time with your family, or you could put in longer hours at work and get promoted and feed your family. No lie. Said manager also said that employees should not be given extra training, as everyone was 'too dumb' to understand advanced concepts for promotion. Yet, this guy was the apple of senior management's eye.

Pros

Nice people, good work life balance, down to earth culture

Cons

Felt stifled, no room for growth, a very functionally segmented company with no information sharing

Advice to Senior Management

Sharing information across functional boundaries and allowing process improvement projects to reach beyond their specific function or area.

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.

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

Pros

Employees care about the company and the products.

Cons

Company constantly changing before results can be evaluated from the last change. The culture is one where employees are afraid to speak out and worried about all of the recent layoffs. Culture is not conducive to innovation and growth.

Advice to Senior Management

Look out past the recent quarterly results to think strategically about the future. What do your customers want and need in the next 5 years? Also, communicate directly with employees and explain what is going on and why you are making decisions - don't use "corporate speak", but more open and truthful.

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.