ThoughtWorks Reviews

Pros

+ full of really smart people
+ company has high standards in people hired and company values and culture
+ not "up or out". You define your own career path
+ people support has increased greatly in the last couple of years
+ a company with a conscience
+ privately held company means reinvesting in company instead of paying out shareholders
+ management bends over backwards to accomodate good performers

Cons

+ travel can be tough
+ tough environment for introverts

Advice to Senior Management

+ keep pushing for more interesting technical work
+ keep investing in growing people

Pros

transparency, knowledge sharing is amazing, first class development teams

Cons

too much forced socializing when on the road

Pros

Relaxed, informal culture
Talented and experienced colleagues
Wide variety of work
Opportunities to work in different roles
Helps on CV

Cons

Senior management talks about "revolutionize IT" but can't fix even basic problems inside their own company
Poor job of matching up of work that people are able to do, work that people want to do, and work that people are given to do.

Advice to Senior Management

Revolutionize ThoughtWorks first, then worry about the rest of IT.

Pros

The hiring process is ThoughtWorks' key strength. Everyone in a given project team are competent and motivated. The internal learning community within Thoughtworks is fairly good as well. There are a few terrific people (in every sense of the word) who contribute much more than they are given credit for. If you are lucky enough to work with one of these people, you will learn a lot.

Cons

Too many people are arrogant and cliquey.

Management is increasingly either aloof or narcissistic. Be careful and don't get on their wrong side. Passive agression is a common trait unfortunately.

Thoughtworks is no longer a great place to work at as a developer, unless you want to learn some basic XP. The glory days of cruise control and selenium are long gone. Innovation is considered risky at the consultant level.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of the "Director" status and the associated social contract. It has created a two tier company.

Pros

Brilliant people to work with.
Quite friendly upper management people
Good food inhouse for free
Open office environment
New Ideas well accepted.

Cons

No proper career growth path
People lack training
Arrogant people everywhere
Though posed as a deomcratic company, but big shot individuals are way more valued than others opinion
There is no or very less growth at the middle levles of employees.
less salary than competitors.
Feedback system sucks.

Advice to Senior Management

Atleast have some plan for employee growth as an individual. Please donot use brilliant peoples obvious success as company's self sucess in the infrastructure.

Pros

- work with big guys in Agile
- learn a lot from your peers
- respect knowledge workers
- smart people around you

Cons

- management people are hard to deal with
- low pay, many people have left because of that

Pros

Culture is great
Flat structure - great ideas always appreciated
Wonderful information exchange across different offices.
As a company they are always opening up channels to improve productivity that we can define ourselves.
Your voice will be heard.

Cons

Travel can get really tough.

Pros

+ Very engaging environment.
+ Competent leadership will to take risks and enable employees to lead change
+ Great benefits
+ Relatively consistent feedback
+ Flat organization*

Cons

- Poor work/life balance
- A LOT of travel
- Lower salary than most competitors
- While flat, (and upper management is very approachable), very political.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay your people more! If people are at the heart of the company, and given the difficulty of the industry and the nature of the work we do, we should recognize hard work through compensation.

Pros

Good work culture
Good people
Flexible
Small size
Good pay

Cons

Handling laterals is a problem
legacy driven culture
old timers have big say
limited opportunities for sales and marketing people

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good work, invest in sales and marketing and domain expertise.

Pros

- Awesome cutting edge technology
- Very bright colleagues
- Excellent culture
- Transparency
- Ethics

Cons

- Slightly arrogant
- Can be a difficult place to get adjusted to for the first couple of years
- Very unique culture so not all would like to work with such opinionated people

Advice to Senior Management

- Continue investing in your employees
- Keep up the transparency