ThoughtWorks Reviews in Sydney, Australia Area

Pros

Intelligent people, good and efficient processes. Salaries are reasonable and there is a good benefits package including a new work laptop, paid home internet access and snacks and drinks supplied in the office. Lots of travel involved if you want it. The more experience you have, the more you can move around with ThoughtWorks. However, if you're in high demand, you might be asked to travel more than you bargained for. Most of the time though, resource management caters to the needs of those who want to stay in their home city or those who want to travel more. There is also an annual weekend away to a location in your home country with all offices in that region.

Cons

Lots of people with strong opinions, which can be a good point as well. Although you can learn a lot from the bright minds at this company, sometimes you can feel overwhelmed by the fact that everyone has such a strong point on view on any such topic. There can be a lot of stubbornness as well. This can result in an arrogant workplace where your colleagues don't acknowledge that they have to work within the existing frameworks before they can truly 'revolutionise IT.' The working hours are sustainable, although the job requires more than just your standard hours at work. Most people are also involved in lots of 'after hours' education and learning which means it can be difficult if you really want to maintain a good work/life balance.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep on doing the great job you are doing, inspiring others and pushing the IT Revolution. The internal emails you send to the whole company really make me feel like we are all part of a global team. I would, however, try to tone down the message given to ThoughtWorkers that we only do interesting work, or only Agile work. It makes current and new employees disillusioned everytime they have to roll onto a project that doesn't live up to these expectations. No matter what you think, we actually do listen to what you have to say.

Pros

There are lots of smart technical people. Business and Project Managers are more like average though.
The company behaves like a single global entity. There are no branches, there are only offices in different regions.
Very nice office with free beverages, food, videogames and books.
Most savvy people in software development know the company and that's good for your resume.

Cons

Likely to travel a lot and lose some money in the process and not everything will be expensed.
HR is extremely ineffective.
Resource Management process (allocation into projects) is just fire fighting. There is no plan and unless you're in good friends with senior management they don't know your skills or who you are.
The office may be nice but you're always on client side.
Managers are directly responsible for 100+ people and those people rely heavily on management for everything as they're on client side.
Account management is fire fighting as well.
Most good tech people are leaving and new hires are not filling the gap.

Advice to Senior Management

Acknowledge the problems. People are the only thing that makes ThoughtWorks any different (and I mean competitive advantage) but the lack of perspective is burning everyone. Forget silly HR schemes for review and "sponsorship". Wake up to the fact that flat hierarchies are great but can't scale. Wake up and realise that they're competing (for people) with Googles and startups, not IBM and EDS.

And stop using "that's how consulting works" as an excuse for everything.

Pros

Great technical people. Lots of opportunity to work with new technologies.

Cons

Often projects don't have interesting work. Can get burned out on projects with lots of out of hours commitment.

Advice to Senior Management

nothing to note

Pros

ThoughtWorks is made up of many of the industries smartest, most passionate technologists! The company is very focused on changing the industry, rather than just making money. Technology and agile process are the key components of the organizations strategy. Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) like Ruby on Rails are creating a new wave of passion with the company.

Cons

The ThoughtWorks culture is very technology focused and developer centric. If this does not float your boat, you might find it tough going. The developers are generally considered to be the most important people in the company. This great for retaining developers but can be hard on other roles.

Advice to Senior Management

Build a solid, consistent global sales function, that includes everyone in the team.