Thoughtworks reviews

4.0

79% would recommend to a friend

(4,676 total reviews)
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Mike Sutcliff

76% approve of CEO

56% positive business outlook

Thoughtworks has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 4,676 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Thoughtworks employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the IT (Information Technology) industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

5K reviews
3.0
Aug 3, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

ThoughtWorks has its reputation and at times they live up to it. They have great projects, amazing people, awesome culture and it feels like a family. The training in India for grads is great, if your trainer likes you. There's space for opportunity and they're flexible if you want to do things like volunteering. The "Pillar 3" of social and economic justice is a core part of the culture and not just for show. Great teams, with plenty of team and company activities like the away days and local office days. They're really flexible on changing roles and it's more common for you to be staffed as different things rather than be pigeon holed into one role.

Cons

It's not a place for graduates. "The beach", which is where you're left to rot in a corner until staffing have bargained with someone to put you on their project. Six months on the beach as a graduate with no support was not fun, to say the least. Lack of support from seniority, especially in the Manchester office. It's chaotic to say the least, especially if the slightest thing goes wrong. They under pay massively and expect a ridiculous amount of devotion, travel, work hours - including weekends. In their recruitment videos they boast how you can walk into their offices and be who you are, yet their culture of feedback rips you to shreds. A few people, including myself, have said they felt like they needed a personality transplant when they got there. My advice for graduates is don't bother and apply as a lateral hire.

2.0
Dec 14, 2013

Just another company in a different skin

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

* Agile in its true colors (Can learn TDD, Pair programming and other engineering practices) * Few really good developers. * Can experiment with latest open source tools and technologies. * No nonsense enterprisy tools are being used on green field projects, and you can challenge each and every technical decisions made in the projects.

Cons

(Disclaimer: All this applies only to TW India) * Huge concentration of empty vessels. * Career progression is proportional to the amount of noise you make. * Mediocre decision makers. Some operations folks can easily be replaced by anyone on the street by paying 10% of the salary that they draw. * High expectations from technical folks with little or no rewards. * You can end up working through your weekends and nights (while constantly being judged) delivering high quality software without even getting a sense of your greying hair, while some weasels in the corner will keep climbing ladders just by sending good morning emails to the entire office every day. * Every office has bunch of folks(cartels) who decides who gets promotion, who travels where, who gets how much hike and all this is totally driven by perception. * Debates and debates and debates with no closure on any topic that they debate. Sometimes you will feel bunch of headless chickens have taken over this "once upon a time" good company. * BAs and Managers :-) (Off course there are exceptions but I am talking about majority.) * Almost 80% of the projects are CRUD web sites with no complexity at all, so all that "highly technical" projects propaganda is fake.

2.0
Jan 2, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

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.

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