Thoughtworks reviews

- The company has lost sight of what its core strengths were - building complex software systems - and is now doing any and every piece of so called coding that clients throw at it - This means it has been growing, and not enabled its hiring intake to be brought onboard in a way that makes sense - But since the quality of work has deteriorated over time, there is no need for the population to operate at highly skilled levels - They have launched some practices in the recent past, like analytics, but a miniscule number of people get to work on it and actual commercial projects in the space are yet to take off - ThoughtWorks is supposedly a company with minimal hierarchy - that myth has been laid to rest many years ago. So called leaders operate like feudal chieftains manning the company coffers, doling out sops for their groupies and themselves, while the vast majority wonders why the profitability is low. - Hare-brained initiatives are launched every so often, with fancy names, acronyms and leaders for these. They die a natural death without having delivered an iota of change or benefit, but lo and behold, come the new year and you will hear of a whole new set of initiatives and leaders to go with it. A smell is that recently launched a global innovation theme and as we all know, the second you have such a grandiose body, innovation stops. Maybe next year they will relaunch it as Continuous Innovation. - The overheads are so vast I think that a small country can be fed on their budgets : functions like recruiting, marketing, internal communications and people burn up money faster than the US Federal Government, flying themselves to fancy locations for so called workshops and planning sessions. - The latest fad is to have multiple people do a job. This is given a fancy name "X in a box". So you have cases where a region is managed by 4 instead of 1 Managing Director and an office is managed by 2-3 people where 1 might suffice. This is apparently done to provide greater coverage and learning opportunities, which, truth be told, is fine, however in some cases rank inexperienced folks are propped into such positions just to satisfy a notion that you have to forcibly get a certain gender, place of origin or some such 'diversity factor' represented in leadership. Whatever happened to plain old merit? - The company prides itself on 'fail fast', 'quick feedback for course correction' and other such Agile mantras. But they like to apply this only to the poor foot soldiers who work on projects. If you screw up, then you will get 'feedback'. If you don't improve, you will be put on a 'performance improvement plan'. And then fired. But do they apply this same yardstick to the management? Oh no, for them, any level of incompetence goes. So you have completely useless people holding positions of power and earning fat salaries to boot, while delivering almost zero value. Thankfully some of these people move on to greener pastures on their own, like one such clown recently did in the office in western India. He was completely useless in a bunch of billable roles, but was put into running some fancy-titled office which delivered less value than a post-it note. - The Chairman jet sets around the world spouting anti-capitalism, but is a pure bred capitalist himself. If he was so concerned about equality and justice, why doesn't he ensure that ThoughtWorks repays its venture capital partner who is owed millions? Different strokes for different folks. - He is the single most biased and irrational leader I have seen. He will trust anything he hears without bothering to even consider the other side of the story. The present crop of global leaders are not able to contain his bilious diatribes, leading to confusion wherever he goes. - He also had some ephiphany some years ago that the company needs to have a social impact angle. This has translated into nonsensical offices of social justice being created. All they do is fly people around the world and talk. Granted, there is actual good work going on in several places where software to help hospitals and the like are built. But the noise outweighs this good work. - Recently in India we had an away day where some random activists were called to spout their opinions. All well and good, but was any debate allowed? The second someone raised their voice, charges were drummed up against the person and summarily exited. Almost Stalinist. I saw it happen. So the mantra is "social justice for all" and "free speech for mankind" but please don't speak against it inside the company. - The company also prides itself on its values and ethics. Horse manure, I say. There is evidence of people way up the food chain sleeping with clients and potential clients to win and keep business. Perhaps they will define a new pillar for that and call it P5. - Thankfully I am soon on my way out of this quagmire of lies, deceit and self-proclaimed righteousness.

While thinking of writing this review I visited Thoughtworks website and found a list of points under people & culture section in about-us page. So I am going to write some of my thoughts using the same point mentioned in the section with my current assessment of those points. Unfortunately most of the things according to me now are not true anymore, slowly & gradually as Thoughtworks grows in size they are only going to go from bad to worse. Some people from leadership who could have done something about this have left the organization in the recent past & the rest are just playing along, keeping there mouth shut to avoid Mr. Founder's wrath. Let me start sharing my views on the points mentioned on the website "We come to work as ourselves. We enjoy each other’s company. We value honesty and transparency." & "Personal and organizational transparency" --> Off late there is deadly silent on the floor for all topics, people discuss these things in corners or over drinks unlike earlier where people can discuss this in open safe forums. In-fact in one of the all hands when Mr. Founder visited Bangalore office he behaved very immaturely with one of the attendee. Increasing the data that get's shared with the larger set of people is colored and often delayed, so I do not think that people are working as them-self & being honest and transparent with each other. "Appearances and backgrounds aren’t important to us; ideas and doing the right thing are. We abhor and reject discrimination and inequality and promote diversity in all its forms." --> In the recent past in some small group meetings & few All hands conducted by Mr. Founder & his subordinates there were few questions asked regarding people's background in terms of there caste, religion & political preference which I think is very contrary to what is published on the website. By asking such question Mr. Founder has already created a subtle divide in people on the floor, which people have started to feel & talk about in small groups, however no one is finding enough courage to speak about this as this might end in the person quitting or made to quit Thoughtworks. "Do the right thing" --> I have already given few example of how this is not completely true & there are umpteen number of incidence that I can write however that will not solve the problem, having said that there are still pockets of people who are doing the right thing however I am not sure how long they can continue. "Attitude, aptitude and integrity", "Service to others and society over self", "Serve holistic goals over achieving targets", "Intolerant of intolerance" & "No jerks" --> Earlier most people I interacted across the board in all the office I have worked use to feel for the organization, It was like home. However It is no more the case for the majority, infact people are working there because it is very difficult to move away from the comfort zone instead it is easy to keep quite (Passively Aggressive). Some people from a particular SIP project get special attention from Mr. Founder, so they start dominating every one around them in all possible way putting there point of view over everyone else on the project. People who do not really relate with the goal of the project or really understand why a particular decision in the project is been made cannot open up or bring changes as there voices get suppressed, or if they are vociferous they get moved out of the project. If one display's a pro left alignment then everything the person say's will be tolerated, however if the person does not display pro left behavior then she/he will labelled right wing. One thing that Mr. Founder & some of his subordinate need to understand that, most people on the floor do not understand what Left or Right is. As it is topic which most people do not relate. However the organization seems to head in a direction where one need to start behaving like you understand these things & just keep quite. People who use to be the voice against these things & used to talk about the journey have either left or shown doors. One of the core ingredient which made the culture of Thoughtworks special and caused people to do more that what is expected out of them was the sense of belonging with the organization, earlier most people did not treat it as a job however it is disheartening to see how fast it is disappearing because some of those people have left & some who still there are increasing not feeling like doing anything about the current state of things & for majority it is just another job without a direct reporting manager to deal with and ample freedom. I think I am going to take a break here and I hope people who read this review, will think and accordingly make there calls.