1. The first thing that will hit you at Thoughtworks(especially Chennai) is the arrogance personified to perfection by the lead and principal consultants. Thoughtworks encourages people to fail first and learn fast. But these people make it fail first and be miserable fast. As a lateral, they don't provide any structured support to transition into the company. They openly mock you if you make mistakes and hold it against you all through your miserable time working at Thoughtworks.
2. Pathetic middle management. As an athlete, I have seen more leadership in middle school football teams by preteens. The management has no spine to begin with. It's run by cowards who hide behind their mistakes and they don't mind stepping on your shoes to make theirs look cleaner. A whole lot of finger pointing, blame apportioning, favouritism. Thoughtworks was supposed to be run by the people who work there but looks like monarchy is creeping in slowly. Though everyone can voice their opinion at Thoughtworks, the middle management makes sure that nobody expresses their opinions. If someone pulls up the courage to defy the management's views, the management responds by apportioning blame, stunting their career and they won't rest until the affected person has resigned. The middle management is also not happy when someone excercises their rights at Thoughtworks. You get questioned by them for working from home or for sick leaves, even if your team is ok with it.
3. Now, let's combine arrogant consultants with spineless leadership. What do we get? Manipulation! Every project has atleast one (max 2-3 depending on the size of the project) of the arrogant consultants and EVERYTHING (right from staffing, timings,which table they wanna sit, who goes onsite etc) is chosen by them. Thoughtworks encourages people to express their opinions irrespective of the seniority in the office. However, if you fail to suck up to these consultants or worse, express your opinion, these guys go out of the way to make your life miserable! And what does the management do? They put up a sorry face listening to your story but go back to make sure His/Her Arrogance is pleased enough to stay in this company. According to the management, its these few people who make Thoughtworks run. Not the freshers, not the laterals, not the people who do a good job in a silent manner.
4. How do you get recognised in Thoughtworks? It's not enough to just do a good job. It's all about how well you publicise your work in the office. The problem here is that, the focus has gone from the good work to how much you can boast yourself about it. Now what do we have in the office? A bunch of people beating their chest desperately on top of their tables after doing their jobs which they were supposed to do in the first place.
5. Career progress - Thoughtworks makes it a point that a career is decided by the community (Dev, BA, QA etc) and the team you have worked with in the past. But what's been happening here in Chennai? Remember those arrogant consultants from point 2&3? Yes, your career is decided by them. They are either gonna be in your community or your project. There is no hiding from them. You wanna move up? Start sucking up, put them in a pedestal and worship them. You manage to rub them on the wrong side even if it means it's the right thing to do, your career stagnates at TW and there is nobody to rescue you.
6. For a company with such a strong open and modern culture, its sad to see favouritism displayed by caste. Your thoughts are more welcome if you belong to the same caste. Middle management makes sure that the middle management has a majority here so that no one can question them.
7. They openly believe that Thoughtworkers are supposed to have an air of arrogance. It's fine in displaying that in doing the job at hand. But it oozes out in unnecessary issues like ping pong table schedules, food menu for the week etc.
