Thoughtworks reviews

Lately, as the company is aiming on having more diversity (genre, race, etc), the tech expertise of new hires decreased a bit. The hiring process used to be harder than it is nowadays, and that's part of their diversity strategy. The idea is that more "senior" colleagues can help these new hires with less tech background to be able to have a good grip on related subjects - this is very nice, but sometimes due to this "urgency" on hiring more diverse people, the hiring process ends up accepting people that are not technically able to join a team and starting doing billable work ASAP, which leads to very slow on-boards and/or not offering the "excellence in technology" that the company marketing likes to talk about. Due to the variety in terms of projects/technologies, I know that people get tired after a while - the work becomes too shallow, i.e. you are never able to go really deep in a given technology/methodology, as you keep switching it through different projects. It's too intense/dynamic, and that starts to drown people's energy with time. The salary anual reviews, despite its organized process and being generally OK, are not really fair. They say that it's not possible for one to do big jumps in terms of promotions within an year period, but there are some cases where someone that joined as a junior got to a senior grade in less than 2 years - that's really lame, and the reason is that not always those who did big jumps are really "that good", is just that they are more extrovert people, keep talking and talking with the management and are always spreading the work about little things that they do - so others hear about it and think "wow, that is really good". I know a bunch of other folks that are the opposite (introvert + don't keep broadcasting what they do there), but are way more dedicated to the company - either by coaching/mentoring other folks in there, writing articles for magazines, giving talks or by doing an excellent job with clients - something that many don't care that much. It seems like for the management that is just "the basic" and they don't care. This is the worst part IMHO.

- Worst salaries in the TechnoPUC campus, which are justified that the company provides a great environment and opportunities that no other company in the whole wide world can (really?) - Culture brainwash. I've been into it. If you are there, they (when I say "they", I mean from the HR staff to your project colleague) will make you believe that TW is the best company in the world and you are now part of an elite group. - Arrogant and pedant technical leads. At TW, there are those 5 grades: Graduated, Consultant, Senior Consultant, Lead Consultant and Principal Consultant. As soon as someone reaches the Lead Consultant level, comes together a big bag of arrogance. - Politically correct patrol in the company. Just like the movie Matrix, everyone at TW is a potential "agent" and controls your freedom of speech. If you disagree on the political view that the majority follows, you are going to be "educated" about the subject. That is the term used there. From that point, you have only three options: accept the brainwash and become part of it, pretend to accept and never, ever mention this or quit the company because you don't fit in the company's culture. - Brazilians are not allowed to ask for transfers to USA, Australia and Europe anymore. You can go there, but inside a project for a maximum of 9 months. The public statement behind this is that "Brazil should be a leader and promote social justice in the poor countries", which are India, China, Equador and the African countries. That is just plain stupid. An employee that wants to travel to "poor countries" has a completely different profile of an employee that wants to travel to "rich countries" and one thing should not interfere on another. - The employees that work on extra hours and on weekends get an extra recognition, which makes everybody trying to do the same, jeopardising the personal life. It is not cool to work long hours on Saturday and Sunday to put fire away to save a project. - Most of projects are dull and offer no challenges. Developers are happy to travel abroad and meet the client, but as soon as they return, they become depressed.