Not without its problems - Software Developer Thoughtworks Employee Review

* The pay is shockingly low compared to the market rate and given that TW is supposed to be a “premium” brand. Pay rises happen once per year (well, not always, but read on for that…) and are applied in bands of 1%, 3%, and 5%. Most people get 3%, but if you’re doing AMAZING, like really exceeding, you get 5%. The upshot of this is that if you’ve been in TW for a few years you will inevitably be getting underpaid, and that will be more pronounced if you joined an a junior. As an example, I joined as a graduate and after over 3 years at TW and being promoted to a senior, my pay had increased by less than 10%. By this point, you can expect a pay rise of 30-50% (maybe even more) if you leave to join a similar company.

The low pay would be forgivable if TW were actually the righteous, influential, do-good organisation it’s branded to be, but the reality is that you work for exactly the same sorts of clients, doing exactly the same kind of work as any other consultancy, you just get paid less for it. And if you’re subjected to any sort of discrimination by the client, TW will not support you or challenge them on that, because no decision made at TW is ever not driven by money. If you think it’s a bit weird that a company that received millions of £££s of investment and acquired 3 other companies already this year can’t afford to pay its employees properly, you’re right. The truth is that they can but they don’t actually care about keeping people in the company of increasing employee satisfaction. Attrition was always really high during the whole time that I worked there, people come and go literally all the time. But any consultant is only worth the (sizeable) difference between their pay and what the client pays for them, so for TW it pays to keep salaries low.
 * There is a pervasive air of arrogance amongst some of the more senior consultants. A general feel of “we know so much better than everyone else, we’re so much better than all these other consultancies and the client is such an idiot who doesn’t understand what we’re trying to do”. TW tech leads will regularly deride client architects as people who are incompetent and won’t get hands-on enough to be of value, but most TW tech leads spend all their time in meetings and never code, so what’s the difference?
 * Really poor response to COVID. This included forcing people to take holiday during lockdown and freezing all pay rises for 6 months. Of course, promotions still went ahead, so they could bill clients more money for newly-promoted people without paying them any extra. And while the client I was working at got their employees to take home equipment from the office the day they closed them, it took 4 months of working from home before HR even sent out a survey to see if people might need some equipment to support them. I felt completely unsupported by TW during what was already an incredibly difficult time.
 * Lack of transparency from leadership. All negative comms have some sort of spin on them and a tone of “oh but you’re SO lucky to work here and you should really appreciate it” and leadership will go to great lengths to hide any instability in the company to the point where it is rather patronising. As just one example, we were told the COO was on holiday one week and then the next he had *mysteriously disappeared* from the company. What is the point in trying to be secretive about things like this when all the employees know they aren’t getting the full story and don’t really care if the COO ragequit/got fired anyway?
 * The unfortunate flip side to having an informal and “no-rules” culture is that when people do exhibit questionable behaviours it often goes unchallenged, and the decentralised structure of the company (i.e. people split into project teams and often working away from home) means HR are often unaware of the extent of these problems. I witnessed a few unsavoury individuals get away with some quite frankly outrageous behaviour that negatively affected many people around them, and would almost certainly violate a code of conduct at other companies. Thankfully there weren’t many people like this in the company, but the influence of the ones who were was quite damaging. If this reads like a very negative review and you’re wondering why I gave 3 stars it’s because I’ve gone overboard having a cathartic rant and honestly there were lots of great things about working for TW, and there were times when it was amazing. I’m just genuinely gutted that it’s being screwed up by people who want to line their own pockets and don’t care if they ruin what could have been a really good thing for everyone else. TL;DR It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, and sadly seems to be on a downward trajectory.