Vantaggi
1. Good recruitment process from a tech/skill standpoint 2. Unlike most places, the great people from whom you can learn a lot, are not the most visible and vocal - they are usually hidden and humble (this of course has an extreme drawback. See Con#2) 3. In theory... a great feedback driven culture (in practices see.. Con#4 4. In theory... a great set of goals, values and raison d'etre (see the Advice to management section)
Svantaggi
Much of this pertains to ThoughtWorks India - 1. The young (5-10 yrs experience) old-timers (spent most of their careers in TWI only) are mismanaging the Indian operations/delivery - they're too proud of the achievements of the few good people who exist in rest of ThoughtWorks. In their pride and naivety they trash the newcomers and forget the privilege and opportunities they themselves had in a young organization that allowed them to learn and grow 2. The really humble, good people are now so few and far between that its difficult both to find them and learn from them. Also, unfortunately these few good people seldom take on greater responsibility or speak out, content merely in doing good work/being good techies in their little project 3. Consequently the leadership team in India is replete with cronyism - it's like a pantheon that needs to be pleased if one has to get good opportunities. They've been around forever, unbudging and unrelenting. Very few new additions from outside in the past ten years 4. The rumor-mongering amongst this old guard can obviate the other channels of feedback that the company needs to be the strong evolutionary organization that it hopes to be. And we falsely believe that this to be strong networking - it would be so, only if it served the common good of encouraging the long-term ideas of the company and discouraging the miscreants. However, in this strong network you'd find the old-timers repeatedly failing and getting away. And the new-comers taunted like a criminal before being given a chance to defend for an every day gaffe 5. You believe that you've setup a peer approval system hence making the process more open and mistake proof - sorry, wisdom of crowds is an idealism that needs a lot of underlying assumptions to be right - knowledge, maturity, self-determination, variation etc… and in India the old-crop has merely perfected the art of propaganda and the peer approval system has been subverted - Its not yet been so bad as to results in a catastrophe - now, let me not be a cassandra
