Comments on: ThoughtWorks: The new BodySnatchers

By: Thought Leadership

Thought Leadership — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 22:11:55 +0000

[Trackback] The discussion is continued…

By: ExtraConner

ExtraConner — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 16:34:35 +0000

I think maybe TW might have been good at one time but, as someone here already said, they’ve lowered their standards somewhat. I recall a few years back there were complaints from self-proclaimed agile gurus in the UK who couldn’t believe they had failed the TW induction process.
However, within the next year, they had all re-applied and this time had been accepted. What happened there then?
As a postscript, the reason they were applying to TW was because their own business had failed – probably not the best advert for their skills

By: Zen Master of Java

Zen Master of Java — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 09:27:33 +0000

Currently I’m working with some TW people. Two of them combined are about as good as an average programmer.

However, they have to be baby sat, which takes away my time. And since I’m the most productive (by at least 5x every time we measure it), the more of my time they use arguing over why we should do things differently, the worse their value proposition is.

I tell them to do stuff, and they argue that Pattern X or Practice Y tells them not to, so I say fine, have it your way. Then a week or more later they’re back, reporting that they’ve had a cunning plan, to do pretty much exactly what I told them to, but the reason is Pattern W or Z (never a different practice, curiously enough).

I don’t know if its the worst thing, but they have this totally stuffed up culture, that whoever commits first ‘wins’. They were working on the same critical class as one of our junior developers, and they totally refactored it. Problem was the junior developers work was then useless. And when I talked to them and told them it wasn’t very nice, and they should have communicated better with the guy they just laughed. So the junior developer had to spend an afternoon trying to put his fixes into their format, when it would have been much easier for them to have incorporated his work.

They are arrogant, rude, overpaid and underproductive.

I really have to wonder. They talk about how the XP/TDD/Agile practices make them much better and much more productive than they used to be. Well how bad must they have been originally if it takes two of them to equal one average programmer??!!

By: chief scientist

chief scientist — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 11:30:21 +0000

In what way is Martin Fowler a “scientist”? Where is his lab? What was his thesis on? Did he invent something or discover something? There are some nice people at CodeWorks, but many of them are completely up their own arses.

By: A Developer

A Developer — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 17:23:44 +0000

Eliot,

You are the archetypical “pointy-haired boss.” You don’t “negotiate” productivity from a developer any more than you negotiate productivity from from a car assembly line.

May you please let me know the name of your company? I never want to work there nor buy its products.

By: Slow Developer

Slow Developer — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 10:22:37 +0000

Eliot,

Please do yourself a favor and reread your post again. I don’t think you intended to sound so ignorant.

By: Eliot

Eliot — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 13:40:04 +0000

Extreme programming started out as a few sensible ideas, but has developed into a fanatical religion.

As a company founder and Java developer, one extreme programming idea I find totally unacceptable is that developers dictate to business side the development speed in an iteration. (E.g. Developer: “You can have any 2 features of the 3 you want this iteration.”) Expected team productivity needs to be negotiated between management and developers. (E.g. boss: “But I need all 3 features from you. I can code that fast: why can’t you?)

Quite frankly, productivity drops to a crawl when developers without domain expertise dictate to biz owners. In fact, XP actually rewards slow developers, by using underperformance to recalibrate volume of deliverables for the next iteration.

By: Eliot

Eliot — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 13:24:15 +0000

Extreme programming started out as a few sensible ideas, but has developed into a fanatical religion.

By: Fowlbot #461

Fowlbot #461 — Fri, 28 Nov 2003 23:17:33 +0000

If a pattern emerged in your refactoring, and your pairing partner didn’t see it, would it still make it into the build?

By: Silent Bob

Silent Bob — Mon, 24 Nov 2003 12:58:44 +0000

It’s a bug in Roller – when you post it should do a redirect back to the comments page rather than a forward. That means that when you press F5 to refresh it reposts the data.
This is very poor programming – let this be a lesson to all you young web developers out there.
To whomever wrote the code… please tell me if you’ve written any code for credit card transaction processing sites – ‘cos I’d like to avoid them!

By: Silent Bob

Silent Bob — Mon, 24 Nov 2003 12:58:36 +0000

By: Fowlbot #468

Fowlbot #468 — Wed, 19 Nov 2003 17:50:17 +0000

We really do stick to the stringent hiring practices. In fact, it’s probably the biggest reason TW is NOT a big consulting company. Today we’ve got 400 people worldwide. Run that figure up against the other companies named in these comments… We have a ways to go before the Dilbert Principle kicks in, I think.

And for the most part, I don’t see a lot of ‘cleverness-for-cleverness’ sake’ in TW design or deliverables. When design tricks are pursued, it’s largely in the interest of testing. *shrug*

By: Silent Bob

Silent Bob — Wed, 19 Nov 2003 03:08:12 +0000

By: The Druid

The Druid — Wed, 19 Nov 2003 02:51:43 +0000

Not my problem – I press the post button once and three entries appear. Maybe the TWATS should be called in to debug it – though it’s probably beneath them as it’s an uncool production problem!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Nov 2003 16:35:11 +0000

I worked with Fowler many years ago at Netscape (prior to the free release of MSIE). He actually put out quite a bit of code himself but this was of course before all this Agile movement.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Nov 2003 15:53:45 +0000

Many of the posters on this Blog are posting 3 or more times – really ? Its my experience too :-)

By: The Druid

The Druid — Tue, 18 Nov 2003 12:09:30 +0000

Many of the best people in the industry are choosing to join ThoughtWorks – really? Not my experience – I know a few people who’ve joined them recently and are nothing more than average. Don’t get caught up in the PR spin! Sure they’ve got some good people but probably no more than any company their size.

By: The Druid

The Druid — Tue, 18 Nov 2003 12:07:02 +0000

By: The Druid

The Druid — Tue, 18 Nov 2003 12:06:24 +0000

By: The Druid

The Druid — Tue, 18 Nov 2003 12:03:33 +0000

Thoughtworks appear to be suffering the classic problems of large consulting companies:

1. The more staff you recruit, the lower average competence gets and the more pressure is placed on the ‘good’ guys. First line of their ‘values’ statement: Leveraging bright people OVER Making the most of moderate people. Really???

2. The larger your cost base, the more pressure to staff teams with as many cheap hires as possible while charging premium rates. Get the client used to the high fees by actually delivering value early in the assignment, then pull the good guy out and replace them with as many cheapos as possible. Good business to be in – bad of course if you’re part of the team suffering the injection of incompetence.

Looks like Androids have been replaced by TWATS (ThoughtWorks Advanced TechnologistS).