I recently completed my one month in my new company. I hold my temptation to express my first impression of company for more than three weeks. I believe, to be fair you should spend at least a month before writing about new company. I was new to concepts of “Flat Organization”, “Agile Practices”, “Stand-ups” and “Sign-ups”. I was hoping to spend a fair amount of time in learning this process and be a part of it. Surprisingly I found it very easy to learn basics of that. Practicing them was even easier because of “Pair Programming” and other similar approaches.
I am not Odd man standing out anymore. I am a thoughtworker! (Somebody at my work will ‘disagree’ with that! 
)
ThoughtWorks, is amazingly different than other organizations I have seen, visited or been. Following are the things which come on top of mind when I compare ThoughtWorks with any other companies.
- No cubicles! – This is a blessing! Everyone sits around tables which mostly look like dining tables. All of your team members, are at a proximity where you can directly call him and have a discussion across tables! This increases a little noise in office but it’s worth it. I learned to work in that now.
- Very energetic team which is very rare to see. In a technical discussion we always run out of time because of overwhelming ideas to discuss on table.
- Agile at its core which is practiced very religiously!
- Resources availability. Company which provides high-end latitudes to everybody for personal use. There are virtually not restrictions for personal / technical growth.
- Every ThoughtWorker is passionate about what he/she is doing!
Comparing ThoughtWorks with any other company is like comparing apples and oranges! Their fundamental structure is different.
I met few of very interesting people in new workplace. I had lots of technical discussions. The very strange thing was, in ThoughtWorks one of my friends opens and closes the discussions with only single phrase –
“Hey, I don’t agree with you! How about that?”