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Well, I'll make no pretense that my answer here isn't commercially biased :) To the easy point first: you're right about providing oversight to juniors and mid-level devs. We generally avoid selling "staff augmentation," as that doesn't allow oversight or outcome accountability. Selling teams helps give our clients more confidence in delivery and helps us provide a range of experience on the team (which obviously helps with cost). We also have a very robust grad hiring program and onboarding curriculum to help skills-based training for junior developers. As for the rest of it, Thoughtworks is growing but isn't massive (think roughly 1/30th the headcount of a Deloitte). I'm not an expert on compensation, but I would say that 1) we're competitive, and 2) comp probably isn't the reason behind your perception. More likely, it is the history of quality delivery and thought leadership. Given our relatively small scale, it is certainly true that Thoughtworkers have had an outsized impact on the technology industry. Notice the word choice: "Thoughtworkers," not "Thoughtworks". Jez Humble and Dave Farley wrote the book on Continuous Delivery (at the time, Jez still worked here, Dave had moved on from the company). James Lewis and Martin Fowler wrote the definitional article on microservices, then Sam Newman wrote the first book before leaving the company. Zhamak Dehghani wrote the first article on data mesh and is wrapping up the book. While there have been a few books directly sponsored by the company, they are often not as impactful as passion projects by individuals, a pattern that started early on with open source (Cruise Control, Selenium, NUnit, DBMigrate, etc). We have a business model where the company benefits by helping individuals build their personal brand, and with folks like Martin Fowler to help provide a loudspeaker, it's a compelling value proposition for technologists who want to make an impact. I suspect that's a bigger talent value proposition than comp. Of course we do marketing, but the reason I pushed back on the critique of commercial bias is based in both an understanding of the technology services industry (stated in the post above), and an under-reported appreciation of Thoughtworks culture. Those passion projects aren't generally vetted by the company, but many are promoted by it -- if you do the work to create something noteworthy, the company will help you get the exposure. Sometimes, it's individuals and not the company itself. For example, Paul Hammant, who has a good personal brand based on his work spinning up Selenium and PicoContainer during his tenure at Thoughtworks, helped promote my own open source tool (mountebank) several years back. The tool has a spot on the company open source page, but Paul's evangelism was what led to an acquisition editor calling me up about a book offer. Similarly, my integration article is published on Martin's personal site, not a company site (although we have that too, and do support employee writing contributions). I assure you that for this type of article, Martin's editorial filter is based on what he considers quality opinions and writing, not Thoughtworks marketing, and he welcomes non-Thoughtworker contributions as well. The same sensibilities are even common when the artifact IS corporate-sponsored. I'm part of the group that curates the Thoughtworks Technology Radar, for example, which is a pretty popular marketing artifact. Rebecca Parsons, our global CTO, is adamant to all of us that you cannot buy your way onto the radar, and that same principle applies to internally produced technology or thought leadership: we are not there to directly promote Thoughtworks; we are there to curate our opinion on technology trends regardless of where they originated. Marketing Thoughtworks becomes a side effect, not the focus. That is a very different approach to marketing compared to other technology companies I've been exposed to. We encourage filtering good advice through the marketplace of ideas based on influence and networking and feedback, not through corporate-sponsored dictates. That autonomy leads to a rejection of common "markitecture" approaches. An analogy I sometimes use is that of magicians. It is far too common in our industry for companies to sell smoke and mirrors hiding behind proprietary tooling and language meant to make things sound more complex than they are. They are like stage magicians: it's great when it works, but it doesn't help anyone else repeat the same trick -- understandably, because giving the trick away gives away a perceived competitive moat. There is a different path, though. Penn and Teller are world-class magicians, but they are also famous for telling you exactly how the trick works while they're doing it. The audience is left with something more than wonder: understanding and appreciation that skill, not magic, is behind the trick. That means Penn and Teller need to be willing to continue to improve their craft and innovate to stay competitive as there are no secrets to protect their revenue model. Thoughtworks-the-company encourages Thoughtworkers-the-individuals to give away thought leadership and innovations to the industry, and relies on the brand equity that creates to attract the talent needed to deliver and come up with the next innovations. It is a strategic bet that our customers care about the craft of software development itself. So, yes, talent is key, but culture trumps compensation. |