[jiraaya]

Disclosure: An ex-employee who loves the organization.

CRUD is a very generic label that could be applied to many interesting apps. I could classify Facebook as CRUD, but that does not mean that it is a seriously exciting system from an engineering perspective. There are a gazillion factors that make large systems interesting and at TW I have had opportunity to work on what I thought were interesting systems (though obviously not at the scale of Facebook)

The single most important thing that I consider special about TW is their Social Impact Program http://www.thoughtworks.com/social-impact.

Crux of the story. Whether an organization is special or not is a multi-dimensional question subjective to individual perceptions.