After ThoughtWorks, Before ThoughtWorks
I used to work for a company called ThoughtWorks, and I hope to again someday. There are some things that I wish I’d gotten around to doing before I left, and the things that I hope to do when(if) I go back.
“I’ve been to the world and I’ve learned some things,” I might say, jokingly, to the TW-as-first-job Associate Consultants that I will meet. There are companies more efficient and competent than will ever see while working with TW; they don’t need me or thee. Teams that don’t change composition or size- sometimes for years- develop quirky working relationships that I can only now empathize with.
TODO:
- Continue the Agilistas blog- probably as a twagilistas.github.io, with back issues imported. Pull requests! People who can’t or donwanna github, I can post directly. :)
- Run a feedback workshop where everyone gets a fake character sheet and has to have a conversation with other characters. This, I hope, would let one practice the skill of feedback as a pure skill rather than with the additional concern of possibly saying the wrong thing to someone while learning how to feedback. Always end with a quick retrospective.
- developer code review of anything whatsoever- maybe a piece of JUnit in a java project, or a piece of rspec in a ruby project
- goto india, china, ecuador
- host board game nights at the office every other week, or at the client site.
- honeypot instantiation
- python hunt design- connect to tor, go to this website, as a steo involved. Go to twitter, find this thing, run this code, etc.
- join the internal security practice
- teach TWU
- run powerpoint kareoke session
- local politics workshop; look up your reps (all the way from local-est to senator) and election dates
Bad parts to expect:
- lower pay
- longer hours
- lots of travel
- some unwanted colleagues
- q center
- terrible clients with ridiculous demands
todo: solve helicopter problem
https://bosh.io/docs/problems.html for radar?
People to email: mindy tom adams review everyone on my former projects ana kimmel
pet peeves: w-2 / pay stub verification
blog product vs people advancement
Disadvantages of TW
salary working on crappy enterprise tech a lot of the time travel vs relationship ppl i disagree with noobs frustrating clients unwilling to change long hours hiring decisions I disagree with changing my memory-at and memory-of TW, possibly for the worse not working on exciting domains most of the time people remembering me as junior new team stress
engineers, better atsafety reeatability, not just new algos