ThoughtWorks Placement Papers - ThoughtWorks Interview Questions and Answers updated on Dec 2024

ThoughtWorks is not your typical company. Talented, driven and principled people who are passionate about software, brought together because they want to do something amazing.Amazing work for our clients is the front line, revolutionizing the way the industry works is a gradual effect, improving society through software is our long term goal.

ThoughtWorks was founded by Roy Singham in a Chicago basement in 1993. Roy's formula for success from the start was "Attitude, Aptitude, and Integrity" – he built ThoughtWorks upon the firm belief that communities of talented, driven, and principled people could move mountains.

Today we employ over 1700 people across the globe. With a reputation as leaders and experts in the industry, we’ve become a destination employer for like-minded people with a passion to improve how businesses design, build and evolve software. We are very selective, hiring only 1 of every 100 aspirants (1 of 200 in some areas). This means we have equally capable people wherever we are located.

Whether we're building a new custom system for a client, fixing a project that's tied up in knots, or helping to make a software development organization more productive, ThoughtWorks delivers.

Our customers start seeing benefits in weeks, not months or years, a radical change for some clients and partners caught up in the inertia of working as they've always worked.

Software development with ThoughtWorks feels and looks different: it is fast, evolutionary, even fun. There are no secrets – you can walk into a ThoughtWorks project room and see exactly where we are at a single glance. We take good ideas – best practices like collaboration, feedback, transparency, and testing – and we build them into the fabric of the way we work. We've spent years, and many early mistakes, building up the set of ThoughtWorks’ core capabilities - reusable approaches that we believe to be world class. Of course, every problem is different, and our commitment to satisfying our clients far outstrips any affinity to a set of practices.

We are based in the United States, UK, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India and China and we work with clients from each location.

Our Mission

At ThoughtWorks we believe in software’s liberating capacity for society, attacking the most pressing problems of our time: social and economic inequality, the environment, energy, health care, participatory democracy, increasing the effectiveness of economic activity, reducing drudgery as well as ushering in the as yet undiscovered. We believe people yearn to belong to socially conscious and responsible businesses

Collage of TWers

ThoughtWorks’ mission is to better humanity through software and to be a role model for the new 21st century socially responsible company.

ThoughtWorks marshals the most capable and driven people to:

Run a sustainable business
Revolutionize IT; champion software excellence
Advocate passionately for social and economic justice.

ThoughtWorks' values

ThoughtWorks was built around three axes of Attitude, Aptitude and Integrity. This goes back to our founder, Roy, and his belief that by building a company around these pillars the company would attract & retain the very best workers, deliver projects more effectively, on time and on budget and so be able to bring about a revolution in the IT industry.

Everyone we hire is considered in terms of their Attitude, Aptitude and Integrity - as well as Roy's special trust measure - 'would I let this person look after my child?' So when we say we hire for 'cultural fit' we mean that we hire like-minded people, those who share our principles, passion and dedication to excellence. Oh, and they had better be ready for anything. (Although, thankfully, not Roy's kids anymore - they are all grown up.)

ThoughtWorks doesn't just apply this measure to the people we hire - as part of our promise to our people we also apply the values and cultural fit test to the work we take on. This means we look to do work for companies who share our values and principles, and projects which we believe in. In addition to this filter, we are building out a successful and innovative social engagement model which means we can make a significant impact through our skills, even more so than by donating cash. Many current ThoughtWorkers are involved in ongoing projects with UNICEF and other non-profit organizations, helping solve fundamental human issues with technology.

Our values are:

Customer commitment - Delighting our customers.
Social responsibility - Creating a better world.
Uncompromising principles - Respect. Openness. Humanity.
Best people - An exceptional community.
Fun - Have fun. Be passionate.
Entrepreneurialism - Imagine. Pursue.
Global - A transnational team.

Company culture

Our culture can't really be explained in a paragraph. We don't wear suits. (Well, not often.) We work hard and we play hard, we have created an environment where you are working amongst the best, so being 'top of the class' isn't really an option, but being challenged is. This doesn't really explain much though - one of the best way to understand our values and culture is to read some of our people's blogs - hear directly from them what we are like as individuals and as an organisation. We hope you enjoy!

Our cultural characteristics and imperatives:

Do the right thing
Attitude, aptitude and integrity
Service to others and society over self
Solidarity over charity
Serve holistic goals over achieving targets
Personal and organizational transparency
Curiosity, creativity and passion
Fail fast and publish our mistakes
Intolerant of intolerance
No jerks
High values alignment, loosely coupled.

Working at ThoughtWorks means a commitment to all of these. If you want to be a part of something amazing, and are nodding your head in agreement with these values and imperatives, then why not join us .

Our history

ThoughtWorks is a social and commercial community whose purpose is to revolutionize software creation and delivery while advocating for positive social change in the world. Roy Singham, the Chairman, founded ThoughtWorks in 1993 to attract and employ the best knowledge workers - "ThoughtWorkers" - who would share some basic core values: attitude, aptitude, integrity.

Building outstanding business software is primarily a social activity achieved by teams of brilliant people, not a mechanistic process where individuals are interchangeable cogs in some master plan. Hence our hiring model focuses on finding outstanding talent, not the mastery of this or that tool. This principle has proven out a founding idea: that intellectuals can also deliver outstanding business value. And it has been borne out in ThoughtWorks' innovations that are at the foundation of our products - Mingle, Go, and Twist - as well as our contributions to development practices such as Distributed Agile.

Over the years ThoughtWorks has grown from that small group of passionate people in a factory-district office in Chicago to a company of 1800 spread across 24 offices in 10 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Our desire to grow comes from a recognition that technology connects people around the world as never before and an understanding that innovation is no longer solely in the hands of the 20th century economic powers but also very much driven by important emerging countries like Brazil, China, and India. ThoughtWorks feels it's the duty of every person and every company to be a responsible global citizen and it is committed to having a presence in these areas, as well as the usual 'western' business centers.

Our success has only increased our ambitions. To continue expanding into more countries, developing industry-changing products, and solving our customers' most difficult problems. Our growth is only constrained by our ability to find enough talented people to join.

Through our production services we work with our clients to design, build, deploy and evolve systems that are truly an asset to our clients' businesses. Through our consultancy services, we provide insight into tough problem, provide objective support for big decisions, troubleshoot technology, projects and mobilise delivery programmes.

ThoughtWorks is well-known as a leader in the field of Agile methods. We evolve our practices constantly and mold them to our client environments and teams. The way we work is based on collaboration and communication. We work fast, with constant testing and feedback loops to ensure that the software works and does the job you need it to. The focus is always on delivering business value to our clients, and working, usable, software to the users.