Nikunj Soni

The time when I attended the interview, I was shocked based on the outcome. I did google but did not come across this site. I find that I am not the only one who faced the music of TW.

1. 1st round of interview. (2 people - 1 A Senior Consultant 2. Project Manager(he just looked arnd 7 yrs of experience)
Basic questions on why you want to join, what have you done .... bhal...blah...The Senior consultant was working in a Competitor product .... so in product companies, you know what the competitor does not have...so questions were more focussed on that. went for 1.15 hours
2. 2nd round of interview - some flowchart questions .... God only knows if those questions were wrong or right - 20 mins
3. 3rd round of interview - some case study .... about a movie rental online
The question asked was how do you address the requirement. So i framed my answers on that basis ... only to realize that the expectation is more on how do I advise the customer on increasing his business. but my JD stated about coming with products / solutions to address the needs of the customer. I was asked what I do when I get the requirements .... I told them, I will do a google search to get the understanding of the business .... there were questions on how will that help .... blah....blah .... During my interview another lady also joined (shud be a fresher ...saw her in linkedin with her experience as working in tw for 3 years) and started asking questions more on the flowchart on how I will address the requirements

My chance to ask questions
1. What will you do when you get the requirements? the lady answers ... " I do a google search and try to understand on that subject" .... I am puzzled ... coz the person who asked me this question was also around and he happens to be her boss.

After 2 days got a mail stating I am not selected.
I was hurt but later on realized may be it was a just a dream company on paper and with the question / answer above came to a conclusion .... that if you are beautiful without brains and say "yes" to whatever your boss says ... you can work in TW.

Made a lot of friends since the interview and most of them are in TW. They all share the same experiences written above in other posts....

TW can talk about Agile, their products, their workshops, Open Culture and everything. But all it has is internal projects, low pay, useless culture

After reading several blogs about goods and bads of TW recruitment, I decided to give a try at TW. I got the first call and as usual got the choice of two problems to solve. I chose Mars Rovers as it was more challenging. I submitted it within the given time(spending few nights for arriving at the solution). There was silence for about next 3-4 weeks. Since I was trying out elsewhere I already got offer from other companies. I thought they rejected my solution.

But after 4 weeks I got a call for next round of interviews. So I went there. There was a test of 50 questions in 12 mins to start with. It was pretty easy, but what they check is your correct to wrong ratio when you are under time constraint. I think I cleared that and next was pair programming with a TW colleague. The enhancement given was pretty straight forward, my initial solution already catered to 70% of the requirement. So we only had to do little coding, I struggled with the laptop keys as I am used to my personal laptop. I think I cleared that too..

Next, there was predictability index test. Here you have to tick about what you think others will think about yourself in one sheet and what you think about yourself in another test. I think it was just to check some personality aspects of people, I don't think there were scores or elimination in this.

Next, was a technical interview. The two gentlemen who took the interview gave a very good introduction about themselves(something unusual). This was followed by my intro and brief glance on various technology I've worked with. Then one of them picked up Hibernate and went a bit deep into it. They were expecting some deep concepts of hibernate, I told them I have the breadth of various technologies and frameworks. Depth is something than can be achieved on a need basis. Since I had experience in Cobol programming one of them went to the extent of asking how Inversion Of Control is achieved in Cobol. I was really confused. Then abruptly they asked if I had questions. Since I had asked some questions already in previous rounds, I did not had any.

Then, came the SHOCKER... they ended the interview and first guy said " Well, it was NOT nice talking to you!".... I almost could not believe my ears... let me say it again "Well, it was NOT nice talking to you!". That's how rude these folks are!

In my 16 years of professional experience never has any one told me something like this. So that makes me think that there are some arrogant (may be smart) guys working in this company. I did not believe some of the -ve comments some of you have written about, I thought it's the case of sour grapes... But after my experience I have reasons to believe.

So, be careful with these folks. If they don't like you, they can be rude/arrogant/insulting....

Nikunj,

I feel for you man and I like your attitude. I am happy you are not too tough on yourself. I think you summarize it very accurately in the end.

I worked with folks from TW and I think TW engineers are overrated. Please don't mistake me. Some of them are really super stars and I am happy I know them but most of them are not worth the hype. And they almost always over-engineer. There is really no one right solution in Software Engineering. IMHO, the design is almost always based on time and cost rather than on the engineer's skill. It is OK not to use patterns. It is OK not to use DI. And more often than not, it is OK when the design is not perfect. Their Face-to-Face interview processes is almost always subjective, so if the candidate gives a solution which the interviewer deems is not correct, he/she is rejected.

If you are young and have about 2 or 3 years of experience TW may be a good idea. Figure out what they want and practice it and do it. But don't go by how the offices look and free food etc ... all those wear off after sometime and you may start having other thoughts.

Checkout this book and video on careercup.com. It is by a former colleague of mine and she nails a few points on how to prepare for interviews in the top engineering companies. Having worked for in two of them, I can say she is spot on.

Anyway, good luck with your career.
AS

Hi all,

One of my roommates worked there around 2 years. He was attracted towards TW India because of same things you are talking about.

It was great place to work before 2-3 years back, because of rapid growth rate they are not able to maintain their work culture and values now they are remains only on paper. Most of the old tech guru left the company including their India MD from Bangalore.

After 2 years he find himself de-motivated and confused. This place is full of egoistic people (they are saying “Best people”) 1 year fresher is jumping more than 10 years exp Lateral. What they are saying outside about open culture, transparency and flat hierarchy is just a trap to attract talented resources. People are coming to TW India sacrificing lot of things in career, finally what they are getting is just a frustration.

Hi Nikunj24,

I just got call from a consultant company that I have to attend an interview with ThoughtWorks. Without a minute wait, I googled and got into your post. You blog post really a helpful message and I will definitely work through. Hope I will clear at least first round to see their office. :)
I will let you know on my progress.

Thanks for your post.

Triguna M S

Hi Blogger,

I have been practicing design and working on design for a while(now i am 8.5 yrs exp), i some how got a call for the second round.But I was not fortunate to work with people smarter( in programming aspect other wise they are real smart folks ) so I have learned what I could from my reading and my opensource work.

I am also poor in my analytical skills so i don't think that i will clear the aptitude question with ease, I have been seeing the work around me getting boring and monotonous so I think thoughtworks could be an exciting place to revitalise my experience and exposure.

You guys are lucky as they called you at Pune office, but they are telling me to come to Bangalore office to give n interview even though they know I m from Pune! As i m unemployed I don't mind going there and meeting my old friends from Bangalore. I have not used state pattern to solve that issue as the issue is more complicated as there needs to be compiler and data collector and then compilation and then execution of rover. So if u think it is more complicated that getting solved using one pattern.

I have read ur blog that is nice to know so many people are interested in design and patterns where as I thought I m the odd man here.

thnks,Babaji

Sup Dude,
I was interviewed yesterday by thoughtworks and pretty much same result :). Pair programming went awesome, the tests were pretty good too, I guess I screwed up a little bit in the final 2 interviews. In the first interview, my object design did not satisfy their thirst, and in the second interview it was more about solving some old school problems like logic gates, binary operations and some more datastructure stuff. Time to move on!!

Thanks
Abhang