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Pretty much the only things I know about ThoughtWorks I got from Zed Shaw's Rails rant, which put them in a sharply negative light as a body shop of mostly-usel

Pretty much the only things I know about ThoughtWorks I got from Zed Shaw's Rails rant, which put them in a sharply negative light as a body shop of mostly-useless people. Was that an accurate characterization or is there more to them?

hugs 9y ago
I worked for ThoughtWorks in Chicago for 6-ish six years (2000-2007). I started the Selenium project there in 2004. At the time, I was a Python and JavaScript developer living in a sea of Ruby, Java, and .Net fanatics.
- obiefernandez 9y ago
  Hi Jason!!! Still a Ruby fanatic over here although I do a lot more JavaScript these days
  - hugs 9y ago
    Hi, Obie! :-) If I hadn't discovered Python first, I probably would have been a Ruby fanatic, too. But yeah, I mostly do JavaScript now. Ironically, I've a got a theory (I did confirm parts of this with Martin years ago, though), that it's all Martin's fault. Before Martin was into Ruby, for a brief period of time, he was a Python fan. But by the time we wrote Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture, he was full-on into Ruby. Then DHH came along and wanted to implement one of the first patterns listed (Active Record). DHH wanted to to step away from PHP and write his new code in whatever Martin's favorite language was. And the rest is history. But within a small window of time, DHH's project might have been called Python on Rails. So, it's all Martin's fault that you (or DHH or half of ThoughtWorks) never became a Python fanatic. :-)
brepl 9y ago
Got a link for this? The original seems to be gone.
- le-mark 9y ago
  "Rails is a ghetto" returns fruitful links, fyi. It's a classic.
- openmosix 9y ago
  https://techcrunch.com/2008/01/01/zed-shaw-puts-the-smack-down-on-the-rails-community/ https://techcrunch.com/2008/01/01/zed-shaw-puts-the-smack-do...
- brepl 9y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20080103072111/http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080103072111/http://www.zedsha...
tyingq 9y ago
What they really are is subjective. But, they have grown fairly large (4500 employees, 14 countries) and still maintained an image of being in a quality tier above a body shop. They are typically brought in to do marquee type projects, so you can imagine animosity from developers at their clients...they didn't get to do said project, because their boss hired it out. It could be that their quality isn't great, but even if it is, they would still see criticism from that crowd.
davidrupp 9y ago
I worked as a Rails developer at ThoughtWorks for three years, from 2008 to 2011, on three different projects, including the one they called "the largest Rails project in the world" at the time. [1] I didn't see any of the toxic behavior Zed recounts. Rather, I got to work with some of the best developers -- and smartest people -- I've ever met, and had a lot of fun while leveling up my career. [1] https://conferences.oreilly.com/rails2009/public/schedule/detail/8706 https://conferences.oreilly.com/rails2009/public/schedule/de...
- davidrupp 9y ago
  I wrote a blog post about it at the time. [1] Wouldn't change a word of it today. [1] http://davidrupp.blogspot.ie/2010/01/why-should-you-want-to-work-for.html http://davidrupp.blogspot.ie/2010/01/why-should-you-want-to-...
  - jarsin 9y ago
    I got fired for being a "Rails trouble maker" in late 2009. Never saw your blog back then but if I did I would have applied.
  - JamesBarney 9y ago
    I will be incredibly impressed with Apax if they are able keep this type of culture thriving.
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  Nice to hear it. Certainly other parts of Zed's rant didn't really stand up to close scrutiny, so I figured I'd ask someone who was really there.
icebraining 9y ago
I never worked with them, but their CI product seems solid, and a few of its concepts seem to have predated the more popular competition by a few years: https://www.gocd.org/ https://www.gocd.org/
- hugs 9y ago
  With CruiseControl, ThoughtWorks practically invented the CI tool category. https://www.martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html https://www.martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration....
  - a-dub 9y ago
    bullshit. continuous integration came out of netscape, which was open sourced by mozilla in the late '90s. i worked for a company in the mid '00s that had some thoughtworks people come in. they were spouting all sorts of nonsense about design patterns and this and that. i asked "how come nobody in open source speaks like this?" "oh, well you know the scope and scale of the projects and the quality of the code in the open source world doesn't compare to that which is locked up inside of companies..." mhmm...
    - hugs 9y ago
      Okay, I stand corrected. Sorry about that. After some googling... Are you referring to Tinderbox? https://oduinn.com/2014/06/04/farewell-to-tinderbox/ https://oduinn.com/2014/06/04/farewell-to-tinderbox/ (It looks like Tinderbox predates CruiseControl by 3/4 years.) Also, the CI Wikipedia page should probably be fixed to also include info about Mozilla's CI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration

hugs 9y ago

I worked for ThoughtWorks in Chicago for 6-ish six years (2000-2007). I started the Selenium project there in 2004. At the time, I was a Python and JavaScript developer living in a sea of Ruby, Java, and .Net fanatics.

obiefernandez 9y ago
Hi Jason!!! Still a Ruby fanatic over here although I do a lot more JavaScript these days
- hugs 9y ago
  Hi, Obie! :-) If I hadn't discovered Python first, I probably would have been a Ruby fanatic, too. But yeah, I mostly do JavaScript now. Ironically, I've a got a theory (I did confirm parts of this with Martin years ago, though), that it's all Martin's fault. Before Martin was into Ruby, for a brief period of time, he was a Python fan. But by the time we wrote Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture, he was full-on into Ruby. Then DHH came along and wanted to implement one of the first patterns listed (Active Record). DHH wanted to to step away from PHP and write his new code in whatever Martin's favorite language was. And the rest is history. But within a small window of time, DHH's project might have been called Python on Rails. So, it's all Martin's fault that you (or DHH or half of ThoughtWorks) never became a Python fanatic. :-)

brepl 9y ago

Got a link for this? The original seems to be gone.

le-mark 9y ago
"Rails is a ghetto" returns fruitful links, fyi. It's a classic.
openmosix 9y ago
https://techcrunch.com/2008/01/01/zed-shaw-puts-the-smack-down-on-the-rails-community/ https://techcrunch.com/2008/01/01/zed-shaw-puts-the-smack-do...
brepl 9y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20080103072111/http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080103072111/http://www.zedsha...

tyingq 9y ago

What they really are is subjective. But, they have grown fairly large (4500 employees, 14 countries) and still maintained an image of being in a quality tier above a body shop. They are typically brought in to do marquee type projects, so you can imagine animosity from developers at their clients...they didn't get to do said project, because their boss hired it out. It could be that their quality isn't great, but even if it is, they would still see criticism from that crowd.

davidrupp 9y ago

I worked as a Rails developer at ThoughtWorks for three years, from 2008 to 2011, on three different projects, including the one they called "the largest Rails project in the world" at the time. [1] I didn't see any of the toxic behavior Zed recounts. Rather, I got to work with some of the best developers -- and smartest people -- I've ever met, and had a lot of fun while leveling up my career. [1] https://conferences.oreilly.com/rails2009/public/schedule/detail/8706 https://conferences.oreilly.com/rails2009/public/schedule/de...

davidrupp 9y ago
I wrote a blog post about it at the time. [1] Wouldn't change a word of it today. [1] http://davidrupp.blogspot.ie/2010/01/why-should-you-want-to-work-for.html http://davidrupp.blogspot.ie/2010/01/why-should-you-want-to-...
- jarsin 9y ago
  I got fired for being a "Rails trouble maker" in late 2009. Never saw your blog back then but if I did I would have applied.
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  I will be incredibly impressed with Apax if they are able keep this type of culture thriving.
Analemma_ 9y ago
Nice to hear it. Certainly other parts of Zed's rant didn't really stand up to close scrutiny, so I figured I'd ask someone who was really there.

icebraining 9y ago

I never worked with them, but their CI product seems solid, and a few of its concepts seem to have predated the more popular competition by a few years: https://www.gocd.org/ https://www.gocd.org/

hugs 9y ago
With CruiseControl, ThoughtWorks practically invented the CI tool category. https://www.martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html https://www.martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration....
- a-dub 9y ago
  bullshit. continuous integration came out of netscape, which was open sourced by mozilla in the late '90s. i worked for a company in the mid '00s that had some thoughtworks people come in. they were spouting all sorts of nonsense about design patterns and this and that. i asked "how come nobody in open source speaks like this?" "oh, well you know the scope and scale of the projects and the quality of the code in the open source world doesn't compare to that which is locked up inside of companies..." mhmm...
  - hugs 9y ago
    Okay, I stand corrected. Sorry about that. After some googling... Are you referring to Tinderbox? https://oduinn.com/2014/06/04/farewell-to-tinderbox/ https://oduinn.com/2014/06/04/farewell-to-tinderbox/ (It looks like Tinderbox predates CruiseControl by 3/4 years.) Also, the CI Wikipedia page should probably be fixed to also include info about Mozilla's CI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration