Future TWUers: the "ice cream list" means that the people on the list buy us all ice cream at the end of the week. Things that will get you onto it: being late, writing emails with poor spelling, cell phone during work, sitting all with people from your office (during sessions, not when actually working).
I hear that TW has a service where they can do our taxes if we want them to. I wonder how that works...
Today we did something called a fishbowl, where there are two rings of chairs, and the ring on the inside is 4 or 5 people with one empty chair, and only people in the middle are allowed to talk. And anyone who wants to from the outside circle can come sit in the empty chair, but then someone from the inside has to get up and leave. And only people who have spoken already are allowed to leave the inner circle for the outer circle! It was really fun.
The fishbowl and our independent lunch discussions were about some value studies of value issues within TW: recruiting women, client:TWer environment issues, management issues, and the truck factor + salary differences between countries.
"There is no better way to get people hooked in [to our company] than to give them what they want." (talking about the fact that TW supports employee entrepreneurial efforts)
Geek nights- each office has basically a study party for people's independent projects. Frequency varies by office
PM groups- usergroups for project managers where non-TW people come in and hang out and talk about best practices.
Quotes about leaders:
"TW pushes its leaders quite a bit"
"That's because I'm hard on my leaders."
Reminds me of the V for Vendetta quote about how a government should be afraid of its people.
Apparently when Roy comes into the TW offices (he visits all of them to make sure they're going well) he talks to the lowest person on the ladder and if they're happy than it's probably a happy office.
On a completely unrelated note, I think that India should buy thousands of these and put them in Poo River.
TWUer: "What makes you tick?"
Me: "Large amounts of obstinance."
As part of a diversity discussion, we had a discussion about Chuckecheese. :)
The "truck factor" is how many people on a project can be run over by a truck before the project grinds to a halt.
Pro tip: the trainers say to order takeout chinese food from "Mainland China" (although possibly only after your stomach has adjusted to the food!
Is there any country with a large % of women in tech? (According to one of the Brazil TWUers, Brazil is even lower % than the USA(?))
One of the things that the company considers best practice (Google aslo does this!) is to have a woman or a member of a minoity group or a person in a very different age cohort in on at least one round of an interview, to check the interviewee for obvious negative reactions which would imply that they would be unemployable by a global company.
Prezi is a cool way to give presentations.
"technology stack" means what platforms and tools you will be using to develop on a particular project.
The last several TWU teams created an internal application called Chronicle.
At the very beginning of the morning, we did:
- facts exercise where we have to fun around the room asking everyone whether particular obscure facts that our trainers pulled from facebook are true.
- put up anonymous postits about our hopes and concerns on a board on the wall
- listened to a presentation that covered:
knowing the big picture concept vs. knowing the tools (tools can be looked up; big pictures can't)
fail fast to reach perfection iteratively (less total effort)
TWU is a proving ground: people have washed out before and you could do it now. We'll be graded on:
- tech skills
- consulting skills (how well we interface with a client and our team)
- people skills (are you a good person to work with?)
- drive (do you learn fast and enthusiastically?) - Over 4 weeks, we will have 160 hours of practice on a project to teach us what to do when we get assigned to something billable.
I want to keep a chart of who gets sick and when... just for statistical purposes... but eh, it might be difficult.
Values are things that outweigh practicality. (my definition)
Origin of the name TWU: used to be TW Global Boot Camp. Also there used to be "lateral immersion" for two weeks...?
The TW Director of Social Responsibility has some cool projects. I want more details.