Do you consider yourself a creative who’s driven to help businesses succeed? At Thoughbot, you can harness this skill and put it to good use as a product developer and designer. Since the idea for Thoughtbot was conceived 20 years ago and launched by five college friends, it has grown to become a self-sustaining business model that allows individuals from all backgrounds to maximize the full power of their creativity through technology.
Through its apprenticeship program, Thoughtbot offers candidates from all ethnic and professional backgrounds a structured pathway to a career in technology. If you’re a bootcamp graduate, self-taught programmer, or tech enthusiast interested in learning more about Thoughtbot paid apprenticeship program, you should read this guide to the end. It details Thoughtbot’s apprenticeship tracks, salary structure, apprenticeship benefits, and reviews from former Thoughtbot apprentices.
Thoughtbot is a technology consulting firm offering clients world-class web and mobile product strategy, development, and design services across multiple industries and continents. This private software company works with clients at every stage in a web, Android, or iOS product life cycle, from ideation/strategy to implementation and control, using expertise in effective technologies such as Ruby, Rails, React, JavaScript, Vim, and Python.
Thoughtbot’s headquarters is in Boston, Massachusetts. It also has five offices in New York, North Carolina, San Francisco, Austin, and London. As of June 30, 2020, Thoughtbot has a workforce of 115 people. As a company dedicated to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, its xx-member team represents professionals from various minority groups, including LGBTQIA+. In 2019, Thoughtbot set up a DEI council with the help of Collective to improve its DEI workforce policies, recruitment, and training processes.
Chad Pytel, Matt Tucker, Calvin Swaim, and Willie Conrad, Jon Yurek launched Thoughtbot in June 2003 out of necessity. They originally attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute. They were computer science majors and were part of a Linux club. After graduation, their first bonding project. Unfortunately, they “Disk the movie.” They couldn’t find work because they discovered that most companies wanted candidates with experience beyond classroom work.
However, with Chad’s help, they landed roles as part of the software development team in a medical billing Startup, ABA, founded by Don Brown. Their time at the company was short-lived because it collapsed a little later. Chad Pytel, who had a software development and freelancing background, brought the idea of consulting to the group. He also got the company its first clients. The founders never defined their roles or how complex the business demands could become. Instead, they took on all computer-related jobs as a full-service IT company.
Even though the business had clients, the founders struggled to cover debts and made bare minimums. They also realized they didn’t like the tasks they were doing. In 2005, three of the five relinquished ownership rights in exchange for debt exemptions. It took the founders two years to figure out the vision and mission of Thoughtbot and streamline their value offering and redefine their clientele.
However, it didn’t take long for them to land an ideal paying client, and they could divert the revenue to the business. In addition, they created many open-source technologies, which helped them build a reputation in the software development community. Besides making its services around Ruby on Rails, Thoughbot’s work model was based on continuous improvement; this has helped it stay ahead of innovations and trends in the industry.
Thoughtbot launched Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast and Upcase, a finishing school that transforms junior developers into experienced professionals, in 2012. Today, Thoughtbot’s founders are Chad Pytel and Jon Yurek. In 2020, Thoughtbot received a Crains Award as one of the best places to work in New York City and Austin. In 2022, Quartz recognized it as one of the best companies for remote work.
Thoughtbot believes that it is possible to continuously learn and improve the way people work while building higher-quality products that make positive contributions to the world.
Thoughtbot guides and supports entrepreneurs, innovators, and enterprises, in every phase of product innovation and enhancement.
Thoughtbot’s values guide how it works and what it represents and motivates it to be an ideal company and team.
Thoughtbot is a holistic software company that guides its clients through the four product stages: thoughtbot Ignite (strategic research and planning), thoughtbot Lift Off (product development & design), thoughtbot Boost (product maintenance and team management), and thoughtbot Mission Control (DevOps, platform engineering, and site reliability engineering).
From drafting product strategies to product planning, hiring the right team, optimizing processes and resources, deploying finished products, and maintaining product reliability, to performing product audits, Thoughtbot ensures you don’t have to do beyond conceiving an idea for your product. It collaborates with its clients at each phase to achieve successful end results.
As such, Thoughtbot generates revenue from providing services such as product strategy & management, web development, mobile development, product design, and team & process optimization to clients by charging based on project scope weekly. Thoughbot’s clients span health technology, technical & business assistance, government & public sector, fitness & wellness, E-commerce, fintech, IoT, education technology, and SaaS industries. In addition, Thoughtbot generates income from sponsorships. It currently has seven sponsors registered to one of five subscription plans.
According to Stackshare, Thoughtbot has 52 technologies in its tech stack. The company uses 24 application and data tools, nine utilities, 11 DevOps, and eight business tools. Thoughtbot's application and data tools include JavaScript, jQuery, Redis, PostgreSQL, Amazon S3, Sass, Dropbox, Rails, and Ruby. The company’s utilities include Google Analytics, Stripe, Twilio, Mixpanel, and Mandrill. Thoughbot’s DevOps include Vim, New Relic, Xcode, Git, and GitHub. Finally, its business tools comprise Slack, Trello, G Suite, Zapier, and Intercom.
Thoughtbot created its apprenticeship program over a decade ago to give unconventional applicants with decisive skill gaps a chance to thrive in the tech industry. Thoughtbot realized in 2011 that while some candidates couldn't be allowed to take on billed client work because of their skill gap, many showed potential and needed a platform to fine-tune their skills. So, unlike most apprenticeship providers, Thoughtbot made its apprenticeship program full-time and open to just about anybody.
Thought it, like Twitter, uses the rotation apprenticeship model where the apprentices move to different mentors, who serve as primary instructors, and teams at the end of each month to build rounded knowledge. The apprentices work alongside developers and designers on client projects, but Thouhtbot doesn't bill clients for their time. They may also take on special projects to improve their skills in their weakest areas. In addition, Thoughtbot provides each apprentice a guide during onboarding to ensure a seamless experience.
The Thoughtbot apprenticeship program spans three months, after which the apprentice is promoted to a developer or designer role. However, it may be extended if the company believes the candidate needs more time to improve their skills. You should know the position is fully remote and designed to suit specific time zones (UTC-2 through UTC+3).
The web developer apprenticeship program trains candidates to build, test, and deploy JavaScript and Ruby on Rails applications. The ideal apprentices should be comfortable with using other frameworks besides Rails. They should also be willing to learn more about Rails' best practices, like code quality and test-driven development.
IOS developers at Thoughtbot write test codes and build and ship IOS applications using Swift or Objective-C. You'll learn to independently create a mobile application using either of the two technologies as an apprentice.
designers at Thoughtbot are skilled at product design and user experience. They can manipulate front-end programming languages such as HTML and CSS to create impressive visuals for web products. To qualify for this apprenticeship, you should have a solid foundation in web design.
Thoughtbot hires most of its apprenticeship graduates. While a billable full-time position isn’t guaranteed at the end of your apprenticeship, the skills you build during the three months are worth it, as you’ll find it easier to land better-paying roles outside of Thoughtbot.
Yes, Thoughtbot apprentices earn salaries as W-2 employees. All apprentices make the same global minimum wage as technical employees regardless of their time zone. For example, a development or design apprentice at Thoughtbot averages $37,500 (£28,642.43) a year.
Thoughtbot apprentices receive benefits such as health, dental, vision insurance, investment time for learning new skills and volunteering, participating in paid conferences, paid time off, paternal and maternal leave, holidays and sick days, life insurance, and a 401k plan with matching.
Thoughtbot Apprenticeship Selection: How Are Cohorts Chosen?
To reduce hiring bias, Thoughtbot accepts candidates from everywhere, including Africa, the Americas, Europe, and West Asia. The hiring process doesn't screen out candidates based on gender, race, or status. Besides having the required technical skills and the potential to succeed in three months, Thoughtbot's ideal apprentices have excellent communication skills. They're focused, grateful, emotionally intelligent, curious, optimistic, enthusiastic, composed, motivated, and show initiative. In addition, candidates should have grit, humor, and an eye for beauty.
Thoughtbot apprentices are usually graduates of coding bootcamps or self-taught coders with at least three years of work experience in a full-time developer or designer role.
Thoughtbot Apprenticeship Program Interview: Is the Thoughtbot Interview Hard?
The interview process at Thoughtbot is straightforward. If you're ready to work as a Thoughtbot apprentice, visit the Apprenticeship Job Page to view open positions, submit an application, or sign up for alerts. Thoughtbot’s hiring team sources talent from GitHub, User groups, product design and development coding bootcamps, Authentic Jobs, and Stack Overflow. In line with its fair hiring policy, Thoughtbot uses an anonymous screening tool that hides identifying characteristics to select candidates who move on to the interview stage. In addition, Thoughtbot uses Workable to manage applicants throughout the hiring process.
A hiring team member reviews the applications based on their cover letters, answers to the self-assessment questions, and the applicant's overall experience. Then, the recruiter sends all the candidates a rejection mail or an invite. The next phase is a non-technical interview with the hiring manager to assess their cultural fitness. The technical interview doesn't use essays or coding challenges to measure skill level. Instead, the candidate's portfolio and eloquence in writing codes, building system architectures, and following a product design process will be evaluated.
In the final stage, the prospective apprentices are invited to work with their respective teams remotely. Thoughtbot pairs the candidates with designers or developers throughout the day, and at 4:00 pm, the apprentices will give short presentations. Offers are reviewed and approved by at least one C-level executive before the hiring team sends them out. Candidates who accept the apprenticeship offer will be assigned dedicated guides for the first two weeks to help them blend into the work environment.
Thoughtbot has trained over 50 apprentices. Each year, it hires two apprenticeship cohorts, screening over 500 applications. On average, each cohort is a maximum of five apprentices. However, Thoughtbot needs to provide official data to support this claim.
Thoughtbot Apprenticeship Cohort Frequency: How Often is a Cohort Hired?
Thoughtbot runs two cohorts each year. The first cohort starts in March, and the second begins in the second half of the year, July, for the 2023 cohort. However, applications for annual apprenticeships start in the second/ third week of December. Consequently, a recruiter will notify you of your application status in January's second/third week.
The hiring team concludes Initial interviews in the third/fourth week of January. The second and final interviews follow in February's first and second weeks. You'll be notified of the hiring decision between the third week of February and the second week of March.
Yes, Thoughtbot is an excellent company to work for if you're passionate about product development and design and would love the challenge of taking on the different scopes of client projects now and then. According to employee reviews from Glassdoor, Thoughtbot has a 4.2 out of five-star rating for having a people-first culture, growth opportunities, supportive colleagues, motivated teams, great benefits, and good management. Eighty-two percent of reviewers agree to recommend Thoughtbot to a friend, and 82% approve of the CEO.
Thoughtbot apprentices work full-time for a maximum of eight hours a day and 40 hours a week. This covers working on billable client projects, attending events, and taking professional courses to improve their skills.
How do I pass a Thoughtbot apprenticeship interview?
To excel in a Thoughtbot apprenticeship interview, you should have a solid foundation in Ruby on Rails and front-end programming languages. Thoughtbot interviews are unique. You won’t have to answer coding questions on a whiteboard. Instead, the hiring team expects you to be able to talk articulately about your technical knowledge of working with frameworks and architectural systems.
Yes, you can fail a Thoughtbot apprenticeship. Every apprentice at Thoughtbot has three months to convince the hiring manager that they have the skills needed to be a billable Thoughtbot developer or designer. Thoughtbot provides you with all the resources you need to succeed, but for the most part, you’ll be allowed to control your time, meaning lots of flexible hours. If you don’t prove yourself to the team after that period, you won’t be promoted to a full-time employee role. In some cases, you may be given additional time to improve.
The Thoughtbot Blog is the official page to learn about Thoughtbot’s tech stack, product development process, and best practices, particularly Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, and React.
If you want to learn more about Thoughtbot's apprenticeship programs, company events, partnerships, and expansion plans, you should visit the Thoughtbot Newsroom.
You can get news about Thoughtbot apprenticeship programs from the Thoughtbot Jobs page.
If you don’t want to track and monitor the Thoughtbot apprenticeship program for yourself or are looking for support in an apprenticeship application, you can join apprenticeship.io to learn more and get support to land an apprenticeship program.
Learn more and sign up today.
