The 2025 Best Firms to Work For: Sketch Development

CONSULTING SERVICE LINES: AI-Enabled Software Development, Organizational Consulting & Training, Cloud Enablement, Atlassian Tooling

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CMAG: What characteristics and elements would you attribute to your firm’s inclusion as a Best Firm to Work For?

John set out to build the company he wanted to work for. One that values transparency and curiosity, and sets reasonable expectations of its employees: deliver your best work and Sketch will deliver its best experience. We allow our consultants to step away from client work twice a month to exercise their curiosity. They're able to work on technologies that their current engagements don't allow for. Twice a year, we demo those efforts, turning experiments into learning opportunities. Our development teams are self-managed: diverse teams of full-stack software developers who make their own decisions about who does what work to best serve their customers. We often find ourselves saying "nothing great was ever built by the team that couldn't wait to clock out." For us that means finding opportunities for our consultants where they can get lost in their work, and love doing it.

CMAG: Are there any specific programs or initiatives that contributed to you being included as a Best Firm?

I'd point to a couple of programs. First, Sketch Fridays, as previously mentioned, that allow our consultants to dive into something that intrinsically motivates them. Those Fridays also include and all-company conversation, where we share the good news, the challenges we're facing, and collaboratively fix what's broken. Those Fridays culminate in twice yearly Sketch Summits, where all of that effort is put on display like a science fair. It's two days of learning from each other and discovering what's possible with new technologies. Another program that's important to us is our Volunteer Day, where the entire company joins an initiative in the community (Forest Park Forever, Rebuilding Together) and we literally get our hands dirty helping those in need.

CMAG: In describing your firm, what would you say sets it apart from other consulting firms?

Many firms in our space are focused on delivering solutions with high technical quality. While that's important for us, we see it as table stakes. What's equally important to us is service quality and bedside manner. Our services are built from the ground up from the perspective of the buying experience. No customer enjoys the change order process, so we've eliminated it. No customer appreciates being talked down to, or talked to with excessive technical jargon, so we forbid it. No customer wants an expensive software solution for the technical elegance of it, so we make sure to recenter all conversations back to the why: what users and buyers will gain from having the solution.

CMAG: Where your workforce is concerned, what would you say your priorities look like for the upcoming year and beyond?

Our customers are increasingly asking for AI-enabled solutions, so we want to make sure we're not just ready for it, but several steps ahead of it. That means providing our consultants with an excess of AI tools and opportunities to experiment. A related high priority for us is addressing the unintended burnout that comes with the new crop of AI tools. Developers are at least 50% more productive with these tools, but it can lead to mental strain as they try to keep more context in their heads while the AI does the hard work.

CMAG: What opportunities do you see as the most promising?

AI is presenting a new frontier of opportunity for us. We continue to be impressed by our customers' creativity in the solutions they're asking for, and we're equally impressed by our developers' creativity in delivering those solutions.

CMAG: What market forces do you see as the most challenging?

The trifecta of AI, tariff uncertainty, and the DOGE effect make it difficult to look too far into the future. We'll continue to respond as we always have, through transparency, inspection and adaptation.

CMAG: What impact do you think Best Firm to Work For honors will have on your employees? The firm overall? Clients?

I think our employees will be honored and proud to call out this distinction for Sketch. We'll use it as a data point that tells us we're headed in the right direction, and we should continue to find ways to make this place attractive to future consultants. I hope our customers won't be surprised to find out that we've achieved this honor, as they're the ones who ultimately benefit. As we see it, our job as leaders is to take care of our employees, so that they can take care of our customers.