Ex-ThoughtWorker here. Pat is indeed a respected voice in this space, even amongst ThoughtWorkers, but he is not the only diamond. I learned pair programming and TDD from many colleagues over three years and four major projects. In all that time, there was exactly one individual whom I thought was a waste of space. On the whole, ThoughtWorks' typical approach to agile (note: lower-case 'a') development is firmly grounded in the pragmatics of what used to be called Extreme Programming, not Scrum-type dogma.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience in your brief engagement with TW. I believe it to be atypical, and I hope you'll have occasion to reconsider your -- not un-dogmatic -- conclusion.