5y
Hi,
I highly appreciate that you took the time to tell us about your experience with OpenClassrooms. Thank you for this.
I’m very happy to see that during your time at OpenClassrooms you liked and felt embraced by our mission, making education accessible, and that you’ve also appreciated your colleagues.
That being said, I will try to answer the rest of your review as accurately as possible.
Regarding diversity at OpenClassrooms, here’s some data:
- it is inaccurate to say that the team is predominantly made of “white males”. Our team is 46% men versus 54% women, which is quite unique in the French (and European, and global) tech world. Out of our 230 team members around 25% are not French citizens, and come from 20+ countries across the world.
- As far as our managers are concerned, it is true that we needed to improve that aspect. As of today, 53% of managers at OpenClassrooms are men, against 47% women; all our recent hires at chief level (chief product officer and chief financial officer) were female, with the firm intention to bring as much balance as possible at leadership level
- Because we want to do the right thing, our work council (CSE) has led an anonymous survey about equality and discrimination at OpenClassrooms. Results were quite interesting: while our people didn’t seem to see discriminations in the workplace, they also drew our attention on items: we’re a startup with a predominantly young team, how do we deal with more experienced people? How do we create - and keep - a team as much as possible? As a first step, we’ve launched a series of 10 webinars about diversity and inclusion, for all OpenClassrooms team members.
All of our employees without exception have been associated with designing our values and principles and they are constantly asked to bring their thoughts and ideas to make our mission and our culture live and exciting. For example, we’ve recently organized company-wide workshops on our culture; most of the benefits we’ve implemented over the years also stem from ideas submitted by team members . I’m sorry but your statement on internal promotions is not accurate: as a rule, all jobs postings are open to internal applications. This year only, 25% of the new roles we offered were offered to already existing team members, all this while we were growing very strongly. The process to apply is available on our internal knowledge management base and frequently communicated on. And no, promotions do not depend on the person’s relationship with me: we’re a 230+ people company with a strong mission and ambitious development plans. If I had to get personally involved in all recruitment or promotion processes I’d do nothing else!
I also do not agree with your statement saying people who speak up are reprimanded. We actually encourage people to provide frequent feedback through monthly anonymous employee engagement surveys, 360° feedback every 6 months, ask-me-anything sessions, and many other channels . Transparency is actually a key characteristic of our culture and often something that comes across as highly distinctive for newcomers. If you feel that your opinion or feedback has not been heard, please send me an email (anonymously or not) and I will make sure to address your concerns, as I am doing so here.
I’d like to add that we are currently investing as never before in facilities (our new headquarters office), system and tools (3 new squads being hired to accelerate on product developments), people (more than 100+ new people joining the team in a few months).
I’d like to conclude by saying that I wish you would have provided such feedback when you were with us, during our weekly all-hands meetings, by email through askmeanything@openclassrooms.com, through our employee engagement surveys, or just by talking to me, HR, or your manager. I am glad that you did anyway now, and I hope that these answers help you understand where we stand.
Finally, I just wanted to thank you for your work with us. We are grateful for your commitment to making education accessible. I wish you all the best with your future endeavors.
Thank you again so much,
Pierre Dubuc, CEO of OpenClassrooms.
pierre.dubuc@openclassrooms.com