Pros
You will get to do work that directly impacts the lives of teachers and students across the country.
Cons
I did not have a good experience working here and witnessed what can only be categorized as bizarre and unprofessional behaviors and constant mismanagement from the executive team (COO and CEO). The organization is overly gossipy and employees are covertly encouraged to engage in underhanded tactics (lying and badmouthing). I am posting my review here publicly in hopes that transparency will help team members still at the company or individuals interested in/considering joining the team. Here are the major issues: Constant Turnover There’s a revolving door of staff; they're in the midst of a current wave of departures (about 20%+ of staff) which is atypical for a startup of this size. Think about how toxic a company must be to have a significant number of employees willingly leave during a pandemic or attempt to unionize as a means of holding the C-level accountable to running a fair and just company. Consistent violation of DEI commitments Despite publicly claiming to be committed to DEI efforts, the C-suite creates a hostile environment for people of color. In the last 2 quarters of 2020 alone, the company lost most of their staff of color and many cited unfair and discriminatory treatment as catalysts for their departure. Management has a history of inequitable pay practices and questionable rationale for hiring and promoting internal staff - including lowballing black and brown talent and essentially forcing them to take pay cuts to work at BetterLesson, but offering generous pay packages to white employees (especially at the leadership level). Lack of formal HR expertise and no documented processes for investigating DEI violations: If you’re a person of color and are dealing with discriminatory issues - they won't be resolved. There’s no way to reliably report issues, no formal investigation process, and the CEO and COO are much more concerned about ensuring that details about incidents involving discrimination at the company are kept a secret. If you dare to share details with anyone, be prepared to deal with retaliatory behavior including: blatant lying and gaslighting and changing commitments to compensation transparency and decision making processes (decisions are made arbitrarily by the way!). I have never dealt with an executive team that displayed such a lack of professional maturity and disregard for how their actions disproportionately impact members of protected classes. I fully expect a rebuttal to this post, as they’re more focused on controlling the narrative instead of doing right by their employees. No path to scale/the long-term viability of the business is questionable: 2020 was an incredibly tough year for everyone - including EdTech companies that aren’t really "tech". As districts were forced to decide which services were essential to supporting the transition to distance learning (and which weren’t), real EdTech companies were able to clearly demonstrate their value and, as a result, experienced quite a bit of success in 2020. Others struggled. You may have guessed that BetterLesson is in the latter group. A series of questionable business decisions left the company well below their revenue goals, despite being incredibly busy in the spring/summer. There’s no strategic agility at the executive level: there's a huge gap in experience with managing a successful sales strategy, absolutely no in-house experience in what it takes to reach profitability as a startup, and no concrete plan for growth - working here is a slow burn. There are still a handful of very passionate, committed, and talented individuals at the company - who have the potential to right
