DISCLAIMER: The views expressed here are my views only and don’t necessarily represent the views of executive leadership at MasterClass or MasterClass in general.
Let me start off by saying that I’ve worked at 10 companies now in my professional career, large and small, with differing cultures and products. MasterClass is the best company I’ve been at, and I’ll tell you why –
I’ll tell you why I joined MasterClass and what excites me about where we’re headed, about how I think we stack up in the key areas that I evaluate companies on, what makes MasterClass unique, what the Product org is like, and I’ll sprinkle in some pictures along the way. Cheers!
Why I joined
I joined MasterClass because, well, I believe there is a huge opportunity to improve education for the world and help people be inspired to pursue their passions. As someone who studied Engineering and then didn’t go into that profession and had a winding path of jobs along the way, I have realized just how much traditional education fails us. In fact, most people don’t even like what they do or the company they’re at and may never find something that they really love to do.
Is it not an important cause to help people find fulfillment in their life by exposing them, inspiring them, and motivating them to find their passions whether in a work setting or outside of it?
Imagine how much happier the world would be, how much more creative, productive, and energized people would be if they were doing things that they loved. That’s what MasterClass does. It’s really quite powerful, and we hear it all the time from our users.
How MasterClass stacks up
The foundational P’s
There are 5 of them that I think about, and it’s convenient that they all start with P:
- Product – It’s incredibly important to work for a company for which you care about what they are trying to accomplish, because this will directly affect how fulfilled you feel when making an impact there.
- People – This includes leadership, your manager, your team, and the people at the company overall. People, I think, is always the most important aspect of a company.
- Position – Depends on what you’re going for, but you should think about is the role scoped correctly and set up for success, are there personal and professional growth opportunities?
- Process – Has the company figured out good ways to work and streamlined things to make it easy for employees to execute. How organized are they, is their data in order, what tech stack and tools do they use. Such an underrated-important piece of a company.
- And Pay – Is the pay competitive to other companies that are the same size and in the same industry? Benefits, rewards, all that good stuff. Most importantly, do you feel valued. Compensation isn’t just about $$$.
It’s unlikely that a company you’re considering is really strong in all of these, but it’s worth evaluating all.
In fact, I think you’ll find that many companies you consider, work at currently, or have worked at in the past tend to have a less-than-satisfactory score in 1-3 of the areas, which, depending on your priorities at the time, can make for a less-than-great experience for you. MasterClass is one of the few companies I’ve seen that is relatively strong in all.
So how does MasterClass stack up?
Product: I think it goes without saying that the MasterClass product is high quality, well-known, impactful, and if you care about education. The fact is that there is no other product in the space quite like it.
People: The leadership and management overall I would describe as humble, invested, honest and capable. MasterClass has an extremely high bar for who is hired into leadership positions. The teams overall at MasterClass are creative, intelligent, excited, and fun.
Position: I can’t speak to positions you’re considering, but I can tell you that there is a low turnover rate at MasterClass, people stay a while and are happy with their roles, people get promoted and are able to move between positions if they’d like. These are all signs of great hiring and opportunities.
Process: Such a relief that MasterClass has a solid tech stack and tools to work off of. I’ve found that we do actively invest in this – we do a fair amount of retros to keep learning and getting better. This is one area that MasterClass wasn’t as strong in in terms of cross-functional processes when I first joined, but has since then closed the gap.
Pay: Well-run HR organizations benchmark pay and compensation against other companies using industry data to be competitive. MasterClass has a well-run HR org in that sense and pays competitively. There are also some cool perks that we get (no you don’t get to meet every instructor though lol).
What makes MasterClass unique
I do genuinely think that MasterClass is strong in the 5 foundational P’s, which is a big part of why I decided to take the job, but after being there for a bit, let me tell you about what is different at MasterClass than most other companies out there.
Candor: People talk about being honest and transparent a lot, but not many companies have actually created a culture of candor. An environment that doesn’t foster candor feels like this in the workplace: you are in a meeting or just talking with someone and you don’t say what’s on your mind because you’re not sure how it will be received – that’s what I’ve found many cultures to be like. Imagine how liberating it would be to not be afraid to just say what’s on your mind and be honest all the time. That, I think, is very valuable and is the type of environment you want to be in.
Passion: We’re fortunate that the MasterClass product is so impactful to people and connects with them. We find that the majority of people that apply to positions are fans and subscribers of MasterClass and have a passion for education and our mission already. This creates a really unique environment where everyone is here for the right reasons and the same mission from day 1. In an interview you might end up talking about a MasterClass you’ve been taking, or in the lunch line with coworkers.
Creativity: And that brings me to the last unique feature of working at MasterClass – creativity. This comes from our shared passion in the product and the nature of the kind of person it attracts. Everyone is in general curious, creative, and intelligent. I have been absolutely blown away by the work that people do and their side projects and the creative competitions we have. MasterClass has a bit of that Netflix dynamic where we have content creation teams mixed with tech teams, it is pretty cool and unique.
What the product team is like
Teams: The product teams are set up as cross-functional pods where you have allocated resources to a project from product, design, and engineering typically. This should go without saying, but it is important to note that the resources are fully allocated and not “borrowed” from those different areas. There are 6 Product Managers – Growth Product is oriented by revenue stream and Core Product is oriented to platforms.
Org Structure: The VP (Taylor Adams) spans across Growth and Core Product, which is really great and I think is how orgs should be setup in order to ensure consistency and collaboration across acquisition and engagement product teams. Many companies silo acquisition vs. engagement too much, so I appreciate the progressive structure we have on this. Design and our SEO/Publishing orgs also roll-up into Product, which is a great partnership.
Projects: We decide projects on a quarterly basis for the most part. It’s not uncommon for Product Managers to be doing something totally different one quarter to the next and that’s really cool that we exercise that flexibility and adaptability in order to put our people on the highest impact initiatives. PMs also typically take on multiple projects at a time and while we do stretch ourselves sometimes, the teams are very capable of delivering.
Responsibility: Product Managers are given a lot of responsibility from day 1 at both senior and junior levels, in part because we are still developing as a company in the grand scheme of things and figuring a lot of stuff out, so we have to give our PMs a good amount of responsibility in order to achieve our goals.
Culture: I think the most common personality thread in our group is that everyone on the team is extremely intelligent, and in general I would say that our team has a “growth-mindset” along with a strong focus. The reason I mention those things is because it’s very common for some product orgs to be on the other side of that and PMs don’t have a growth-mindset, and focus can be all over the place. I think this is a defining aspect of our product team culture and is one of our strengths.
And that’s it folks! I hope that this was helpful and please leave me a comment or hit me up on Linkedin if you are interested to learn more.
If you are looking for a job at MasterClass you can see our openings here. We are growing and hiring, if you don’t see something for you at the moment, I would encourage you to continue to checking back in and reach out to a recruiter to ask about future plans.
