Polytechniciens Visit eXo’s Vietnam Office: My “World is Flat” Story

Today’s guest post is from is by our marketing manager for eXo Vietnam, Thuy Dang Thanh.

As a member of eXo’s Marketing & Communication team, I get to meet and work with a lot of interesting people – whether they are partners, customers, journalists, or job candidates. One of the coolest experiences I’ve had in this position was getting to spend a day with a great group of students who visited our office in Hanoi last week.

Every year, 10 of the top students at the prestigious Polytechnic of Paris (Polytechnique) are selected for a special program that provides intensive technology and leadership courses. At the end of this program, they visit a foreign country to experience different local and business cultures. This year, Vietnam was selected – and eXo was one of the companies they chose to visit during the trip.

The team was definitely buzzing with anticipation when they arrived at our Hanoi office last Thursday. After a warm welcome from the 80+ eXoers on our team, they wanted to walk around and check out our facility and the big open spaces where we all work. Next, Brice Revenant, the General Manager of our office, led a discussion about the Vietnam market and eXo’s business model. One of my co-workers who works on the GateIn development team, To Minh Hoang, shared a lot of information about the Vietnam economic climate, our history, main industries, employee culture and work ethics, cost of living, and more.

The Polytechnique students asked a lot of questions too. They wanted to know about the benefits eXo provides to its employees, open source adoption and the software industry in Vietnam, Vietnamese business culture, and other government-related issues like regulations and taxes. The most interesting topic for all of us seemed to be the comparison between eXo and other local major companies (FPT or Viettel), and how we stack up on issues like management style, local recruitment efforts, and the upward mobility of employees.

The students left with a better understanding of not only Vietnamese culture, but also of eXo’s vision for hiring and promoting the best and the brightest engineers in the country. It was especially great to show them that our distributed development model not only provides better value to all our customers, but it also provides fantastic opportunities for our local employees.

After the meeting, I had a question for the students too: What had they liked the most about eXo? Julien de Zélicourt answered, saying ¨eXo impressed us by the fact, among all local and foreign companies we visited during our study trip, it is the only one who manages to carry out R&D operations. Almost all businesses just focus on project outsourcing for remote countries, without a strong activity in research.”
The team leader, Matthieu Deconinck, concluded the meeting with another memorable quote: “We were impressed by the company culture and profile. To us, it looked like a mini-Google. Good luck!”

Here are some pictures from the day:

The students arriving at our office in Hanoi.

Open discussion with the students and eXoers in our meeting room.

Brahim Jaouane

I am a Digital Marketing specialist specialized in SEO at eXo Platform. Passionate about new technologies and Digital Marketing. With 10 years' experience, I support companies in their digital communication strategies and implement the tools necessary for their success. My approach combines the use of different traffic acquisition levers and an optimization of the user experience to convert visitors into customers. After various digital experiences in communication agencies as well as in B2B company, I have a wide range of skills and I am able to manage the digital marketing strategy of small and medium-sized companies.