[HN Gopher] Layoffs push down scores on Glassdoor - how companie...
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       Layoffs push down scores on Glassdoor - how companies respond
        
       Author : EvgeniyZh
       Score  : 357 points
       Date   : 2023-05-26 08:48 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com)
        
       | marstall wrote:
       | Any hard evidence companies can really get negative reviews taken
       | down? This page on Glassdoor suggests otherwise.
       | 
       | https://help.glassdoor.com/s/article/I-m-an-employer-What-ca...
       | 
       | Excerpts from that link:
       | 
       | > You can't pay us to take down reviews and we apply the same
       | content moderation rules to our clients that we use for everyone
       | else.
       | 
       | > We generally don't consider evidence offered by someone with a
       | vested interest in getting a review taken down, because we don't
       | know how reliable it is.
        
         | kmod wrote:
         | P(them saying this | you can kind of get negative reviews taken
         | down) = 1
         | 
         | The lines you quoted give them tremendous wiggle room, and
         | nothing from the original article is actually disallowed by
         | them.
        
       | cebert wrote:
       | Do people generally still put any value in Glassdoor reviews?
       | These types of behaviors on the site aren't new.
        
         | maccard wrote:
         | Yes. I treat Glassdoor reviews the same as I do hotel reviews
         | or restaurant reviews - look at the reviews where people are
         | positive but have criticisms, and look to see if those
         | criticisms have a trend in the reviews (or if some reviews even
         | tell people that thing is a positive - "difficult work life
         | balance" "high pressure rewarding environment)
         | 
         | If they're all positive (or negative) then that's a sign
         | there's something wrong.
        
         | clnq wrote:
         | Yes, I mostly look at critical reviews and really pay attention
         | to things mentioned by a few employees in different words. I
         | usually do this while interviewing, so I am only interested in
         | the negative takes as the company will readily tell me every
         | positive aspect they can boast of.
         | 
         | Just apply a bit of common sense to the comments and they will
         | be a great source of insight. Some things they say can even be
         | verified elsewhere (like if people from management keep getting
         | into harassment lawsuits, if the company mistreats its clients,
         | and similar).
        
         | hardware2win wrote:
         | I think the only reviews I somewhat value are Steam reviews
        
           | Etheryte wrote:
           | The only review I trust for any company is a random stranger
           | commenting on HN.
        
             | oblio wrote:
             | I have bad news for you, marketing teams and co have alerts
             | set up for key words and there's a reason tech evangelists
             | exist.
             | 
             | HN is actively targeted for advertising.
        
               | saagarjha wrote:
               | You don't even need advertising for this place to be
               | useless. Do you think everyone singing the praises for
               | e.g. Rust here is using it in production?
        
             | rightbyte wrote:
             | There are alot of threads about X where there are kinda
             | probable insiders writing lame positive stuff about the X
             | thing. Like "that is really cool" or interested leading
             | questions about it, when there is no way people here would
             | naturally write it in such an optimistic manner.
        
         | knallfrosch wrote:
         | Yes, ignore all ratings and read the review content. You can
         | spot pain points, such as missing remote-flexibility, or bad
         | incentives, or impossible deadlines, or bad equipment, or lousy
         | onboarding, micromanagement, meetings late in the day, racism
         | (like in Tesla factories)..
         | 
         | Reading reviews helps you understand what you should pay
         | attention to. You might take some things for granted that the
         | company completely violates.
         | 
         | You can then use your knowledge to ask specific questions
         | during the job interview. Like: "What's your remote work policy
         | and please put 5 days at home in my contract." Or you could
         | spot the open office with old computers.
         | 
         | As Tolstoy put it: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy
         | family is unhappy in its own way" And it's up to you to spot a
         | specific unhappiness at any given company.
        
         | passwordoops wrote:
         | Yes, especially non-engineers, like everyone in my family. It's
         | why every HR I've encountered has asked employees to put a
         | positive review on the site
        
         | lordnacho wrote:
         | In the nicest way possible, people who aren't the HN crowd are
         | years behind when it comes to understanding how the internet
         | works:
         | 
         | - They think Amazon reviews are useful
         | 
         | - They think Glassdoor reviews are useful
         | 
         | - They think hotel reviews are useful
         | 
         | - They think Trustpilot is useful
         | 
         | - They think blog-style product reviews are useful
         | 
         | It hasn't occurred to a lot of people that any content that
         | could influence you was probably generated by a computer.
         | 
         | Even further away is the realization that LLMs are about to
         | inundate the entire internet with this kind of stuff, it's like
         | crack has just been invented and everyone is only just aware of
         | milder forms of cocaine.
        
           | ggm wrote:
           | God give me strength, this is patronising. Do you really
           | believe only the HN cognoscenti know they're being gamed?
        
             | neilv wrote:
             | In this particular case... HNers tend to be familiar with
             | tech industry business models and investment models, more
             | than the average person who doesn't work in tech.
             | 
             | So I think it's plausible we'll tend to have a somewhat
             | better awareness of the dynamics around reviews that are
             | posted online.
             | 
             | (But I don't think we're more savvy about the world in
             | general. If anything, we tend to have STEM-like narrower
             | exposure to the world than many, coupled with the
             | overconfidence that comes from income level.)
        
             | etothepii wrote:
             | No, but I do believe that working with computers all day
             | rewires your brain.
        
             | lordnacho wrote:
             | It's not meant to be patronizing, it's just a fact that
             | people who spend a bunch of time reading about tech are
             | going to hear about things before people who don't.
             | 
             | It also makes sense that reviews would have signal. It's
             | not like people are dumb, they were just born in an earlier
             | world where reviews would actually have some reputation
             | attached to them. Movies, restaurants, concerts, that kind
             | of stuff would be reviewed by someone capable of writing
             | and filtered through a newspaper editor.
             | 
             | Now things have changed and it takes some time for everyone
             | to figure it out.
        
               | 2devnull wrote:
               | If reviews "have some signal" then wouldn't it be more
               | clever to learn to make use of that signal rather than
               | dismiss as entirely worthless?
        
               | lordnacho wrote:
               | I said it makes sense that they have signal, not that
               | they have signal.
               | 
               | Like it makes sense that shaving makes your beard grow,
               | it just turns out not be what actually happens.
        
           | asah wrote:
           | In the nicest way possible, I am downvoting this reductionist
           | and patronizing summary. Reviews are messy signals like
           | photos etc: train your wetware neural net and you can smell
           | trouble.
        
           | Mistletoe wrote:
           | - They think HN comments are all real
        
           | emptyfile wrote:
           | [dead]
        
           | treeman79 wrote:
           | My grandma, once snapped at my dad when he pointed out that
           | something on the news wasn't true.
           | 
           | Grandma: "They aren't allowed to lie on the news so that has
           | to be true."
        
             | mschuster91 wrote:
             | > Grandma: "They aren't allowed to lie on the news so that
             | has to be true."
             | 
             | That's the problem with Boomers and earlier generations.
             | They grew up (in the US) with first the Mayflower and then
             | the Fairness Doctrine that forced at least some _basic_
             | ethics standards, and with a media portfolio that didn 't
             | consist of a few very rich people and companies controlling
             | wide swaths of media (Fox, Sinclair, Murdoch come to my
             | mind), leading to actual competition between media, high
             | quality journalism and actually well paid journalists.
             | 
             | They didn't realize that the landscape has changed - there
             | are no media standards anymore, there is no antitrust
             | enforcement anymore, hell Carlson got away with his antics
             | because a court ruled that a "reasonable viewer" would be
             | skeptic towards his claims [1] despite it being more than
             | obvious that Carlson's audience eat up everything he spouts
             | as pure truth.
             | 
             | [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-
             | cant-...
        
               | treeman79 wrote:
               | Fairness doctrine was specifically to try and silence
               | conservative voices.
               | 
               | Talk radio, prove to be a great venue for conservative
               | speech. Countless efforts were made to silence them in
               | the name of "fairness" as defined by government
               | bureaucrats.
        
               | mschuster91 wrote:
               | > Fairness doctrine was specifically to try and silence
               | conservative voices.
               | 
               | Or maybe "conservative voices" have used lies and hatred
               | as a political tool for decades? We've seen just how
               | incredibly the media landscape has devolved since the
               | repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. Far-right talking points
               | _everywhere_.
               | 
               | Name one, just _one_ case of  "progressive voices" doing
               | the same that comes even close to what the right wing
               | does with people like Tucker Carlson every single day.
        
               | skinnymuch wrote:
               | If conservatives were being silenced, what happened to
               | socialists and communists? Seems like conservatives
               | weren't being silenced at all.
        
               | esja wrote:
               | You're right, and it's getting worse, but even in 1962
               | there were problems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Im
               | age:_A_Guide_to_Pseudo-e...
               | 
               | The internet accelerated the decline by 1) destroying
               | media business models, leading to seasoned editors and
               | fact checkers being replaced by cheaper twenty-something
               | Twitter addicts, and 2) driving consumers into filter
               | bubbles and feeding their confirmation bias.
               | 
               | Even NPR are deteriorating. For example, this aged
               | extremely poorly: https://twitter.com/NPRpubliceditor/sta
               | tus/13192811012239400...
        
               | mschuster91 wrote:
               | > Even NPR are deteriorating. For example, this aged
               | extremely poorly: https://twitter.com/NPRpubliceditor/sta
               | tus/13192811012239400...
               | 
               | It did not. Even a Republican-led investigation didn't
               | find any wrongdoing [1]. Not every bullshit conspiracy
               | claim of the far right warrants an investigation - their
               | entire _modus operandi_ is running a continuous
               | "firehose of falsehood" stream [2], and media reporting
               | on each and every of their claims like a bunch of flies
               | swarming around a pile of poo is actually dangerous to
               | society.
               | 
               | When the far right manages to create absurd amount of
               | media attention for nothing substantial _every time they
               | open their mouths_ , then there's no airtime left to
               | report on stuff that actually matters.
               | 
               | [1]
               | https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/10/us/politics/hunter-
               | biden-...
               | 
               | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
        
           | taude wrote:
           | As a HN regular, I find Amazon reviews super useful. You just
           | have to understand which ones to put more faith in or not.
           | And how to poke around for the product you want, and not one
           | being paid to be promoted in the search. But it's not
           | insurmountable.
        
           | knallfrosch wrote:
           | "Package arrived within one day, 5 stars."
        
           | jasode wrote:
           | _> They think Amazon reviews are useful_
           | 
           | Amazon reviews are still useful because many times, people
           | will point out some negative aspects and nonobvious defects
           | of the product that I didn't think of. This helps me avoid
           | buying a lot of junk. (My previous mattress shopping example:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24197305)
           | 
           | Yes, reviews can be gamed but there's still some signal in
           | the noise.
           | 
           | On the other hand, many product categories on Amazon have
           | useless reviews because they _group unrelated SKUs together_
           | into 1 page. E.g. different harddrive models of different
           | capacities made across different years and manufactured in
           | different countries of origin. E.g. everybody writing 1-star
           | reviews of the bad Seagate 3TB drives is irrelevant to
           | assessing the other 10TB and 16TB drives. E.g. 24000+
           | combined reviews for unrelated harddrives released across 15+
           | years : https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-IronWolf-12TB-
           | Internal-Drive/...
        
       | mercurialsolo wrote:
       | Anonymity completely destroys the fabric of glassdoor reviews
       | being trustworthy. There definitely is an opportunity to have a
       | more open and transparent feedback culture built around this
       | system of employee - employer relations.
       | 
       | In an era where we are going to see more of tech jobs
       | disappearing (AI and automation kicking in), the effect of
       | maintaining a glassdoor presence is no longer even meaningful for
       | new age companies. For prospective employees, having a meaningful
       | way to have feedback from current employees is a solution that
       | does need to be in place.
        
       | ajross wrote:
       | This is like a lifecycle thing. Review site startups, in their
       | early days, view the reviewers as their customers. People want to
       | know whether X is good or bad, so come tell us! So they construct
       | systems aimed at making sure the reviews are attractive and
       | useful, and everyone loves them.
       | 
       | But over time, ad revenue dries up, the new reviewer stream dries
       | up (because most things are already reviewed), and they start
       | looking for new revenue sources. And one such source is the
       | producers of the reviewed products, who would _love_ to be able
       | to have some control over the content. And thus the downward
       | spiral begins.
       | 
       | We've seen this again and again and again.
        
       | davedx wrote:
       | Roughly matches my experiences with how reviews work on AirBNB,
       | which I'm not allowed to talk about because of their legal dept.
        
       | etothepii wrote:
       | Does this help the company long term? Surely the cognitive
       | disconnect of reading that the company is awesome and then
       | finding out it's awful leads people to quit?
        
         | flir wrote:
         | People stay in jobs long after they should leave.
        
           | oblio wrote:
           | And companies make a lot of money from that delta of:
           | 
           | time when employee actually quits - time when employee should
           | have quit
           | 
           | Heck, entire businesses that would never be profitable
           | otherwise last for <<decades>> like this.
        
       | SillyUsername wrote:
       | Glassdoor encourages employees to review their company, then
       | tells the employer (point 4) to take the employee to court? It's
       | a wonder Glassdoor don't get themselves sued with that policy.
        
       | oofta-boofta wrote:
       | I stopped following Gergely Orosz a long time ago. His tech stuff
       | has/had been pretty great, but he's always simping for corporate
       | tech to the point of obsequiousness and it's a huge turn off for
       | me to read any of his stuff. This tone-deaf, pro-management,
       | anti-worker post just further seals the deal.
        
       | haspok wrote:
       | They should just remove the scoring. All complainers will do a
       | score of 1, all cheerers will do 5.
       | 
       | It is also the case that a company can be a perfect place for
       | some, and a completely wrong place for another. And of course,
       | this is true for each team within the company.
       | 
       | Actual opinions do have a merit, and it is possible to weigh them
       | according to one's perspective or expectations. Eg. a reviewer
       | writes that WFH is not allowed or limited to 1 day per week, I
       | can decide if that bothers me or not. If it doesn't bother me,
       | why would I accept a bad score from someone who wants to WFH?
        
       | jmyeet wrote:
       | This should surprise precisely no one. It's called the Yelp
       | business model and it's been around for 10-15 years. You allow
       | paying customers to remove bad reviews. Shocker. In Yelp's case,
       | you also give paying customers better search visibility.
       | 
       | It's never as straightforward as "if you pay, you can remove bad
       | reviews". It's always couched in some form of plausible
       | deniability, like reviews that violate a ToS or community
       | guidelines in some nebulous way.
        
         | knallfrosch wrote:
         | Also, there's noone combats fake positive reviews on these
         | sites.
         | 
         | Glassdoor won't upset the company buying the fake reviews, the
         | company won't review it and users aren't allowed to.
        
       | softwaredoug wrote:
       | General rule of thumb for all reviews is to ignore the star
       | ratings, read the most helpful negative reviews. Think critically
       | about them. See if there are themes or if they're being
       | unreasonable.
        
         | Silhouette wrote:
         | Although if the reviewed party has any significant ability to
         | influence what the review system shows - which appears to be
         | the case here - then the whole thing is compromised so you
         | can't really trust anything about it at all. The most helpful
         | negative reviews might no longer be there and only ones that
         | look like someone being unreasonable remain for example.
        
           | layer8 wrote:
           | Companies hiring unreasonable people might still be a signal.
           | ;)
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | armchairhacker wrote:
           | The article says pretty much all of the reviews which got
           | removed were the unreasonable ones (rude language, unfounded
           | accusations, and TOS violations). Albeit according to the HR
           | reps, but with context it sounds believable.
        
             | Silhouette wrote:
             | The article also describes numerous unethical-at-best
             | practices that some companies have used to skew reviews
             | positively. Some of those practices were ways to beat the
             | system so that potentially legitimate reviews might get
             | removed on one of the reasonable-looking grounds.
        
               | lazide wrote:
               | Yelp does that too. The only bad reviews I got to stick
               | had clear, unambiguous written evidence and were written
               | like a police report with clear, neutral language and
               | specifics backed by documentation.
               | 
               | The number of folks who can meet that bar are very, very
               | low.
               | 
               | One I did get to stick was the car dealership that tried
               | to scam me into ~$1k in unneeded fluid changes, where I
               | posted the exact times, amounts, and a photo of the
               | written quote (with quote #) they gave me after I
               | demanded it in writing - in the middle of their public
               | showroom where they couldn't try to avoid it.
               | 
               | It's a jungle out there, and yes the review sites are a
               | problem too.
               | 
               | the police are also not very helpful either in many
               | cases. I had someone at Bestbuy steal a VERY expensive TV
               | from me (I ordered it for pickup, but when I got there a
               | few hours later it had 'already been picked up' - and
               | definitely not by me), and got clear self serving
               | bullshit from the store manager, including 'we'll call
               | the police, you don't need to do it' - which they didn't
               | - and went home.
               | 
               | When I called the police later, they required me to drive
               | there (the store was an hour away), and wait for awhile
               | before they'd even dispatch anyone to even take a report,
               | let alone do anything. So figure several hours, just to
               | get a report in.
               | 
               | This was solid felony territory too.
        
               | grugagag wrote:
               | How did your story end? You got your money back
               | immediately or it took a while?
        
               | lazide wrote:
               | I had other things going on in my life that meant I
               | couldn't do what I needed to do in a reasonable amount of
               | time - and unfortunately just got screwed.
               | 
               | I couldn't charge back on the card without a police
               | report during a specific time window (30 days). Filing it
               | after that might have resulted in some action, but I
               | wouldn't likely get my money back.
               | 
               | I suspect it was the store manager, and I wasn't the
               | first one. But I had no real evidence, just a pattern of
               | shifty behavior and lies.
               | 
               | They'd conveniently avoided having cameras in the areas
               | to document what actually happened, and my pickup code
               | had been used to pick it up, so definitely an inside job.
               | I had video evidence I was at home when the supposed
               | pickup happened, but that was it.
               | 
               | So the thief won.
        
         | londons_explore wrote:
         | Thing is... This is gameable too. A competitor can easily come
         | along and post 10 negative reviews all saying similar things
         | like "This company says you get holiday, but the reality is if
         | you ever take even a days holiday then you will forever be
         | blacklisted from promotion. Promotion is strictly for people
         | who work 8am till 8pm, 6 days a week, 365 days a year. And to
         | trap you in, they'll offer a stock vesting schedule that means
         | you have to throw away a lot of money to change companies.".
        
           | brookst wrote:
           | Do you think that happens?
        
             | bentlegen wrote:
             | Given that Uber was once caught booking (and canceling)
             | thousands of fake rides on Lyft -- seems perfectly
             | plausible.
             | 
             | https://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-
             | ride-r...
        
           | lazide wrote:
           | Sure, but that is legally actionable and can be falsified or
           | not (as would the company actually doing that). _relatively_
           | easy to verify during an interview too (does everyone look
           | like a burnt out zombie?).
        
             | BossingAround wrote:
             | As if Glassdoor was amenable to going to all the trouble of
             | talking to various employees at a company to judge whether
             | 10 reviews all saying the same thing are correct or not.
             | And then, potentially facing a law suit for their decision.
        
               | lazide wrote:
               | I meant easy to verify for the consumer of the reviews.
               | 
               | Like the Amazon reviews talking about a bicycle when the
               | produce someone is looking at is a random usb stick.
               | 
               | And if a competitor targeted someone, the Glassdoor
               | reviews should be subpeonable, and there is a legal
               | framework for extracting compensation in that case. Takes
               | a lot of time and effort though.
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | Same as for Amazon reviews.
        
         | jredwards wrote:
         | My opinion has always been that Glassdoor is a useless resource
         | in every regard.
        
           | smcin wrote:
           | It was great pre-2010-ish, and before it was compromised by
           | its business model and subsequent acquisition; but those were
           | always inevitable.
           | 
           | Consider the proportion of GD's revenue from employer premium
           | subscriptions vs from jobseekers (job listings, profile
           | views). When there's lots of hiring, the jobseeker-related
           | revenue will prevent the worst excesses. But in a downturn,
           | there's less disincentive to not live off charging employers
           | premium for reputation-washing.
           | 
           | [It's not easy running a for-profit technical jobs board, let
           | alone doing it ethically and delivering growth; StackOverflow
           | Jobs was sadly killed off in 2022. One of SO Jobs's
           | innovations (other than almost zero on-site advertising) was
           | it allowed you directly interact with the hiring mgrs, so
           | you'd skip days/weeks of non-technical preliminary
           | interviews.]
        
           | goostavos wrote:
           | Let's not go crazy. It's great for mining which leetcode (or
           | class of leetcode) problems you're going to be asked in the
           | interview.
        
         | marcinzm wrote:
         | I've found this to be pretty indicative of company cultures and
         | issues based on companies I've worked at.
        
       | DelightOne wrote:
       | Is there a Meta Review for Glassdoor like for Amazon? Something
       | that records how many reviews were removed.
        
       | jedberg wrote:
       | In summary, if they have a bad score on Glassdoor, they are
       | probably a bad place to work. If they have a good score on
       | Glassdoor, it tells you nothing, because there are many ways it
       | can be gamed up.
        
       | thejackgoode wrote:
       | Glassdoor is one good candidate for "disruption". Anyone knows a
       | competing alternative for a global workplace review website?
        
         | bradleyjg wrote:
         | The business model is garbage. The only possible source of
         | revenue is the very companies that are being reviewed. Either
         | you offer some benefit to those companies, in which case you
         | are untrustworthy, or you don't, in which case you are broke.
         | 
         | See, also, Yelp & TripAdvisor.
        
         | scrame wrote:
         | Blind, but I can't imagine why anyone would trust a site that
         | requires you to register with your work email.
        
           | robertlagrant wrote:
           | It's a bit of a catch-22: why would they believe you're
           | actually an employee of a company if you don't have a work
           | email address for that company?
        
           | capableweb wrote:
           | Blind is nothing like Glassdoor, two very different platforms
           | which seemingly two very different goals.
        
             | cornercasechase wrote:
             | Really? Because Blind seems like a much better Glassdoor if
             | your goal is to understand what it's actually like inside a
             | company.
        
               | devnullbrain wrote:
               | Only a small number of very large companies.
        
               | capableweb wrote:
               | Blind requires you to have a company email in order to
               | even participate, meaning if you left the company, you no
               | longer can sign up for Blind. So if you want to review a
               | company, how would you?
               | 
               | Blind also targets having communities for people inside
               | companies to talk, and facilitating discussion. Glassdoor
               | is mainly about reviewing companies.
        
               | cornercasechase wrote:
               | If I want to know if a company is toxic, Blind is a lot
               | more useful than Glassdoor. People will speak the truth
               | while they're at the company.
        
               | pmoriarty wrote:
               | Will they? If I had something very negative to say I'd
               | fear getting fired while working at the company, but will
               | have no such fear after I leave.
               | 
               | A site that requires your company email before you can
               | post a negative review sounds like a honeypot.
        
               | withinboredom wrote:
               | A manager on my old company's blind (they never
               | revalidate your email apparently) just posted the other
               | day how the CEO asked the managers 'who in their team
               | would you not hire today'. They took that list and fired
               | all of them.
               | 
               | I imagine HR would absolutely love to take that down.
        
               | cornfutes wrote:
               | > So if you want to review a company, how would you?
               | 
               | So have up to a year after you leave the company I
               | believe.
        
         | capableweb wrote:
         | Let's brainstorm some solutions to some of the problems that
         | would arise with another glassdoor clone:
         | 
         | - How do you verify that the reviews are actually from
         | current/former employees?
         | 
         | - Can the data be open for the public to verify while
         | protecting the people leaving reviews?
         | 
         | - How could the service get funding? Donation model?
         | 
         | - How would you overcome the initial issues with trust?
         | 
         | - How do you prevent companies from manipulating the
         | scores/reviews?
         | 
         | - How do you handle legal challenges if you're based on
         | something like a donation model? Companies would surely sue you
         | at one point or another if they cannot take down reviews
         | themselves
        
           | pzo wrote:
           | >- How do you verify that the reviews are actually from
           | current/former employees?
           | 
           | People who write review would have to upload recent pay slip
           | or after when committing review provide their email at
           | employee to receive some passcode active within 2 months
           | 
           | >- Can the data be open for the public to verify while
           | protecting the people leaving reviews?
           | 
           | Verification explained above. Token to employee at employer
           | domain email would be anonymous. Reviews would be randomly
           | visible within 1-8 weeks after submission.
           | 
           | >- How could the service get funding? Donation model?
           | 
           | Jobs advertisement ads and website getting commission if
           | someone got hired from advertised jobs like most agency get.
           | Hired person would get small bonus for confirming got
           | accepted.
           | 
           | >- How would you overcome the initial issues with trust?
           | 
           | Just reliable reviews that got verified with payslip and
           | domain email and maybe even passport just to make sure
           | employer doesn't create dozens of fake payslips and domain
           | emails.
           | 
           | >- How do you prevent companies from manipulating the
           | scores/reviews?
           | 
           | See above
           | 
           | >- How do you handle legal challenges if you're based on
           | something like a donation model? Companies would surely sue
           | you at one point or another if they cannot take down reviews
           | themselves
           | 
           | Just create account in some law friendly country. Don't store
           | any user data such as passport, payslip, user employee emails
           | etc - after verifying just delete those
        
             | xaitv wrote:
             | > People who write review would have to upload recent pay
             | slip or after when committing review provide their email at
             | employee to receive some passcode active within 2 months
             | 
             | If I was leaving a review, even if I cared about it a lot,
             | and I'd have to upload a recent pay slip I'd just leave the
             | site and not bother with it anymore.
        
               | icepat wrote:
               | Any data-breach would be an utter nightmare for the users
               | with that sort of info on the site.
        
               | pzo wrote:
               | The idea would be not to store those data on server only
               | process it and keep anonymous data or even only
               | aggregated. Some processing maybe could be done also on
               | the client or payslip user name masked after verifying it
               | matches passport holder locally before sending to server.
               | Other option using blockchain with open source repo.
               | 
               | I know a lot of HN users are in theory very distrustful
               | about anything new but in practise still:
               | 
               | - using VPNs (even paid one don't guarantee your data is
               | safe)
               | 
               | - tor
               | 
               | - open source password managers (w/o reading source code)
               | 
               | - Dropbox etc
               | 
               | - compiling random open source code first without reading
               | 
               | - having no issue telling hour rate or daily rate
               | recruiter on linkedin when asked and attaching resume.
               | 
               | So what's so very sensitive in payslip if you already
               | providing this kind of information to any recruiter?
        
               | capableweb wrote:
               | > So what's so very sensitive in payslip if you already
               | providing this kind of information to any recruiter?
               | 
               | I know 0% people out of my circle who would share
               | payslips with any potential employers, even less any
               | recruiter, while we frequently talk about our pay with
               | each other and co-workers at our work.
        
               | pzo wrote:
               | Ok but genuine question why? Does in other countries
               | payslip has any other more sensitive information than
               | name, company and salary? Any more sensitive information
               | than CV you attaching to recruiter?
        
               | smcin wrote:
               | Yes: in the US, your SSN (or EIN) is on every single
               | paystub. (You could always manually redact it if some
               | third-party asks for a copy).
               | 
               | By the way, another huge reason: images of paystubs can
               | be and have been used by identity thieves to open fake
               | accounts/loans, remotely.
        
             | marcinzm wrote:
             | >Jobs advertisement ads and website getting commission if
             | someone got hired from advertised jobs like most agency
             | get. Hired person would get small bonus for confirming got
             | accepted.
             | 
             | >Just create account in some law friendly country. Don't
             | store any user data such as passport, payslip, user
             | employee emails etc - after verifying just delete those
             | 
             | The more you try to detach from the countries that will
             | (possibly) make you retain that information (or block you
             | from collecting it) the harder it is to do business with
             | companies from those countries (or to enforce contracts
             | against them for things like commissions).
        
             | Tade0 wrote:
             | >- How could the service get funding? Donation model?
             | 
             | I have a more hellish proposal: want to publish a review?
             | Pay. Want to see reviews? Pay.
             | 
             | Small amounts of course, but I would like to see someone
             | actually sign off assigning a budget for something like
             | this in a sufficiently large organization.
        
             | ztrww wrote:
             | > Jobs advertisement ads and website getting commission if
             | someone got hired from advertised jobs like most agency
             | get.
             | 
             | If you rely on income from the same companies that are
             | reviewed on your site it will inevitably become just as bad
             | as glassdoor
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | >People who write review would have to upload recent pay
             | slip or after when committing review provide their email at
             | employee to receive some passcode active within 2 months
             | 
             | No sane person is uploading a pay slip so they can leave a
             | review on some internet site. In fact, I'd daresay the only
             | reviews you'd see at that point are from individuals (or
             | companies) with sufficient incentive to generate
             | convincing-looking fake pay stubs.
        
               | pzo wrote:
               | Would they also risk making convincing fake passport that
               | has the same name as fake payslip? Not a lawyer but this
               | probsbly could be considered a fraud.
        
             | foota wrote:
             | > People who write review would have to upload recent pay
             | slip or after when committing review provide their email at
             | employee to receive some passcode active within 2 months
             | 
             | The employer controls their email domain.
        
             | oblio wrote:
             | Your model would get you a grand total of 5 users.
        
               | listenallyall wrote:
               | if we're not counting the internal devs & testers, I'd
               | take the under
        
           | supriyo-biswas wrote:
           | HN has many entrepreneurial types so I don't think this
           | suggestion would go over particularly well, but entrusting a
           | government body with some of these functions would seem to
           | take care of the identity verification and review
           | manipulation part of it. The government already knows about
           | your income sources and employment status, so it would not
           | expose any more information. As for transparency, maybe
           | publish review hashes similar to CT logs?
        
             | mathieuh wrote:
             | I think any government doing this is very unlikely.
             | Governments aim to make things easier for capital, not
             | labour. Where I am it's actually technically illegal for
             | you to even discuss your salary with your fellow workers.
        
               | ztrww wrote:
               | So governments do, some don't, some occasionally try to
               | do both.
               | 
               | where I am not only are salary ranges mandatory on job
               | ads but company also have to publicly disclose a lot of
               | stats wages/salaries. Median, average, quartiles etc. for
               | all full time and part time employees.
        
               | oblio wrote:
               | Where are you located?
        
               | 2devnull wrote:
               | He can't even say that.
        
           | ben_w wrote:
           | Make a Glassdoor competitor called "Goodheart" and see how
           | many people get the reference.
        
         | capkutay wrote:
         | Why is it a good candidate to disrupt? 1 year in, the
         | "disruptor" would run into the exact same problems if they
         | reach any meaningful scale or adoption.
         | 
         | Asking happy team members to review your company is no
         | different than apps asking frequent users to review on the App
         | Store.
        
         | blitzar wrote:
         | Glassdoor (and similar) is a waste of time, reviews are all
         | heavily biased at best or outright paid for lies. Amazon
         | reviews are barely useful - that reviews of workplaces, the
         | average tenure of which is 4.1 years can be any better is just
         | a pipedream.
        
         | janalsncm wrote:
         | Before trying to disrupt any product, it would be good to
         | identify the failures of competitors, determine whether they're
         | actually "failures" (i.e. will people pay for an improvement)
         | and make your solutions to those issues part of your core
         | identity.
         | 
         | To say Glassdoor is a good candidate for disruption _is not the
         | same thing_ as saying they have some problems. Every product
         | has some problems.
        
           | 2devnull wrote:
           | Meetup is an example. There are many.
        
           | twelve40 wrote:
           | here is an actual failure: when i'm looking at say Meta
           | salaries, i still see no indicator or filter of how recent
           | this data is. Are the numbers that they are showing an
           | average of all reports starting from 2007? which may have
           | like doubled since then, 15 years ago? This renders the
           | salary data _completely useless_ , you can't do apples-to-
           | apples with a more recent company like OpenAI that doesn't
           | have 15 years worth of old useless numbers averaged into it.
           | It could be solved by adding some kind of a pretty basic
           | recency filter, but in 15 years of their existence they
           | haven't bothered.
        
       | Madmallard wrote:
       | companies should not able to do anything other than raise a
       | complaint when it seems like they're being unfairly review-bombed
        
       | hathym wrote:
       | that is why I only read bad reviews.
        
       | rybosworld wrote:
       | A truly honest review site seems like one of the toughest open
       | problems to solve.
        
       | andsoitis wrote:
       | > I've talked with CTOs and HR professionals at 5 tech companies,
       | who all tell me they're doing something similar to having set a
       | target score to improve to, or did so in the past. I'm not naming
       | these companies as I believe this is a widespread trend that's
       | not limited to just a few players
       | 
       | So the author is extrapolating from gossip.
        
       | AngeloAnolin wrote:
       | Given that it is Glassdoor's interest to provide employers with
       | pretty much the power to veto negative reviews, then the data
       | points in terms of satisfaction will greatly be skewed favorably
       | to the companies.
       | 
       | While we can acknowledge that a lot of negative reviews will also
       | stem from employees who were terminated / laid off / dismissed as
       | the company may be undergoing financial / economic challenges,
       | there can also be a lot of valid ones.
       | 
       | But then again, each individual (who will do a review) knows the
       | adage to _never burn the bridges_, hence, either they use
       | Glassdoor as a venting platform, or have the courage to stand up
       | and speak their minds.
       | 
       | Unless there's a net benefit upside to the individual providing a
       | negative (albeit constructive) criticism, it'll really be hard to
       | weed out what's really helpful from what is written out of anger
       | and desperation.
        
       | golemotron wrote:
       | It would be interesting to compare this to Yelp.
        
       | paulbjensen wrote:
       | I kept tabs on a company where I used to work and when I got an
       | email from Glassdoor about a review of that company with the
       | title "stalled", I naturally wanted to click through, but by that
       | point the review was gone.
       | 
       | I then started to screenshot any new reviews, ad saw that some of
       | the negative ones also got removed after time.
       | 
       | You could say that Glassdoor is more like a rose-tinted window.
        
       | lopkeny12ko wrote:
       | So, for all the critics in this thread: how do you propose we
       | deal with current and former employees intentionally
       | misrepresenting the company?
       | 
       | If employees have free reign to say whatever they want, truth or
       | not, is it not reasonable for employers to be able to vet the
       | contents of those reviews?
        
         | jobs_throwaway wrote:
         | Let the readers decide for themselves how much stock to put in
         | those claims. If a user can prove they worked for the company,
         | IMO they should be able to say their piece about the company.
        
       | raymondgh wrote:
       | If you work or worked at a startup, wouldn't you want to leave a
       | positive review regardless of your experience in order to
       | increase the odds of your equity being worth anything?
        
         | hankchinaski wrote:
         | Like if leaving a positive review on glass door has any
         | meaningful effect on your equity
        
       | mytailorisrich wrote:
       | My experience is this: " _Companies encouraging staff to leave
       | more positive reviews is a common way to increase the score._ "
       | 
       | I see many reviews that are complete positive BS and are aimed at
       | increasing the company's score, either to offset previous bad
       | reviews, or because the company is hiring and wants to look good.
       | 
       | I would not say that this is "smart"... You might get people to
       | accept offers but if the work environment is bad they'll leave so
       | the end result is just to increase turnover and to trash the
       | company's reputation (which will make hiring more difficult).
       | 
       | IMHO companies should forget about Glassdoor reviews and focus on
       | the actual work environment. But of course the reality is that
       | the Glassdoor score is a nice, simple metric that HR can boast
       | about improving... so that's what happens, instead.
        
         | aziaziazi wrote:
         | I wish more companies also focus on their product instead of
         | their marketing. In reality the money is a simple (and
         | desirable) metric and become the only one as soon as market is
         | reach. Like if the new moto would be << create a great product
         | until it sells >>.
        
         | soco wrote:
         | As a job seeker I would not just look at the general score -
         | that's a very poor preparation for interviews. I would
         | recommend reading the reviews and I'd start with the bad. Most
         | of this will be obviously disgruntled nonsense but at some
         | point you start getting real information as unhappy people have
         | less reluctance to share.
        
           | pmoriarty wrote:
           | _" Most of this will be obviously disgruntled nonsense but at
           | some point you start getting real information as unhappy
           | people have less reluctance to share"_
           | 
           | I could find no way to tell the real from the fake. Anyone
           | can write anything.
        
             | soco wrote:
             | I read the reviews of my company (big, so many reviews) and
             | I find them generally spot-on. Again, with obvious filters:
             | if one gives 1/5 on everything it tells me to not take it
             | very seriously. Same for 5/5 reviews.
        
             | Brian_K_White wrote:
             | Detecting fakes is the wrong question. You don't even try
             | to tell if any particular individual reviews are real or
             | fake.
             | 
             | You just read a bunch, and see if they are random, or if
             | there is a pattern where many have something in common.
             | 
             | If 70% of the negative reviews say anything at all about
             | aimless priorities and never being allowed to finish a job
             | properly before being moved to the next thing, that company
             | definitely has that specific kind of problem.
        
           | mytailorisrich wrote:
           | The thing is that it's all the same package: Good scores and
           | glowing reviews that have little to do with reality. I agree
           | that it is useful to seek the bad reviews to check how their
           | content compares with the good ones, but I think it's very
           | difficult to get an accurate picture overall.
        
             | eastbound wrote:
             | Even with the best intentions, no-one can make a good
             | picture of anything in life, because there are so many
             | different facets, even two team members can experience the
             | same work as an opportunity for careers or a stressful
             | experience with a boss expecting too much.
             | 
             | The bad reviews show the failure modes of the company.
        
             | krageon wrote:
             | In my experience if you can find a topic most bad reviews
             | talk about and all positive reviews avoid (or directly
             | contradict), it is probably true. Whether you find this an
             | issue is something you can then decide for yourself.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | oblio wrote:
         | > I would not say that this is "smart"... You might get people
         | to accept offers but if the work environment is bad they'll
         | leave so the end result is just to increase turnover and to
         | trash the company's reputation (which will make hiring more
         | difficult).
         | 
         | They can kick the can down the road and make money.
         | 
         | IBM coasted on its reputation for decades and even now it's a
         | big company and still respected in many arenas.
         | 
         | Reputational damage is hyper overrated.
         | 
         | The average individual doesn't have the time or inclination to
         | do research.
        
           | pmoriarty wrote:
           | _" The average individual doesn't have the time or
           | inclination to do research."_
           | 
           | I took the time to do research on the companies I interviewed
           | with, but the reviews on sites like Glassdoor are completely
           | untrustworthy.
           | 
           | Virtually every company had reviews which praised them to the
           | moon, and reviews that said they were a company from hell.
           | Which to believe?
        
           | lolinder wrote:
           | > The average individual doesn't have the time or inclination
           | to do research.
           | 
           | This is probably true for small-to-medium sized purchases,
           | but for hiring? I suspect people are much more inclined to do
           | their research when they're about to trust their livelihood
           | to a company, especially in fields where they have other
           | options.
        
             | oblio wrote:
             | True, but what happens looks a lot like this:
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36082954
             | 
             | And then people are back to judging the financial offers
             | and their own gut based on the interview, I imagine.
             | 
             | The information asymmetry is massive between companies and
             | employees.
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | And the reality is that at large companies people are in
               | roles and with groups they love (at least for a time) and
               | people are in roles or with groups they can't wait to get
               | out of.
        
       | jacknews wrote:
       | "Send a reminder to new joiners during the first few months,
       | asking them to leave a review on Glassdoor. This is a smart
       | approach, as new joiners are often in their honeymoon period, and
       | are likely to leave a positive review."
       | 
       | LOL, more to the point, they are often still in a probation
       | period, so maybe it's a case of 'make a positive review ... if
       | you know what's good for you'
        
       | boringg wrote:
       | Is Glassdoor even relevant anymore? Seriously asking. It was
       | maybe a decade ago but seemed to limp along badly damaged after
       | everyone figured out how to game it and they took money to scrub
       | reviews.
       | 
       | It's similar to yelp or any review based app.
        
       | gnicholas wrote:
       | How does Glasdoor validate that a reviewer actually worked at a
       | given company?
        
       | jschuur wrote:
       | Can GlassDoor visualize a company's score over time, including
       | the amount of removed reviews to highlight when companies try and
       | improve their score by getting reviews removed?
        
         | capableweb wrote:
         | The perception of neutrality is very important for platforms
         | like Glassdoor, otherwise no one would trust it. Showing any
         | sort of visualization that would reveal that they remove
         | reviews would be bad for this.
        
       | steveBK123 wrote:
       | HR has long since figured out how to game Glassdoor.
       | 
       | A good metrics is # of reviews versus # of employees.
       | 
       | You'll see some companies with such high numbers, that somehow
       | 10% of current employees have left glowing reviews. Digging
       | deeper they are mostly "less than 1 year" and terse "good
       | company" type reviews.
        
         | blitzar wrote:
         | > terse "good company" type reviews
         | 
         | "I am in good health and have been well treated and fed since
         | my abduction"
        
           | analognoise wrote:
           | >> terse "good company" type reviews >"I am in good health
           | and have been well treated and fed since my abduction"
           | 
           | I make sure to watch for blinked messages, like T-O-R-T-U-R-E
           | 
           | https://youtu.be/rufnWLVQcKg
        
         | Silhouette wrote:
         | _Digging deeper they are mostly "less than 1 year" and terse
         | "good company" type reviews._
         | 
         | Some of the practices described in the article are simply fraud
         | or gagging. Where that kind of behaviour is not explicitly
         | illegal already it probably should be. Preventing employees
         | from giving honest and factually correct feedback about their
         | employers is almost never in the public interest. That's not
         | even an anti-business position because preventing fair
         | criticism of bad employers is also against the interests of
         | other employers who don't do those bad things.
        
       | Eumenes wrote:
       | Companies bribe Glassdoor and those "best places to work" lists
       | with fees, ability to remove negative reviews, etc. Hacker
       | news/Blind/Reddit seem to be better for discussing how its like
       | to work at a company . .. for now
        
       | ouid wrote:
       | You just cannot organize a rating system into a company. The more
       | trust you accumulate, the more money there is to be made in
       | selling out.
        
         | paulddraper wrote:
         | Really? I still go to Amazon to read reviews. (Even if I don't
         | purchase from Amazon.)
         | 
         | It's not as helpful as it used to be, but it's still helpful
         | enough to be worth it.
        
       | emmanueloga_ wrote:
       | Maybe we could popularize written reviews and tagging it with
       | schema.org data [1].
       | 
       | That way:
       | 
       | * You own the review
       | 
       | * You can decide to take it down or not (harder for HR teams to
       | tamper with them).
       | 
       | * It would be on the reader to decide if the review is spam or
       | not.
       | 
       | There are plenty of pages where a review can be published for
       | free, for instance, github pages.
       | 
       | 1: https://schema.org/EmployerReview
        
         | joshstrange wrote:
         | Personally I have no interest in tying my name to a review. In
         | fact I've still not reviewed a few places from my past because
         | I don't fancy getting a call/email from that employer yelling
         | at me for telling the truth. I've mostly worked at smaller
         | companies so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put 2 and 2
         | together and I'd have to lie about my position/salary to keep
         | it from being immediately recognizable, probably even need to
         | write "creatively" to avoid them telling it was me.
         | 
         | Even if I hated working somewhere I'd never publicly blast them
         | under my real name. Near zero upside and unlimited downside. At
         | best I prevent others from going through what I did (IF they
         | check reviews, IF they believe me, etc), at worst someone knows
         | someone who knows someone who torpedos my career/prospects at
         | another company. It doesn't matter if that retaliation is
         | illegal, I'd never know or be able to prove it. Lastly, I have
         | to put food on the table, if my current job goes under or
         | opportunities dry up I'd go back to company that I disliked to
         | make ends meet. Why would I burn that bridge?
         | 
         | People rarely leave companies because they are happy where they
         | are so I have trouble seeing anyone wanting to sign their real
         | name to a review about a company they left. Like I said, near
         | zero upside and unlimited downsides.
        
           | emmanueloga_ wrote:
           | This is very fair, and since I never pay attention to
           | glassdoor reviews, somehow I assumed they weren't anonymous
           | -\\_(tsu)_/-
        
       | indymike wrote:
       | People will tolerate a lot of dysfunction for money. When being
       | paid, they'll probably even be willing to say good things, even
       | though that's not what they really think.
       | 
       | When you take away the money, they are going to share their
       | experiences and real thoughts.
        
       | selimnairb wrote:
       | So Glassdoor is running a sort of (reputation) protection racket
       | against employers while simultaneously running a potential honey
       | pot against employees. Brilliant.
        
       | hankchinaski wrote:
       | Glassdoor has become pretty much useless as a source, especially
       | salaries and now reviews
        
         | __turbobrew__ wrote:
         | Levels.fyi for salaries and blind for reviews is what I have
         | been doing for a while now.
        
         | marcinzm wrote:
         | They require you to add a salary/review every year to keep
         | using the site but don't verify anything. So it's actually
         | easier to put in some fake numbers than bother putting in real
         | ones.
        
       | lastangryman wrote:
       | Surely a simple solution here is for Glassdoor to show removed
       | reviews with a simple placeholder text and a reason for removal.
       | 
       | Glassdoor could also account for these in its overall rankings,
       | and show a graph plotting number of removals against time. That
       | way companies legitimately removing invalid reviews can continue
       | to do so, but those gaming the system would have that activity
       | show up. If they plotted submitted reviews as well you could see
       | when these periods of mass removals and "forced" positive reviews
       | happened.
       | 
       | Glassdoor could also provide a short summary of "X reviews
       | removed in the last Y days - this is lower/higher/inline with the
       | average".
       | 
       | All of this is easily within the power of Glassdoor to do and
       | keeps the platform fair for both parties.
        
         | shp0ngle wrote:
         | You cannot publish libel even if you preface it with "this is a
         | libel".
        
           | lazide wrote:
           | You can certainly say 'in my opinion...' however, as long as
           | you're not making statements that can be factually proven
           | false.
           | 
           | 'In my opinion the New York Times is a pile of lying garbage'
           | or whatever for instance isn't libel.
        
             | brookst wrote:
             | Are you saying Glassdoor should rewrite user posts that the
             | company claims are libelous?
             | 
             | Honestly I'm not sure how many negative posts could
             | reasonably be considered libel, but for those that
             | genuinely could be, Glassdoor is probably better served by
             | just removing them than wading into liability both from
             | posting and from modifying them.
        
               | lazide wrote:
               | Nope. That should be between the company and whoever did
               | the post, frankly.
               | 
               | I don't see how Glassdoor would have any liability unless
               | they were somehow presenting it as their own opinion.
               | 
               | They might want to take it down as part of overall
               | community moderation if it violates their TOS of course,
               | say if it includes cursing, or has racist remarks or
               | whatever.
               | 
               | I'm pointing out libel has a definition, and posting what
               | is clearly an opinion isn't it. It has to be making
               | statements which are presenting false facts as true.
               | 
               | That they'll almost certainly find ways to take down
               | 'undesired' messages that paying customers don't like
               | seems like something they do, which is shitty and
               | undermines their nominal reason for existing, is... sad
               | but seems to be what is going on. Nothing to do with
               | libel.
        
               | chickenpotpie wrote:
               | * user posts anonymous review
               | 
               | * Company tells Glassdoor the review is false and to take
               | it down
               | 
               | * Glassdoor says the review is from an anonymous user and
               | not them, so they should sue the user * Company asks for
               | the name of the user so they can sue them for libel.
               | 
               | * Glassdoor refuses to turn over the user because it
               | ruins the anonymity
               | 
               | * Company sues Glassdoor for libel because they refuse to
               | produce proof they didn't create the libel. Glassdoor now
               | has to face the lawsuit or turn over the user and destroy
               | the anonymous premise of their website thats fundamental
               | to their business model
        
               | idiotsecant wrote:
               | This is not how the law works, and if it was no website
               | on the entire internet would be able to print user
               | comments of any kind.
        
               | lazide wrote:
               | Also, Glassdoor has no issues turning over user details
               | in case of a subpoena I believe?
        
             | vasco wrote:
             | Everything you say is your opinion, the prefix does
             | nothing. Even if you're "just stating facts" it's still
             | just your opinion of how reality unfolded.
        
               | lazide wrote:
               | My understanding is that the courts have a different take
               | on it.
               | 
               | Stating 'x killed y', even if _I wholeheartedly believe
               | it_ is libel if it turns out someone else killed y, and x
               | had reputational damage due to my statement. I'm
               | asserting something is true, full stop.
               | 
               | Stating 'in my opinion, x killed y', if I wholeheartedly
               | believe it, is not libel, even in the same situation,
               | because even if x did not kill y, it is still true it was
               | my opinion that it was true, and I was being clear about
               | that. I wasn't asserting facts, I was asserting my
               | opinion. Opinions are protected, as long as they can't be
               | confused with false assertions of facts.
               | 
               | Now, if it turns out there is evidence that I didn't
               | actually have that opinion and it was all a game to
               | destroy x's reputation, I might still get hit.
               | 
               | It's the same reason 'allegedly' gets used by the press
               | so much when someone gets arrested.
               | 
               | Regardless of what the courts find later, it was indeed
               | alleged. And that matters if someone tries to come after
               | them later. Which happens.
               | 
               | The news sells itself as making factual reports (except
               | for 'entertainment' or 'editorial' sections), and can't
               | get away with saying it's all just an opinion.
               | 
               | If you have pointers to case law that disagrees, I'd much
               | appreciate it!
        
               | barrkel wrote:
               | It's not quite the same thing - it's under oath, rather
               | than public speech - but in the Alex Jones, Sandy Hook
               | libel case, the Judge Gamble admonished Jones:
               | 
               |  _"You believe everything you say is true, but your
               | beliefs do not make something true," Gamble said. "That
               | is that is what we're doing here. Just because you claim
               | to think something is true does not make it true. It does
               | not protect you. It is not allowed. You're under oath.
               | That means things must actually be true when you say
               | them."_
               | 
               | Quoted here and elsewhere:
               | https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/alex-
               | jones...
               | 
               | I'm not a lawyer and don't know American libel law so I
               | can't speak to that. I will say there's a big difference
               | between using "allegedly" and "believe". Belief in what
               | you say being your opinion is implicit (unless, of
               | course, you're lying). You have no access to facts
               | outside your opinion. It's the nature of your statement
               | which indicates whether it's a statement of fact or
               | opinion, not whether you say "in your opinion" or not.
               | "Allegedly" has a very different purpose; it imputes the
               | statement of fact to someone else. Someone else has
               | stated (in their opinion) a fact; they _alleged_ it.
               | Rather than qualifying a statement as a belief, it
               | qualifies it as the truth of it being someone else 's
               | responsibility.
        
         | dehrmann wrote:
         | They can also detect when employers excessively flag. I'm not
         | sure if that means they pause their flagging privileges for 6
         | months, show it as a metric, or something else.
        
         | hn2017 wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | lozenge wrote:
         | Glassdoor runs a job board, they want the appearance of
         | neutrality not the actual achievement of it.
        
         | ritzaco wrote:
         | You think glassdoor wants to be fair to both parties when one
         | party (business) pays them in order to help exploit the other
         | party (employee)?
         | 
         | Maybe it sounds cynical, but that is the business model.
        
           | spacemadness wrote:
           | Yelp did (does?) this same thing. So many of these type of
           | companies are run by unethical "business leaders" in that
           | their business model is to hold data hostage and filter it in
           | the right way for higher paying clients.
        
             | dicknuckle wrote:
             | BBB as well
        
           | darth_avocado wrote:
           | I only refer blind reviews now. Keeps things pretty honest.
        
           | wahnfrieden wrote:
           | I've been designing a worker-owned (both the startup and the
           | user data owned by those 'worker' users) Glassdoor
           | alternative. Wonder about how to grow interest in it. Pay
           | sharing is another useful feature of Glassdoor that could be
           | done better in a worker-centric way.
           | 
           | Another aspect of it is to refer/resell self-hosting for
           | users to completely own their own data (such as Bunny CDN
           | which has very wallet-friendly prepaid schemes and a referral
           | program) so they don't have to worry about what the service
           | owner does. It would then be a kind of decentralized network
           | of mini Glassdoors about the workers current or past
           | employers, where one worker would spin it up and their peers
           | can use. Each would decide what to leave public-facing and
           | private-facing for the workers, and could even monetize for
           | the workers via selling their data as Glassdoor does for
           | things like market comp survey data so that workers could
           | privately share comp data amongst each other and publicly
           | sell access to extra anonymized summaries of that data.
           | 
           | This would be tied together into a user friendly iOS/macOS
           | app to manage the deployment of the site. How does that
           | sound?
        
             | smoldesu wrote:
             | > This would be tied together into a user friendly
             | iOS/macOS app
             | 
             | Why? Providing a web client would drastically expand your
             | potential customer-base.
        
               | wahnfrieden wrote:
               | The web client would be for most users, the native
               | iOS/macOS client would be for the smaller group that
               | manages the deployments (would be one person at a company
               | or in a friend group). I'm working on cross-plat Swift
               | strategies to bring this to Windows later.
        
               | smoldesu wrote:
               | I'm still confused. I can't deploy or buy your app
               | without iOS or MacOS?
        
               | wahnfrieden wrote:
               | It's a good point, I'll find a good way to start earlier
               | with cross-plat deployment management. Between the two of
               | us we have strong fullstack skills in web and iOS/Apple
               | ecosystem. Apple App Store distribution and IAP are a
               | strong part of our typical app strategies (I'm able to
               | drive huge user growth via App Store) but this approach
               | for this idea needs more thought because the deploy-
               | manager person for this app wouldn't be the one we'd
               | charge IAP to. I'm not actually sure how to make money
               | off this idea yet.
               | 
               | It's also potentially linux-runnable (the management
               | tools) with a native apple frontend, then later can
               | explore bringing to win/web
               | 
               | I've been moving more of my iOS app core biz logic to JS
               | and exploring cross plat Swift for running more across
               | web and windows, while still leaning hard into the nice
               | parts of Apple ecosystem, so that whatever solution I
               | find for this is easier
               | 
               | We're also doing an app using https://github.com/live-
               | codes/livecodes to move a lot more languages/envs
               | capability into the client which might enable some good
               | web and ios cross plat capabilities.
               | 
               | Anyway besides the platform question, interested in any
               | other feedback from anyone
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | bazmattaz wrote:
           | Yes exactly. Same as TrustPilot. If you pay for their top
           | tier you can remove reviews that go against their TOS, funny
           | thing is they let you the customer decide if the review goes
           | against the TOS.
           | 
           | Complete shambles
        
             | gnicholas wrote:
             | Does anyone put stock in TrustPilot reviews? I have seen
             | some companies brag about them and wondered if they are
             | actually trusted elsewhere (I'm in the US).
        
           | byby wrote:
           | [dead]
        
         | okl wrote:
         | I think a first question could be if it is in Glassdoor's
         | interest to be fair/objective for both parties. I would assume
         | that users are more likely to visit and engage when drama,
         | conflict and emotions are to be found in the reviews. It also
         | gives companies an incentive to respond on the platform because
         | of the reputational damage.
        
           | hyperdimension wrote:
           | To your first question: not unless employees (as a group) are
           | willing to pay Glassdoor more than the employers. The
           | economics are biased toward the employers unfortunately. See
           | Yelp as another example.
        
         | cgb223 wrote:
         | Who pays Glassdoor to keep it in business?
         | 
         | Glassdoor wants to make that group happy so they can keep
         | making money
        
           | Lio wrote:
           | The Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
           | 
           | If Glassdoor's real customers are companies using it for
           | hiring then that's who they will prioritise unless that
           | becomes an existential threat to their reputation.
        
         | hedora wrote:
         | It looks like archive.org scrapes reviews:
         | 
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20200625025452/https://www.glass...
         | 
         | (Hey, I wonder why twitter's CEO rating in 2023 is almost
         | 100%-(rating in 2020))
         | 
         | I wonder if their scraper goes deep enough to let a third party
         | list compute a list of removed reviews. Honestly, that seems
         | like better signal than the non-reviewed reviews at this point.
        
         | lisasays wrote:
         | _All of this is easily within the power of Glassdoor to do and
         | keeps the platform fair for both parties._
         | 
         | Indeed -- assuming that Glassdoor actually wants to be "fair"
         | and informative, in some meaningful sense.
         | 
         | Unfortunately its business model stands in the way of that.
        
         | pmoriarty wrote:
         | _" Surely a simple solution here is for Glassdoor to show
         | removed reviews with a simple placeholder text and a reason for
         | removal."_
         | 
         | Completely unverifiable and easy to fake.
        
       | pierat wrote:
       | I treat Glassdoor reviews like Amazon reviews.
       | 
       | I immediately go to the 1 and 2 stars, and read all the negative
       | reviews. I then look for trends in those negatives.
       | 
       | If I see no real trend, and instead people being dumb, I ignore
       | them. If I see distinct trends of faulty thing, or fails to
       | perform, then I know to avoid.
       | 
       | I assume (well, rightfully so) that any 4's and 5's are gamified
       | and or just outright fraudulent. Companies who run these review
       | sections are directly complicit, and usually rely on these
       | ratings to "make the sale" or otherwise hold mind share.
       | 
       | There's not much we can do here. Just hope we hit jackpot on the
       | employer lottery.
        
         | paulddraper wrote:
         | Agreed.
         | 
         | Qualitative trends are the interesting thing, not the
         | quantitative result.
        
         | scottLobster wrote:
         | The flip side: There are always bad apples at any company. The
         | negative reviews may be legit, but not relevant to the
         | manager/program you'd be working under.
         | 
         | As someone who's worked at a 100k+ employees company, there
         | were literally dozens of programs in the same building living
         | largely separate/parallel existences. Unless the reviews called
         | out a program/manager by name they'd be completely useless in
         | gauging job satisfaction.
        
           | byby wrote:
           | [dead]
        
           | pierat wrote:
           | Too true, and the larger orgs definitely have that as a
           | concern.
           | 
           | And some specific managers who would be better not leading
           | people (aka fired) are a weird case where the in-person
           | interview can kind of discern that. Basically, one has to
           | learn what to ask and how to ask to suss out which team leads
           | are good and which ones aren't. Then again, it's a definite
           | problem where you are in an org can make or break you.
           | 
           | However, we have to separate "shitty manager" from "shitty
           | organization forcing managers to enact shitty policies". And
           | this is where I think Glassdoor 1 and 2 star reviews can show
           | policy trends (versus bad manager trends).
           | 
           | And of course, you may get a company that avoids most of the
           | reviews in scummy ways. I know that the company I worked for
           | that got bought out had a clause they wanted us to sign that
           | stated "no negative comments about us anywhere". What's funny
           | is this is actually illegal under the NLRB. But to me this
           | was a massive red flag to get the hell out (and I did).
        
             | thx-2718 wrote:
             | Personally in my experience, regardless of the size of the
             | organization (small family business to thousands of
             | employee orgs) if management is toxic, it's because it's
             | tacitly approved from higher ups.
             | 
             | Culture starts at the top.
        
               | dimitrios1 wrote:
               | Culture is preserved at the top. It starts at the bottom.
               | The problem is too many leaders read an Adam Grant or
               | Simon Sinek book and all of a sudden think they are the
               | latest incarnation of the tech leadership buddha and
               | impose their will on the team.
        
             | regentbowerbird wrote:
             | What questions should one ask to suss out the good team
             | leads?
        
               | pierat wrote:
               | 1. Efforts to conceal in an interview reveal potential
               | toxic areas. NDA issues aside, this is more about
               | concealing and making things look better than they
               | actually are.
               | 
               | 2. Ask "What do you like about working here?". If there's
               | pushback or defensiveness, red flag.
               | 
               | 3. Ask "If you were in my position, would you take this
               | job?". Would they gladly take this job, or is there
               | hesitation/defiance/pushback?
               | 
               | 4. Ask "What does your organization know and believe
               | about psychological safety?" - This is an institutional
               | question about https://hbr.org/2023/02/what-is-
               | psychological-safety
               | 
               | 5. Ask "What are your values and how do you hold people
               | accountable to live them?" (Does the org follow their own
               | guidance, or is it just for show?)
               | 
               | 6. Ask "What happens to employees who make mistakes?" -
               | is this a 1 and done? This also pairs with psychological
               | safety.
               | 
               | 7. Ask "What happens to employees when they challenge the
               | status quo?" (As an engineer or similar lead
               | technological role, you will be continually pushing tech.
               | How does the company respond to that?)
               | 
               | 8. And for you to ask yourself: "Is the interview
               | conversational or scripted?"
               | 
               | 9. Was the interview genuine happiness, or faked? Would
               | the people you would work with actually happy what
               | they're doing?
               | 
               | 10. How do you feel after the interview? Is there
               | something that felt off? Can you identify it?
        
               | winrid wrote:
               | What will #8 tell you? as someone that is forced to do
               | scripted interviews at current job...
        
               | mikestew wrote:
               | And if it is scripted, so what? That might mean every
               | candidate gets a somewhat consistent experience, instead
               | of whatever off-the-cuff crap my not-as-smart-as-she-
               | thinks-she-is interviewer pulls out of her butt. Because
               | we've all known that person on the interview team that
               | has their bullshit manhole cover question because "I
               | think to see how they think".
        
               | bigtunacan wrote:
               | Yeah. 8 is just a silly question. First off you can often
               | just tell if it's scripted. Secondly if it is scripted
               | it's generally just because HR is more mature and is
               | trying to be more fair in the hiring processes; this is a
               | good practice for diversity.
               | 
               | Organizations that aren't scripted just haven't gotten
               | there yet.
        
               | iamdbtoo wrote:
               | It's not good practice for diversity. While it might help
               | some with racial, ethnic or gender diversity, it
               | discriminates heavily against neurodiverse people who
               | often do not fit into little boxes a scripted interview
               | is designed to check off.
        
               | ARandomerDude wrote:
               | I hope this comment comes across as helpful rather than
               | rude: if you asked me a couple of those questions
               | (especially back-to-back) during an interview, I would
               | not hire you. It isn't that any of those are bad
               | questions per se, but the volume and forwardness of them
               | would be a red-flag that this is a person who likes to
               | show up, make trouble, and not be held accountable for
               | it. Maybe that's not your goal, but remember that in an
               | interview you only have a few minutes to communicate
               | where you're coming from.
        
               | pierat wrote:
               | I'm trying not to take this as rude... But yeah. My
               | failing, I guess?
               | 
               | I gave a list of types of questions I use to try to
               | discern the manager and the company's perspective.
               | Obviously these aren't to be utilized rapid-fire in a
               | dismissive attitude. However, that's exactly how
               | companies approach interviews. Why _isn 't_ it good for
               | me to do the same that's being done to me?
               | 
               | > if you asked me a couple of those questions (especially
               | back-to-back) during an interview, I would not hire you.
               | 
               | (The personal response) And there's no way I'd want to
               | work with or for you with that kind of "you ask too many
               | questions" attitude.
               | 
               | > It isn't that any of those are bad questions per se,
               | but the volume and forwardness of them would be a red-
               | flag that this is a person who likes to show up, make
               | trouble, and not be held accountable for it.
               | 
               | I've also been in workplaces that fired after one fuck-up
               | that was due to miscommunication, bad documentation, or
               | other 3rd party factors. I'm not normally accustomed to
               | making mistakes in my professional area, but they do
               | happen. "How are failures and changes handles in your
               | org?" is a massive key indicator of how this org
               | maintains and grows, and I along with it.
               | 
               | And as an engineer, I get *paid* to ask questions,
               | including those pointed ones that get to the root of a
               | matter. And I apply those skills and abilities to
               | interview processes as I would to any other process. To
               | see a hiring manager dismiss this type of interactive
               | discussion as "someone who makes trouble", is the very
               | type of manager I recommend to be fired on my reviews.
               | 
               | > Maybe that's not your goal, but remember that in an
               | interview you only have a few minutes to communicate
               | where you're coming from.
               | 
               | And the implied contextural clues you typed here
               | indicates that it's the interviewer's to ask the
               | questions, and the candidate to shut up unless spoken to,
               | except for a softball one-off question at the end.
               | 
               | Interviews are a 2 way street. You're interviewing me,
               | and I'm ALSO interviewing you. My questions I ask that
               | probe to a company culture and happiness of the
               | interviewers is of utmost importance. I've turned down
               | higher-paying higher-stress jobs precisely because people
               | on the team balked at work-life balance questions.
               | 
               | Another company had a manager roll their eyes when I
               | asked if they would work the position they were hiring
               | for. Just what exactly did I dodge by discontinuing the
               | interview?
               | 
               | One company blatantly stated that "full time ie expected
               | to be 50 hours minimum" when I asked how maintenances
               | were handled with scheduling. And they're a BIG vehicle
               | company. 6 sigma, ISO 20000, yadda yadda. Absoluutely no
               | life balance, and the interviewing manager made that
               | known.
               | 
               | I've dodged a LOT of crap companies with these sorts of
               | questions. Yours sounds like one as well, with your
               | response.
               | 
               | No offense.
        
               | ebiester wrote:
               | On the other hand, as a hiring manager, I know this is
               | someone who is team-focused and wants to be part of an
               | organization that is similar rather than a blame-focused
               | organization.
               | 
               | An organization that is aligned with the communications
               | patterns outlined in those questions would answer those
               | questions comfortably.
        
               | ncallaway wrote:
               | I'd ask similar questions as the parent poster, and I
               | explicitly wouldn't want to work somewhere where asking
               | these questions was a red flag.
               | 
               | So, it can actually still be a useful candidate side
               | filter. If you don't hire me because I asked these
               | questions, that's good for me because I don't want to
               | work for you (not in an accusatory manner, just we
               | probably don't have compatible workplace expectations).
        
               | ethbr0 wrote:
               | As a counterpoint, if someone asks these questions in an
               | interview of me, they'd still go to the "Had questions
               | prepared" higher slice of rankings.
               | 
               | Prepared questions indicate you have initiative and do
               | your homework. I'm hiring thinkers, not drones.
               | 
               | The only turn-off could be in the _way_ they asked the
               | questions and followed up -- aggressive? Not listening to
               | my response closely? Not clarifying if I asked for more
               | information?
        
               | pierat wrote:
               | Exactly. This isn't meant to be a Blade Runner Voight-
               | Kampff rapid-fire interrogation.
               | 
               | An interview is supposed to be a bidirectional
               | conversation to see if you fit with the manager/company
               | and the company fits with you. Obviously, how you ask
               | (and don't ask), and ask around these questions can
               | really give an idea what to expect.
               | 
               | There's also major red flags for places that you probably
               | never want to work at. For example, dismissive managers
               | are a major problem. What are they going through on a
               | day-to-day? They probably can't tell you, but you can ask
               | around them.
               | 
               | Why are they interviewing? Is it a new position, or a
               | replacement? Why did the replacement leave? I had one
               | interview that the person leaving was also on the
               | interview committee. Really nice gentleman. He was
               | retiring, and wanted to move back with family across the
               | US. And he was on the committee to help find a person and
               | train them to be there. The job wasn't exactly what I was
               | looking for and declined, but I greatly respected how
               | they did that interview.
               | 
               | Again, I interview primarily for engineering roles. Maybe
               | other non-engineering roles do things differently. But I
               | like to try to get a snapshot what the company's like,
               | their expectations, my expectations, and how my life is
               | working there. Last thing I want to do is accept a
               | position and find out they grossly misrepresented the
               | position to get me in the door, and make it hard to
               | interview/switch to get out.
        
               | pstuart wrote:
               | Great questions, as well as the review strategy in your
               | OP.
        
               | zdragnar wrote:
               | I might hesitate in answering #3 because it's such a
               | weird question. I don't know your tolerance for common
               | things in young companies like frequently changing
               | priorities. I don't know your financial situation (are
               | you desperate for a job, or are you holding out for a
               | perfect fit?).
               | 
               | Answering "no" could easily land me in hot water,
               | regardless of my reasons, and especially if I don't
               | explain them very clearly and objectively. Answering
               | "yes" doesn't tell you anything; after all, I already
               | work here and might have drunk the company kool-aide.
               | 
               | It just seems like you're looking for a reason to not
               | work here, instead of looking for reasons to be excited
               | about working here. Walking in the door with a negative
               | attitude is a good way to poison a team's working
               | environment. You are, in effect, the very toxic thing you
               | are trying to reveal.
               | 
               | Maybe it's just cultural differences, but I cannot
               | imagine a reason to ask that question of anyone other
               | than someone who I trust and know well.
        
               | tivert wrote:
               | > 4. Ask "What does your organization know and believe
               | about psychological safety?" - This is an institutional
               | question about https://hbr.org/2023/02/what-is-
               | psychological-safety
               | 
               | That's not a good question because it assumes the other
               | person if familiar with the jargon term "psychological
               | safety," which seems pretty new. That's not reasonable
               | because that recent HBR article you posted indicates that
               | many people don't know what that term means.
               | 
               | Also "psychological safety" could be easily
               | misinterpreted in today's political environment as
               | something related a demand for an (ideologically) "safe
               | space."
               | 
               | After skimming that article, it would probably be better
               | to ask something along the lines of "is it OK to make
               | mistakes in this organization and learn from them?"
        
               | EatingWithForks wrote:
               | I would actually want to use "psychological safety" to
               | see if my manager is the kind of person who, when they
               | see a word they don't know, instead of asking they make a
               | shit assumption and then react negatively to their own
               | projection of the situation.
        
               | brailsafe wrote:
               | I would agree with you if it was a more esoteric sounding
               | word that doesn't have some kind of intuitive
               | interpretation. Physiological safety doesn't sound like
               | something that has a concrete definition at all, and if
               | asked, I'd probably _either_ ask what the person means by
               | it, or come up with my own definition that 's otherwise
               | equally valid. Though in the context of an interview,
               | probably best to ask what they mean.
        
           | JustSomeNobody wrote:
           | It's still a huge red flag against the company that one team
           | can be toxic and another great.
        
             | somsak2 wrote:
             | i mean, in a sufficiently large organization, this is
             | essentially unavoidable
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | cortesoft wrote:
           | It depends on what is driving the dissatisfaction. If it is
           | something like how the company handles promotions and raises,
           | than it doesn't matter which department is providing the
           | review.
        
           | importantbrian wrote:
           | This is very true. I've worked in an organization where most
           | people on most of the other teams would negatively rate the
           | company, but I was fortunate to have a great boss. So I look
           | back on my time there as positive, although I recognize that
           | most other people had a very different experience of that
           | company.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | flashgordon wrote:
         | The reality most (all) companies exist for the benefit of well
         | the company. And all the power plays, motivations, passive
         | aggressiveness, politics, misaligned manager motivations,
         | bureaucracy are to be expected (sadly). Yes you could go much
         | smaller to reduce process but you are taking that risk or
         | loosing out on reward (and as I get older I am realizing how
         | much I've been under appreciating peace of mind). I used to
         | scoff at a friend when he suggested this - but his strategy of
         | choosing a company based on who he knew and who he could work
         | with has been looking amazing lately!
        
         | mejutoco wrote:
         | In a lot of platforms less than good reviews are removed. Some
         | people post 4 or 5 star reviews that sound vaguely positive,
         | but in the text itself one can clearly read a bad opinion. I do
         | not know how effective this is versus a bad review, but the
         | ones that survive are often gems.
        
         | fatnoah wrote:
         | > I treat Glassdoor reviews like Amazon reviews.
         | 
         | This is my approach as well. Probably my favorite moment was
         | reading a review for my own company. It was very recent and
         | mentioned that "management had stupid delusions of being
         | acquired by company X." That review was posted literally days
         | before the acquisition was publicly announced.
        
           | bigtunacan wrote:
           | If they were a public company then 100% that review should
           | have been removed. That's leaking insider information.
           | Leaking insider information in and of itself is a violation
           | of insider trading laws.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | walrus01 wrote:
         | What's fascinating about reading Amazon 1-star reviews for
         | anything that's even _slightly_ technically complicated is
         | seeing people who clearly have no idea what they 're doing, and
         | have broken the thing themselves when trying to install it or
         | use it. Or similar.
        
           | bookofjoe wrote:
           | I prefer the ones where people have ordered the wrong
           | size/color, to wit: "I meant to order a black one but I
           | ordered a white one by mistake."
        
         | belter wrote:
         | If I want to leave a bad review, I always do exactly the
         | opposite. Both for Glassdoor or Amazon reviews. Always give
         | five stars, start with innocent paragraph and leave the full
         | details and scathing review in the second paragraph. It helps
         | reaching the target audience...
        
         | carlivar wrote:
         | My company has had legitimate 1-2 star reviews removed. I know
         | this because one in particular struck a chord with me, and a
         | month later it was gone. At the same time I saw that many other
         | lower scored reviews were gone.
         | 
         | Glassdoor is simply compromised by money and can't be trusted
         | whatsoever.
        
           | whamlastxmas wrote:
           | I've had two employers that are impossible to leave 1 star
           | reviews for. Doesn't matter how mundane and kind the review
           | is, it never makes it past moderation.
        
           | smcin wrote:
           | If only a third-party archived/screenshotted Glassdoor
           | reviews to preserve them. Then we could see the pattern of
           | deletions by date/location/dept/position/timing of
           | layoffs/stock price/etc. Also, someone could construct a
           | RottenTomatoes-type aggregate of RealGlassdoor vs
           | PurgedGlassdoor (vs Blind) metascore over time. To see when
           | things were being manipulated.
           | 
           | [UPDATE: hedora already said archive.org does this earlier
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36084679]
        
           | AaronM wrote:
           | Is it possible for a company like glassdoor to not eventually
           | be compromised?
        
             | datavirtue wrote:
             | No. Cloud compute and egress is expensive.
        
       | lisasays wrote:
       | _And so, they got to work flagging negative reviews for removal,
       | and encouraging staff to post 5-star reviews to balance out
       | negative reviews._
       | 
       | Surprise, surprise.
        
       | francisofascii wrote:
       | Glassdoor reviews are filled with subjective phrases that are so
       | meaningless. Comments like "great work/life balance" doesn't
       | offer much information . A more useful approach would be to have
       | users enter more objective figures. For example: "Typical office
       | hours: 9-6, Weekends worked per year: 4, Pager evenings per
       | month: 2, meeting hours per week: 10. Remote days per week: 3,
       | etc.
        
       | anothernewdude wrote:
       | > My company is removing Glassdoor reviews
       | 
       | So Glassdoor is useless then.
        
       | game_the0ry wrote:
       | > Independent of this article, solution scientist Shikhar Sachdev
       | dived deep and investigated The underground economy of Glassdoor
       | reviews, finding fake, 5-start Glassdoor reviews have a going
       | rate of $10-25 per review on marketplaces, and providers offering
       | review removal services - for a price. Review removal is
       | something Glassdoor explicitly says should not be possible. It's
       | fascinating research to read: check it out here.
       | 
       | Interesting how HR departments and managers resort to gestapo
       | tactics instead of fixing the root of their problems, which is
       | typically poor management.
       | 
       | Side effect - prospective employees will no longer trust
       | glassdoor reviews. That will likely hurt their business model.
        
       | danjac wrote:
       | If I see a company with only a list of 5 star reviews, I know
       | something sketchy is going on and they're written by HR flunkies.
        
       | tomcar288 wrote:
       | i've learned from reading glassdoor reviews, that you have to
       | read the review rather than go by the star ratings. the star
       | ratings often don't reflect what written in the review. for
       | example, you'll see lots of amazon reviews that are 3, 4 or even
       | 5 stars but a lot of the time the truth comes out in the text
       | review itself.
        
       | ginger2016 wrote:
       | They can respond by not caring about glassdoor scores.
        
       | voidfunc wrote:
       | Not surprised. I remember a startup I was at telling employees
       | several years ago to leave five star reviews. When I left I
       | provided a good review as well to avoid any potential for bridge
       | burning since at certain sizes its obvious who is leaving certain
       | reviews.
        
       | anotherhue wrote:
       | They'll remove reviews if you ask right. I've seen it done.
        
       | thisisit wrote:
       | I was using Glassdoor until 5 years ago before I realized the
       | shenanigans behind the scenes. It is a terrible place to put your
       | trust.
       | 
       | I have a speech impairment. About six years ago a company's HR
       | communicated to me that they couldn't hire me due to my
       | impairment. I indicated this to the company's social media, which
       | wasn't active. But I also wanted people to know before they
       | interviewed with the company. So, I wrote a review on Glassdoor.
       | Couple of months later all my other "contributions" were up on
       | the site except this one. So much for companies cannot manipulate
       | reviews.
       | 
       | If you need feedback it is better to reach out to people on
       | Linkedin and talk instead.
        
         | broguinn wrote:
         | I'm sorry they didn't hire you because of your disability.
         | IANAL, but I suspect that your disability is a protected status
         | in the United States. I'm not saying that you should've pursued
         | legal action, but that what they did is both immoral and
         | illegal.
        
           | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
           | I'm old[ish], and wasn't hired, explicitly because of that.
           | In fact, a couple of the interviewers made no effort to hide
           | it. I suspect that this may come as a surprise to a lot of
           | folks here, but age discrimination is every bit as illegal as
           | race, sex, or disability discrimination.
           | 
           | If an industry makes a lot of money (f'rinstance, the finance
           | industry), all kinds of toxic, illegal behavior is ignored,
           | and it's really difficult to effect change.
           | 
           | In industries that don't make much money (teaching, social
           | work, etc.), bad behavior is not tolerated in the slightest.
        
             | 0xcde4c3db wrote:
             | > age discrimination is every bit as illegal as race, sex,
             | or disability discrimination
             | 
             | Oddly, this is not quite true at the US federal level.
             | Unlike most protected categories, the one for age only
             | applies to a specific subset of people (people over 40
             | years old), nor is it generally illegal to prefer an older
             | candidate over a younger one [1].
             | 
             | [1] https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination
        
               | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
               | It's funny. In Japan, at my company, there were levels
               | that were unattainable, until the applicant was a certain
               | age. That would be completely illegal, in the US.
               | 
               | Ah, well, it's all water under the bridge. After a few of
               | these hazin- er, _interviews_ , I got the message, and
               | accepted that I'm in early retirement, and I work for
               | free, these days.
        
               | svachalek wrote:
               | I think if you look at race, sex, and disability
               | discrimination, there's an implicit direction as well.
               | The law is not particularly worried about companies
               | refusing to hire people without disabilities.
        
             | ctvo wrote:
             | > If an industry makes a lot of money (f'rinstance, the
             | finance industry), all kinds of toxic, illegal behavior is
             | ignored, and it's really difficult to effect change.
             | 
             | > In industries that don't make much money (teaching,
             | social work, etc.), bad behavior is not tolerated in the
             | slightest
             | 
             | This falls apart outside of your examples. The health care
             | industry makes a lot of money. They don't tolerate this.
             | Teaching in primary education? It doesn't make much money,
             | but higher education? They do well, and they also don't
             | tolerate this. The legal industry? Probably doesn't
             | tolerate this. Etc..
        
               | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
               | _> higher education? They do well_
               | 
               | I know quite a few, and none of them make a fraction of
               | what they could, outside academia. Some, are, quite
               | literally, on public assistance, with Ph.Ds.
               | 
               | The healthcare industry is rife with bad behavior. Their
               | practice is restricted, but their behavior ... not so
               | much.
               | 
               | Same with lawyers. They have very intense ethics laws,
               | but they are about the practice, not the personal
               | behavior.
               | 
               | But you are correct. It is a "broad brush," and not
               | really a worthy argument.
        
         | jimt1234 wrote:
         | My girlfriend worked for a small-ish company (less than 100
         | employees) that got ONE negative review on Glassdoor. The
         | company executives were so angry about it that they contacted
         | Glassdoor, trying to get them to remove it. Denied. Then they
         | hired an attorney to try and _force_ Glassdoor to remove the
         | negative review. Denied again. Finally, a few weeks later,
         | someone from Glassdoor reached out about some sort of premier
         | program for employers. Nothing was ever stated directly, but it
         | was implied that reviews would be  "managed" with the premier
         | program. They signed up. Negative review disappeared later that
         | day.
         | 
         | I don't know the details about the "premier program", like what
         | it was specifically called, but the negative review did
         | magically disappear. Also, everything said in the negative
         | review was totally true.
        
           | dicknuckle wrote:
           | Just like BBB. I'm not sure why people think it's some kind
           | of government agency.
        
           | gnicholas wrote:
           | Did the company have to stay a "premier" member for the
           | review to stay buried, or could they sign up and then churn
           | out and have it still be hidden?
        
             | ganoushoreilly wrote:
             | I would imagine there was at least a 1 year contract. I
             | don't know of any outbound sales that would target 1 month
             | subscriptions. It's definitely a racket either way.
        
             | pnt12 wrote:
             | Hmmm... I'd day restoring a bad review would be even more
             | suspicious. Let them come naturally and don't delete them -
             | unless the company reconsiders the benefits of premier,
             | that is.
        
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