[HN Gopher] Glassdoor updated my profile to add my real name and...
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Glassdoor updated my profile to add my real name and location
Author : throwaway_08932
Score : 622 points
Date : 2024-03-14 16:13 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cellio.dreamwidth.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (cellio.dreamwidth.org)
| darknavi wrote:
| Glassdoor is so gross sometimes with its requirements.
|
| Levels.fyi has been really nice.
| samstave wrote:
| The problem Ive always had with levels, is that it seems much
| more focused on the "sales" groups - the non tech, but vital to
| business everything.
|
| I've always disliked sales. especially when working on projects
| where a sales is so smarmy, because they get a huge pay - and
| I, implementing it all - get nothing.
|
| This happened all over. but here is a story of why I cant stand
| sales:
|
| I was tech designer for LDAC (lucas presidio campus)
|
| So I built out the RFP for network and we were doing selections
| up at Big Rock Ranch (the only reason this is important is just
| how beautiful the space is, so it feels really open nice
| energy, relaxing)
|
| We are doing vendor selection presentations (the vendors come
| show us why their solution is best match to RFP reqs)
|
| The vendors were Cisco, Foundry, Force-10 (extreme backed out)
|
| Cisco comes in and they're going through their presentation and
| we are getting through it - I am reviewing and seeing that it
| was rather weak, more "marketing"-ish reply to the RFP instead
| of a detailed response on the specs...
|
| I am sitting across from the main cisco sales guy. (this is at
| the time the largest 10G network in the world as this is just
| as the 10G switches were made) - so at the time, its a big deal
| - like ~$80 million in core gear)
|
| The sales guy is leaning back as if... don't worry Toots.
| Jimmy's got this _sniffs coke_ "
| https://i.imgur.com/gPdQiW5.jpg
|
| --
|
| So I am going over the RFP with his team, and he interjects:
|
| "I just want to assure you that Cisco has a world class media
| team - and I will personally be sure they go through this in
| depth and really create the right solution"
|
| PIN DROPs
|
| (I am the youngest in the room - but its my RFP/design)
|
| "Excuse me. This is the RFP review. Youre presenting your
| solution here today. So are you to tell me, that you have a
| "world class media team" and they have not informed your
| response to this RFP? That the entire point of this meeting" i
| said a few more things that made this guy die inside.
|
| This guys balls shot into his throat.
|
| Those are the types of people I think of when I think of
| levels.
|
| (this was also the meeting where the CIO of Lucas Arts
| demanding a date for "when can you provide me power over fiber"
| ((his logic was the design was for both power and fiber to
| desktop - and he was trying to flex on showing 'how can we
| reduce infra wiring costs' -- it was a truly different world
| back then, mostly))
| mlrtime wrote:
| I used to think similar to you, as an engineer I didn't see
| value in sales. Then I tried to sell something myself and I
| realized it is not easy. You hear no all day long it starts
| to get to you.
|
| The best sales people I've seen are relationship builders.
| They understand their clients needs (Even if outside the core
| market) and try to find a solution for their needs. This
| looks like wining/dining on the outside but it's important.
|
| I would suggestion anyone that wants to build something to
| try and sell first. Then you'll realize why they get paid and
| can be very valuable.
| samstave wrote:
| (sorry that was from an old lens... I was pointing out my
| perception of LEVELS not sales. (thus I said "vital to all
| business")
| fredley wrote:
| Aren't Glassdoor's reviews pretty much a scam anyway? Last I
| heard companies can pay $$ to gain moderation control over their
| own profile to delete/downrank bad reviews.
| djbusby wrote:
| Remember when Yelp did that? And yet, somehow not dead.
| paxys wrote:
| Yelp isn't dead but no one I know uses it anymore,
| specifically due to all the issues with reviews.
| emchammer wrote:
| Yelp rating, photos and reviews come before the street
| address when you click on a place in Apple Maps. I have to
| scroll down to get the street address, somebody decided
| that is less important.
| healsdata wrote:
| Bing gives Yelp similar priority for queries like "tacos
| near me", so all the Bing-serving alternative search
| engines like DuckDuckGo do the same thing.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Yelp has no real alternative for vetting unfamiliar
| restaurants, at least not one which doesn't have similar
| conflicts.
| aledalgrande wrote:
| If you're in UK look at Harden's http://www.hardens.com/
| OJFord wrote:
| TripAdvisor? They charge for advertising/sponsored
| positioning, but it's free to claim your business and it
| allows you to respond to people but pretty sure not do
| 'moderation' like that.
| internet101010 wrote:
| TripAdvisor is good for everything outside of the US but
| I pretty much just use Google Maps now for restaurants in
| the US. I'll keep an eye out for who gets awards in my
| city as well.
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| The reviews might be real, but the order you see
| anything, say Top 10 hotels in Indianapolis, is the
| result of an auction
| AaronM wrote:
| Google Maps?
| kelvie wrote:
| I find this is generally region-specific, as what review
| sites are most commonly used will differ somewhat from
| region to region.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| I have found it preferable to visit the restaurant in
| question, look around, read the menu, and decide based on
| those cues around me whether it's worth risking a meal
| there.
|
| Yelp has become useless, and TripAdvisor is as bad if not
| worse. The reviews on Google Maps are wholly unreliable as
| well.
| wnevets wrote:
| > And yet, somehow not dead.
|
| I can't remember the last time I looked at yelp, pre-covid
| maybe?
| ipqk wrote:
| I think Yelp only survives through its integration with Apple
| Maps. If Apple ever decides to build its own review feature I
| can't imagine Yelp surviving.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Given the integration, I'd expect that Apple's decision to
| build their own would start with buying Yelp if for nothing
| more than the data Yelp already has.
| mikestew wrote:
| Apple seems to be working on it. A lot of times when I
| press that POI icon, I get Trip Advisor reviews and not
| Yelp. Additionally, there is thumbs up/down UI in the Apple
| Maps app to rate a POI. An example would be Fairhaven
| Village Inn, Bellingham, WA: no Yelp droppings anywhere to
| be found.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| I basically stopped reading Amazon and Yelp reviews. They do
| more harm then good. Now it's all about human-curated
| information. Find someone you trust - on social media, a new
| site, or a newsletter. Get the info from them.
|
| Should I eat here? Should I buy this product? Etc.
|
| With restaurants it's tricky - sometimes you just need to
| take a chance. There is some old-school magic in that.
| astura wrote:
| >Find someone you trust - on social media, a new site, or a
| newsletter. Get the info from them.
|
| OMG please don't do this - it's more gamed/scammy than
| online reviews: people will routinely post sponsored
| content disguised as personal recommendations. The FTC
| occasionally cracks down on it (or sends warning labels)
| but it's still so ubiquitous.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| If you are following an "influencer" peddling products,
| yes, but there are plenty of good resources available.
|
| The choice is between "scam" and "bias".
| onemoresoop wrote:
| > I basically stopped reading Amazon and Yelp reviews
|
| I've done that too and am sure many people here on HN
| realized how gameable and gamed they are but sadly it still
| works for the masses who fall into these traps like flies
| to a candle. When these this kind of deception will stop
| working we will have reached a total trust of 0.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _With restaurants it 's tricky - sometimes you just need
| to take a chance. There is some old-school magic in that._
|
| Absolutely agree, and I try to do this more often now. A
| visit somewhere new and untested for lunch or dinner isn't
| like a product purchase, where I might regret a bad
| purchase for months or years. If a restaurant doesn't work
| out, I've only lost an hour or two of my time, and a bit of
| cash that likely still went to providing me sustenance,
| even if the experience and taste was poor.
|
| And if it turns out to be great -- well... great!
| gryzzly wrote:
| it wasn't always the case (or at least most people believed it
| wasn't) and they exist for a long time - the suggestion I think
| is for the people like me, who wrote something there over 10
| years ago and now their posts would possibly stop being
| anonymous.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| How is this not fraud?
|
| https://help.glassdoor.com/s/article/I-m-an-employer-What-ca...
|
| > 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.
|
| https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/
|
| https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/
| benmanns wrote:
| I wonder if it could be considered securities fraud, in the
| Matt Levine sense of "Everything is Securities Fraud."
|
| I certainly would take CEO approval rating and employee's
| reviews of overall job satisfaction into account when
| investing in a company. If you see very low reviews, you know
| the company is under-investing in employees and will likely
| need to increase spend on employee retention in the coming
| years, which is not reported in their current financial
| reports. Likewise, if you want to be cynical, a consistent 5
| star company has some fat it could trim, which would increase
| it's investment value.
|
| Perhaps we'll see a shareholder lawsuit following a mass
| employee resignation event which was arguably concealed by
| manipulating employee reviews.
| blibble wrote:
| oh but they're not paying to take down reviews
|
| you're paying to "flag and report reviews for additional
| scrutiny"
|
| their process then co-incidentally always seems to agree that
| those reported by paying customers are bogus
|
| (same as paying for trustpilot)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I'm still filing the regulator complaint.
| blibble wrote:
| hopefully the sarcasm in my post was obvious
|
| maybe not :)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It was! :)
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| A few of the tricks I've noticed they use:
|
| * Review not tagged as English, or neither Full-Time or Part-
| Time, and those are the default filters
|
| * Default sort is "Most Recent" and the Featured Review at
| the top of reviews is always a positive hand chosen review
|
| * "Found 515 out of over 530 reviews" - I suspect they maybe
| take those 15 other reviews into account for the rating
| average, but you just can't read them right now so
| technically not taken down
|
| * Negative review stays in Pending state while being screened
| by Glassdoor for over a month, but the time it's approved,
| it's buried by newer reviews
|
| *
| avidiax wrote:
| > https://help.glassdoor.com/s/article/I-m-an-employer-What-
| ca...
|
| Interesting that of the 4 options to address bad employee
| reviews, none of those options is:
|
| * Address the review by improving your company culture or
| policies
| begueradj wrote:
| Many companies pay agencies to post fake positive reviews about
| them. This is especially common among companies who publish
| fake job vacancies.
| reaperman wrote:
| I feel like this is technically some kind of FTC violation,
| even if it's not broadly enforced.
| jredwards wrote:
| Many companies just post fake positive reviews about
| themselves directly. Glassdoor reviews come from two places:
| aggrieved former employees and HR departments. The whole
| thing is garbage.
| digitalsushi wrote:
| i wish everyone would adopt a mutation to the 5 star
| review, so that at a single glance a 3 star review would
| have coded with it whether it's a bathtub curve, or equal,
| distribution. like, if it's bathtub curve, change the
| middle star to a skull. but if it's even, leave it a star.
| how great would that be
| spacebacon wrote:
| All reviews are scammed. Phone a friend.
| codelobe wrote:
| Join the trust graph...
| seanw444 wrote:
| I have an idea. We could build a new, better review site.
| Sprinkle in some blockchain and AI...
| queuebert wrote:
| I find it hilarious that all the money pumped into Glassdoor
| has created less useful information about companies than the
| Better Business Bureau.
| brezelgoring wrote:
| I know of two multinational conglomerates (one Indian, the
| other Argentinian) that requires all newcomers to post a
| GlassDoor review and a LinkedIn post praising the company, the
| onboarding gifts, and such things. Both are absolute hell to
| work for unless you're upper management, according to
| acquaintances that have been there and climbed outside the bog
| of low-level positions.
|
| It's not a lot, but it's weird it happened twice.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| Globant?
| javcasas wrote:
| Their interview raised a lot of red flags for me. I see
| they were raised for a reason.
| brezelgoring wrote:
| That's one, the other starts with a 'T' and ends with 'CS'.
| wvenable wrote:
| Who needs glassdoor when you get red flags like that on your
| first day.
| mattrighetti wrote:
| I've never _flexed_ my new positions or anything like that,
| which seems to be widespread nowadays to seek validation on
| social media.
|
| I'll never make a post about a company even if I end up
| loving my time there, it's just not going to happen. It looks
| fake and everyone knows that.
| tivert wrote:
| > It looks fake and everyone knows that.
|
| Sometimes I wonder if being fake is seen as pejorative as
| it used to be. I mean the whole "social media influencer"
| thing is super fake, but people seem to eat that shit up
| and a depressing number of kids aspire to be one.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| You're missing that plenty of people lack the
| intelligence, education, media literacy etc to actually
| recognize that "fake"ness. You can still pull in a
| hundred grand scamming people on instagram by posting a
| selfie with a rented or parked Lambo and a caption
| reading "Send me <shitty cryptotoken of the day> and I'll
| double it and show you how to be rich just like me!!!"
|
| There are people on this very forum who are 100%
| subscribed to the "if you work hard you will make it"
| propaganda and also the often unspoken corollary of "if
| you didn't make it, it's your own fault". Arguably that's
| the entire ethos of this VC/startup focused community.
|
| We are extremely irrational creatures, who have pretty
| much only advanced by being able to write down
| information and curate that body of work over the
| centuries, enough to tease out a couple semi-working
| systems that produce better than a coin flip results
| enough of the time to manage to advance. Even the best
| educated, smartest, or most successful of us are
| absolutely chock full of irrationality and bias opposed
| to direct evidence. Even Einstein abandoned the data when
| it disagreed with his beliefs.
|
| There's also some preliminary data that younger people
| consider the awkward, scammy, low production value feel
| of things like tiktoks to be "more authentic" and
| therefore more trustworthy to them. All you have to do is
| say ten words very confidently and some insular community
| will adopt it as part of their belief system. Look at all
| the absolute dreck, nonsense pseudoscience that makes up
| the incel community.
|
| Media literacy is completely irrelevant to all the people
| who lack it. When you haven't learned HOW to pick apart
| and interrogate a source of information, you have no
| option but to fall back to shittier, brand or ideology
| based source analysis.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Last I heard companies can pay $$ to gain moderation control
| over their own profile to delete/downrank bad reviews.
|
| I very briefly worked at a toxic company that was aggressive
| about Glassdoor reviews. From what I heard, they couldn't get
| them removed just by asking. They had to carefully examine the
| Glassdoor rules and find a reason that a review violated the
| rules.
|
| They used the argument that reviews revealed confidential
| company information most of the time. It didn't always work.
|
| When I left, I used a throwaway email and coffee shop WiFi to
| leave a completely accurate, honest review. I carefully made
| sure to comply with every letter of Glassdoor's rules.
|
| My review is still up.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Aren't Glassdoor's reviews pretty much a scam anyway?
|
| Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but all online aggregate reviews
| are a scam. There are countless ways to game them and with AI
| it's only going to get worse. At _best_ , they're a weak signal
| of whether something is bad or good. And the bigger and more
| popular a review site, the worse the quality/reliability since
| the impact of manipulating reviews on a site with a huge
| audience is that much higher.
| halo wrote:
| My understanding is that these sorts of sites allow companies
| to pay to boost positive reviews to de-emphasise negative
| reviews, not remove bad reviews.
|
| Still somewhat shady.
| bee_rider wrote:
| There's something odd in the lifecycle of these sorts of sites.
| I wonder if it goes like this:
|
| Review site starts out as community driven, connected people
| tend to get involved. This provides a filter for competent
| users.
|
| Companies become aware of the site, start looking for ways to
| manipulate their score. Companies gain access to competent
| employee. It is bearable for a while.
|
| The scores are manipulated to the point where the site no
| longer provides a good signal. Only out of the loop dummies
| still use it, and it becomes a negative filter.
|
| From this point of view, community sites are more like a crop
| that gets harvested. It would be better for people if it didn't
| happen, but the incentive for the company seems to be: be the
| first one to start consuming the site.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Oh, a mini-cycle could be: at first, the companies that start
| manipulating the reviews tend to be the more connected and
| on-the-ball ones, so users don't mind as much, since the
| companies that are trying to exploit the rankings them are
| also filtered for competence.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| > Last I heard companies can pay $$ to gain moderation control
| over their own profile to delete/downrank bad reviews.
|
| I can verify this was true at least a few years ago. My
| friend's company had some bad (but totally honest) reviews.
| They requested them to be removed. Denied. A few days later
| they received an email from Glassdoor, talking about some sort
| of premium plan. They signed up. The bad reviews disappeared a
| few days later.
| rurp wrote:
| I know for sure that Glassdoor has no problem with companies
| flooding their page with fake positive reviews. I worked for a
| shady company that did exactly that in the most blatant way
| possible. They consistenly posted short vapid 5 star reviews on
| a regular weekly schedule from the same IP. I tried reporting
| it to Glassdoor two different times and they could not have
| cared less.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| That's absolutely batshit insane if true. How do they not
| understand that no one will use their site if they can't do it
| anonymously?!
| rincebrain wrote:
| First, you get to the point that management thinks enough
| people won't leave no matter what they do.
|
| Second, you find some sketchy thing to do that will boost
| revenue and burn people's desire to use your product willingly
| into the ground.
|
| Third, you leave on your golden parachute and the company acts
| surprised that this proved toxic and changes nothing.
| p1esk wrote:
| Sadly this is becoming more common everywhere. Companies (and
| individual people) just don't care about long term prospects.
| This includes SWE industry: if people switch companies every
| two years on average, why care about things like tech debt?
| blowski wrote:
| I definitely want to hear this from Glassdoor. I just can't
| imagine why Glassdoor would put a user's name alongside a review
| against the wish of the user in question. So I'll give Glassdoor
| a chance to clarify what's happening before getting my pitchfork.
| romanows wrote:
| It sounds like they aren't doing that, from what the glassdoor
| rep wrote. It sounds like the author is concerned that, _in the
| event of a data leak_ , that their name can now be associated
| with their reviews, instead of just their email address.
| htrp wrote:
| Also more importantly, in a future product update:
|
| If you pay for the Extra Premium Data Insights Package (TM),
| Glassdoor will happily give your real name to your employer
| so they can either see the reviews you've written about past
| employers or the review you wrote about your current
| employer.
|
| While this isn't a real product (yet), you can't tell me
| there is a non zero risk on this one.
| romanows wrote:
| Yep, although if we're worried about an adversarial
| Glassdoor, then the OP screwed up their opsec by sending
| their real name in the first place. Even for regular
| Glassdoor, it's in their email logs which might get leaked
| alongside anything else, anyway. Still should have the
| right to easily delete info, though, I'm not trying to
| blame the OP for being angry about that.
| JojoFatsani wrote:
| It will be pretty hilarious if we see 500 positive reviews
| exposed as being from Terry from HR on Glassdoor. Maybe it will
| help legitimize it a little.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Site is close to unusable anyway. I have gotten emails from them
| about potentially interesting jobs, and then could never figure
| out how to actually view the job postings. Instead I'm sent
| through their review workflow to get access.
| zug_zug wrote:
| If anybody doesn't think this is a problem, I overheard managers
| talking about a 3rd-party tool that finds "at risk employees"
| which they didn't define but said it included signals such as
| "they updated their linked in recently" as a signal that they may
| be on the job hunt.
|
| You better believe that data brokers are both interested in
| buying and selling any sort of information around your
| employment/job/interview behaviors.
| shon wrote:
| We built this tool as part of HiringSolved. Other signals
| included time in current position relative to industry average
| and personal history.
| sli wrote:
| I will never understand how people can willingly build tools
| like this that almost exclusively serve to make employment
| miserable.
| 8b16380d wrote:
| The family needs to eat and as an American with no social
| or economic safety net, my morals play a very small role.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the industry in Silicon Valley and elsewhere is filled,
| packed with people who have no children
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| Let me give you a hint how: it involves a money
| transaction.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| There's a strong component of "If I don't someone else
| will", but also, usually this is the kind of thing that
| sucks at getting general open/free solutions, because no
| one does it willingly, yet it's easy for an employer to
| justify paying for (And economically incentivize it's
| development)
| mrguyorama wrote:
| "If I don't then someone else will" is only an excuse for
| the already morally dubious. So what if someone else does
| it? Sure the bad thing still exists, but at least you
| didn't personally make the world a worse place explicitly
| for your own personal gain.
|
| The unspoken part of that phrase is the second half of
| "so since it will happen anyway, it's not wrong for me to
| reap the rewards of doing the bad thing"
|
| I hope you understand how inherently wrong that is.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I think there's an explanation that is both more charitable
| and more pragmatic.
|
| Companies try to keep employees happy and committed, and
| part of that is making sure they see a potential future /
| growth for themselves. As a manager I try to both make sure
| this is based in reality and that employees are picking up
| the message.
|
| I like to think I am good at this but it's a difficult
| skill, and external signal to "hey, you might want to check
| in with Bob a bit more carefully next time to make sure
| he's feeling as good as we think he is" could always be
| valuable.
|
| So even from Bob's perspective it's positive - he may get
| the extra conversation that increases his options where he
| stays. On the flip side, what's the malicious use case?
| "You updated your linkedIn so I am going to fire you"
| doesn't sound like company policy that's going to be
| implemented anywhere because it makes no sense.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > "You updated your linkedIn so I am going to fire you"
|
| You might be close to quitting (via perceived signal) so
| I'm going to give the high visibility project to someone
| "loyal".
|
| You may be perceived as a quitter so I'm going to give
| discretionary budget for the next raise to the employee
| who is more loyal.
|
| You might be perceived as quitting, and my company
| requires me to stack rank employees. The lowest gets
| fired. I put you there to keep the rest of my team. You
| become a "sacrifice" since you were going to quit
| anyways.
|
| And these are just the examples my friends at Amazon talk
| about. I'm sure there's more.
|
| Now consider all of the above, but now you're on a visa.
| Losing your job means you have a few weeks to replace it
| or get deported.
| shon wrote:
| Typically these tools are bought and used by HR or Talent
| Acq departments, not managers so the type of detailed
| decision-making you're describing wasn't a use-case in my
| experience.
|
| It's more like a roll-up metric that can be looked at
| globally, by role, department, location, etc. yes, it can
| also be used at the individual level but again, HR is the
| buyer and they are the most fearfully bureaucratic
| department in most companies .
|
| From a data and capability perspective, I agree it's a
| little scary. But in practice I doubt it's used this way
| and if so, there's your retention problem.
| sangeeth96 wrote:
| Murphy's law disagrees.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| IMO a company that would rely on this kind of invasive
| surveillance is not really interested in the well being
| of their employees. There are far better and less
| invasive ways to evaluate employee satisfaction and
| fulfillment than hiring an outside organization to "dig
| up dirt", for the lack of a better term.
|
| To me it's no different than a company hiring a PI to
| follow me around so they can report back how many drinks
| I have on the weekend at a barbecue. Or following me
| around to find out if I bought a new suit and tie (oh no,
| might indicate I'm going for an interview!). Just because
| it's being done digitally doesn't make it any less
| invasive.
|
| What's next? Grocery stores start selling my buying
| habits to my employer? That would definitely give them
| more insight into whether I'm happy and committed.
| Banks/Credit card companies selling my purchase history?
| dml2135 wrote:
| > Banks/Credit card companies selling my purchase
| history?
|
| As far as I am aware, almost every credit card company
| already does this. They tell you they are doing it too.
| shon wrote:
| Yep.. and grocery stores
| techdmn wrote:
| Stop giving them ideas! The last thing I need is for
| someone to figure out and monetize the correlation
| between my Oreo / Johnny Walker consumption rate (not
| together, obviously) and my job satisfaction.
| shon wrote:
| Lololol
| kelnos wrote:
| > _my Oreo / Johnny Walker consumption rate (not
| together, obviously)_
|
| Hmmm, why not together? You might be on to something
| there...
| shon wrote:
| Originally it was built as the inverse. A signal that
| recruiters could use to tell them which "passive
| candidates" could be more willing to change jobs.
|
| A customer asked if it could be used internally (we already
| had their ATS/HRIS data) so a new feature was born.
|
| Yes money was a motive but this particular feature didn't
| seem like an evil idea to be used to increase employee
| misery.
|
| That said, We did build some things that I do regret now.
| 23B1 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
| fHr wrote:
| Late stage capitalism makes us do it.
| latentcall wrote:
| Amazing what people are willing to trade in exchange for a
| fat salary with decent benefits. Even if it means trading
| their moral code.
| shon wrote:
| Really? You think this is that bad?
|
| I always said "at least we're not building weapons we are
| trying to get people jobs (or keep them in jobs)"
|
| But aside from weapons, if you think building a retention
| tool for HR is bad, you certainly should not ever look at
| AdTech or the types of things insurance companies are
| doing from a data perspective.
|
| Or ah hem... Palatir for example.
| blibble wrote:
| so your argument is that you don't need to be ethical
| because there exist people that do worse things than you?
| shon wrote:
| No, my argument is that building an employee retention
| tool is not the same from an ethical perspective as
| building a weapon system.
|
| One is like a hammer, it was envisioned for and can be
| used for good, like building free houses for the poor.
| But it also makes a great bludgeon.
|
| The other is like building a weapon that is used as a
| weapon.
|
| And then there's AdTech.. lol
| blibble wrote:
| I'm sure zuckerberg says the same thing to his kids
| shon wrote:
| lol.. probably
| zettabomb wrote:
| Paycheck go brrrr I assume
| ashton314 wrote:
| Can you tell us more? What signals should I be worried about
| employers looking at?
| shon wrote:
| It's worse and deeper than you'd want to know. That said
| most HR Tech companies and large corporate HR departments
| are incompetent so it's not really as scary in practice as
| it sounds.
|
| Also GDPR/CCPA has hamstrung a lot of this and HR depts are
| fairly petrified about it. Talent Acquisition, not so
| much...
| generalizations wrote:
| Wait, how much worse, and how much deeper? Unless that
| kind of stuff is a trade secret.
| shon wrote:
| Sorry, I'm being a little dramatic.
|
| I mean the data part is a little scary. Look up People
| Data Labs. There are lots of these data aggregators and
| that data can be used for a lot of scary things. HR in
| practice is probably the least scary.
| araes wrote:
| Your website returns: Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN
|
| The certificate is only valid for the following names:
| *.allegisgroup.com, allegisgroup.com
|
| hiring solved
| shon wrote:
| Sold the company to Allegis.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| Do you sleep well at night?
| shon wrote:
| Yes, actually. Hiring sucks. We wanted to make it better.
|
| I believe we did do that by showing the HR world that data
| driven insights could be a better indicator than what
| school someone went to or whether they played Ultimate
| Frisbee (a real hiring signal used by a Fortune 500 tech
| co).
|
| We didn't solve hiring. It's a tough problem with many
| strange human biases and rituals. But I do think we made it
| better even if only a little.
| pluc wrote:
| It can be useful to know who's near the door so that you may
| rectify the situation, it doesn't necessarily have to be slimy.
| Benefit of the doubt I guess. DX (getdx.com) has it and it's
| very pro-worker.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| This can be a positive too, proactive dive & save to retain an
| employee who's manager feel they're about to leave isn't
| unheard of in my company.
|
| If you're good at your job and highly rated there should be
| obvious signs when they're trying to preemptively backfill you
| and at that point you can just communicate about how excited
| you are about your growth at the company or something to make
| them take a step back.
| tomrod wrote:
| Let them squirm. Get your teammates to update to and keep
| management nervous and focused on improving the employee's
| lives. Take it even to starting a union if needed.
|
| You don't give your time to an employer, you trade it, and in
| our modern society we have a gap in the market power of labor.
| Only way to get it is to reclaim it.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Let them squirm._
|
| The risk here isn't that your snooping boss feels a bit
| uncomfortable.
|
| The risk is that your snooping boss now thinks they'd better
| not send you on that expensive training course or assign you
| that big, important project where success could get you
| promoted. And that you'll never get a chance to address their
| fears, as they want to keep the snooping secret.
| javcasas wrote:
| > success could get you promoted
|
| "Could" is such a big word. It means nothing, but it is
| intended to be very valuable. Get that promotion in
| writing. Otherwise it's a carrot to dangle upon you.
|
| > they'd better not send you on that expensive training
| course
|
| You know what's worse than training people and then these
| people leaving? Not training them and then these people
| staying.
|
| You insist on giving me reasons to stay away from that
| company.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| You don't necessarily realize that you work for this
| company.
| abracadaniel wrote:
| Or it guarantees you're in the next round of layoffs.
| You're now a liability and they'll be looking for a
| replacement with better loyalty signals.
| javcasas wrote:
| You will be on the next round of layoffs regardless of
| your loyalty. "You were updating linkedin" is the excuse.
| It could be anything else. But the reality is that they
| found someone cheaper.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I heard non-squeaky wheel look more loyal and are kept
| around.
| ADuckOnQuack wrote:
| "Loyalty" has been dead for decades, just look at that
| many accounts of successful teams and people that have
| been laid off in the last year alone. The same exact
| stories of hard working and dedicated people being laid
| off on a whim can be found going back decades.
|
| There's a reason that so many people now get prompted by
| moving "horizontally" between companies, very few
| companies today properly reward loyalty, if anything most
| actively incentivize individualism and disloyalty.
| javcasas wrote:
| Definitely. But also expensive non-squeaky wheels get
| replaced with cheaper wheels if upper management is in
| the mood of cost cutting.
| groestl wrote:
| Avoidant attachment at its best.
| tomrod wrote:
| You can wait for others to promote you as a carrot or you
| can promote yourself. With more power on the labor side,
| you can more easily promote yourself.
|
| Big Tech started with a lot of power in labor due to the
| knowledge economy, and is losing a lot of their core power.
| Thus wages will start slipping more and more and converge
| to general market rate for talent. Reclaim that power!
| tomrod wrote:
| > The risk is that your snooping boss now thinks they'd
| better not send you on that expensive training course or
| assign you that big, important project where success could
| get you promoted. And that you'll never get a chance to
| address their fears, as they want to keep the snooping
| secret.
|
| What a great reason to encourage employees at the margin to
| job hop! Better pay, negotiation of those expensive
| training courses and/or big important projects.
|
| What's the downside here, exactly, to a more fluid labor
| supply/supplier's market?
| pts_ wrote:
| Managers want prisoners. Tradespeople don't fall for this
| shjt, white collar employees shouldn't.
| tomrod wrote:
| I think a better mental model is that managers want
| _control_. If you are known for keeping your word and being
| frank in your goals, you are forecastable in how you will
| act and management steps back from trying to control and
| maybe even trusts you. If you aren't this way (and most
| folks aren't), then you become a pawn in a lot of manager
| headgames.
|
| Some managers are just a--holes, granted.
| usefulcat wrote:
| All of that is reasonable, but none of it works unless you
| can get ~everyone in your org to do it.
| tomrod wrote:
| Conservatively, only takes about 15%.
|
| Some findings show as low as 3.5%
|
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-
| takes-35...
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Get your teammates to update to and keep management
| nervous and focused on improving the employee 's lives._
|
| If you're working for a company that actively monitors this
| sort of thing, I don't think that management's response will
| be "let's make our employees; lives better."
| nness wrote:
| It reminds of a concept, which barring a better name, is
| "action through inaction" -- if you know an employee is unhappy
| through external signals like these, you could make the active
| effort to not engage with them knowing that it may lead them to
| quit; instead of a lengthy severance/redundancy discussion.
|
| I've seen similar insights, derived from a person's social-
| graph through email exchanges, and it was decided to not be
| used by managers as it could be a liability.
| throwaway918274 wrote:
| Employers and recruiters are always bewildered when I say I
| don't have a LinkedIn account, or a public Github profile (I
| have a few tiny open source projects I maintain, but they are
| all pseudonymous) - and this is exactly why.
|
| I don't want people creeping any kind of "profile" of me. Ever.
| wvenable wrote:
| I have such public accounts but they are specifically for
| said creeping.
| fHr wrote:
| Linkedin is required to market yourself though or else you
| can't bullshit your way through the HR hoops.
| FpUser wrote:
| No. I have plenty of clients over the years and not a
| single on ever asked my LinkedIn and / or any other social.
| And if they ever will the answer will be NO. Well other
| than HN I am not really on social media anyways. Just have
| couple of accounts to talk to a couple of people.
| marssaxman wrote:
| I deleted my LinkedIn account fifteen years ago, and it's
| been fine. I don't have random recruiters beating down my
| door trying to interest me in jobs I don't want, but is
| that such a loss? I've had no trouble getting the jobs I
| _do_ want.
| behringer wrote:
| Maybe you have a better history than I, but I've only
| ever had 2 or 3 _very_ interested recruiters that got a
| hold of me but they were the real deal and weren 't
| looking to fill entry level crap or stupid temp work.
|
| All the other recruiters just make chat and email spam
| easily ignored and they never bother me.
| throwaway918274 wrote:
| And yet I am gainfully employed and haven't had problems
| switching when I want to..
| swozey wrote:
| It's by no means a limiting factor if they don't have one,
| but when I'm interviewing for mid - staff+ level engineers in
| my specific field I absolutely love when they have some sort
| of project portfolio I can look at. Github, Gitlab, medium,
| whatever.
|
| I learn so little from a persons bullet pointed resume that
| when I don't have those the interviews feel like I'm pretty
| much walking in completely ignorant to this persons interests
| and skills over and over again.
|
| When I can go "oh neat, jbob99 worked on a foss project I
| used a few years ago!" it's nice.
|
| But I also couldn't care less about being "creeped" on. Half
| of my career was built because I'm _not_ an anonymous random
| software guy and companies know my work.
|
| You're using a completely random throwaway nick to stay
| anonymous on here, while I've literally gotten jobs from hn
| and grown my career from it. Just like I did on IRC when I
| was 13. It's an interesting difference of use.
|
| I don't mean one is better or worse at all and I totally get
| wanting to be anonymous.
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| People often have reasons outside of their control for
| being anonymous. Others have employment contracts that
| limit what outside business interests they can be involved
| in, including open source. That being said, I've been on HN
| for 2 years longer than you, 2/3rds the karma, and zero job
| offers so what do I know.
| swozey wrote:
| I wasn't aware of any of this! Outrageous!
|
| All kidding aside I totally get it. I was lucky and taken
| under under the wing of a very generous group of people
| who have pretty much followed one another around to
| various jobs/projects over the last decade and our skills
| have just grown non-stop. I WISH I'd gotten into FOSS
| projects way sooner, like when I was a kid instead of
| just learning linux and crawling up the sysadmin route.
|
| Like, junior help desk tech support to principal
| architects nowadays, etc. I try to get my friends who
| want to level up or change careers to hop into foss
| projects, #goodfirstissue sort of things. A lot of people
| just have no idea where to start, and they don't think
| they're skilled enough to join a project like kubernetes
| or what not, but those projects actually have Contributor
| Experience people/teams to help bring new people in
| comfortably and they need all sorts of help, not just go
| developers, etc.
|
| Hell, those contributor experience people are absolute
| diamonds and really make certain communities so inclusive
| and great to be in. There is a lot of cool ancillary work
| to be done and everyone has something in their wheelhouse
| they can contribute.
|
| https://goodfirstissue.dev/
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Half of my career was built because I 'm not an
| anonymous random software guy and companies know my work._
|
| I think this is a really important point. Most companies
| aren't going to hire some anonymous person on the internet
| with no track record or verifiable background. Most
| companies can't even legally put someone on their payroll
| without knowing a lot more about a person.
|
| People without a real-name presence on the internet are
| only going to get a pretty limited amount of unsolicited
| job-opening contact. And that might be what people like
| that prefer, which is fine. The minimal cold emails that
| come in may even be of much much higher quality and
| relevance. But ultimately they're still leaving a lot on
| the table, even if much of what's on the table is probably
| poorly-targeted crap. (Again, that's fine if that's what
| they want.)
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| My take is exactly the opposite: the more people who know
| that I exist, the more likely I am to hear of jobs that might
| interest me.
|
| Let them creep all over my profile: so far the only downside
| is that I have a pile of messages to sort through and say
| "no, thanks" to.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I have a very old linkedin account that has 10 years-
| outdated info. The company I'm supposedly working for does
| not exist anymore.
|
| As soon as I would even touch one word in my profile, a
| pile of recruiters would be triggered instantly. From
| experience I know that these recruiters have zero added
| value for me and often even their customer. On the contrary
| even, they have a tendency to try to fill any job with any
| qualification, because when they succeed, they hit a
| jackpot.
|
| Job vacancies are present on job sites like 'Indeed'. It is
| very easy to set an appropriate filter and just start
| sending out your CV to companies.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| It's even easier to do nothing and have people contact
| you.
|
| I got my current job because a recruiter cold-called me
| about my Linked-In profile. It was a perfect match for a
| position she was trying to fill.
|
| I wasn't looking, but it wasn't hard to persuade me to
| switch either.
| macintux wrote:
| I clearly need to do a better job with my profile,
| because recruiters never bother me.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I had two pretty good jobs come to me from LinkedIn.
|
| The majority of job leads I got from maybe the start of
| LinkedIn to about 8 years ago were crap.
|
| These days, most job leads are not crap, they just are
| not competitive with my current job. Much improved!
| Granted, I just updated a couple months ago my profile to
| say, "Not open to opportunities" and because my profile
| is recently updated, I get people contacting me daily -
| even on the weekend.
| kelnos wrote:
| I'm torn on this. Exactly once have I gotten a recruiting
| email from someone that turned out to be a good match for
| me. That job literally changed my life.
|
| But... every other recruiting email I've gotten has been at
| _best_ something I just wasn 't interested in, while the
| vast majority of them are so poorly targeted, I'm
| embarrassed for the recruiter for clearly not having a clue
| how to evaluate if a candidate is a good fit in even the
| most basic ways. All promising job prospects I've had
| (whether they worked out or not) came through connections,
| or active work on my part to seek out positions that
| interested me.
|
| (Obviously everyone's experience differs; I see you mention
| downthread that you once found a great match from a cold
| recruiter call.)
|
| So... did that one life-changing job come to me because of
| a privacy-minefield site like LinkedIn? I'm not sure how
| that in-house recruiter found me: it was a cold email to an
| address that I hadn't used in years, and it was just dumb
| luck that I signed into it a week after it was sent, which
| seems at odds with the usual way to get in touch with
| someone you've found through a job-network site.
|
| I'm at a point where I don't think I really need to
| maintain a LinkedIn profile in order to achieve my
| employment goals... but a part of me is too afraid it'll be
| useful (or even critical) to something in the future, so I
| haven't deleted it. Meh.
| szatkus wrote:
| Just yesterday I got a phone call from a recruiter asking
| about my LinkedIn account. I said that I don't have one.
|
| About an hour later she called me again with an invitation
| for a job interview.
|
| I don't really know what LinkedIn would change here...
| layer8 wrote:
| If you can help it, it's best to leave (or not start at) a
| company with such practices anyway.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That's difficult to identify.
| layer8 wrote:
| What I mean is, you shouldn't necessarily be afraid of
| losing your job or not getting hired due to those
| practices.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I already have concerns over my retention and
| marketability. I would definitely be concerned about this
| as I would like to have some sort of decent job.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think a lot of people necessarily need to be afraid of
| losing their jobs, depending on their skill set, local
| job market (less important with remote work, but still),
| and financial situation.
| tonmoy wrote:
| Perfect, I can update my LinkedIn profile when the project is
| in a critical phase and I know managers are making increment
| decisions
| badrabbit wrote:
| I think this was done to me. I didn't even signin or anything,
| just looked around at what options are out there and started
| getting questions about my plans to leave.
|
| What I've learned is if you plan to change jobs assume everyone
| at your current job will find out the minute you have an
| interview booked. Only applies to big companies that pay 3rd
| parties to monitor their employees like that though.
|
| Sometimes I wish we had germany's privacy laws for employees in
| the US.
| duxup wrote:
| Even some rudimentary effort on a given manager's part could
| find LinkedIn updates.
|
| I'm not convinced this is always an ultimately bad outcome if
| someone finds that.
| Avicebron wrote:
| I feel like if managers are using third party tools to try and
| find employees changing their linkedin,, they have waaay too
| little to do
| mmcdermott wrote:
| Very few managers would do this themselves. It is far more
| likely to be done by HR or an HR-adjacent group and a report
| sent to a manager.
| bri3d wrote:
| I've never really seen retention risk tooling used for evil in
| the way that most HN readers seem to think it is; it's kind of
| interesting and eye-opening to me to see the strong negative
| sentiment towards it.
|
| I've worked in management at companies with risk-based
| retention tools, and I've always seen them used as just that...
| retention tools. If anything, getting a high risk score as a
| high performer would usually be greatly in an employee's best
| interest, as it would be another justification to the higher-
| ups for a raise or better job assignment.
|
| To be clear, I'm personally generally against these kind of
| panopticon data-slurp initiatives overall, I'm just surprised
| that the initial reaction is so strongly "my manager will use
| this to fire me" when I've only ever seen the opposite.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I've never even heard of these tools before now, but my
| impression is the same as yours: the people they flag are
| more likely to be the kind of people that you want to keep.
| t_mann wrote:
| The basic assumption at play here is that data about you that
| you don't control is likely going to end up being used
| against you, which I think isn't unreasonable. Flawed risk
| metrics, even if they are only used to benefit those who are
| flagged, may still turn out to be unfavorable for some
| employees (eg for the false negatives).
| zug_zug wrote:
| Well the article is about glassdoor, which is where you write
| reviews.
|
| You better believe that if databrokers will buy information
| on whether you updated linked in that they'd also buy
| information on whether you gave the company a 1 star review.
|
| Heck, you can even post your salary to glassdoor, so maybe
| your next employer would buy that information so they know
| the least they could offer you.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| >"my manager will use this to fire me"
|
| For me it is more like: "my manager sees that I'm looking for
| a job", and I really rather tell him that I will be leaving,
| as soon as I'm certain of a new job. It's none of his
| business before that point.
| m463 wrote:
| > I've never really seen
|
| I remember reading a blog post by an employee that had gotten
| on the wrong side of google. When he came in their
| crosshairs, he said all his google machines forcibly updated
| themselves, and it became clear he was closely monitored.
|
| I think the idea is that decent relationships have good
| boundaries, and proactively maintaining them is a worthwhile
| endeavor. This is especially important when there is a power
| relationship.
| behringer wrote:
| I hope my boss sees my LinkedIn activity. Every other company
| does and if they want to retain me they better be willing to
| offer a fair wage.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I think we should modify the laws covering credit reporting
| agencies to cover these knuckleheads and add criminal penalties
| for non compliance.
| shsachdev wrote:
| That's super slimy of them -- a while back I had spent some time
| investigating fake reviews on their platform [1] and also found
| that their moderation team has no strict processes in place to
| deal with bad actors.
|
| [1]: https://www.careerfair.io/company-reviews
| p1esk wrote:
| You might be confused: to them, people like you and the OP are
| bad actors. What you mean by "bad actors" are their paying
| customers.
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| All this "my final determination" and "your other surprise
| account" nonsense could be rectified pretty quickly with a GDPR
| banhammer. I am increasingly of the opinion that personal info of
| any kind should be legally radioactive, and very high-risk for
| companies to hold onto or collect.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I agree. I am the author of a [very mild] social media app,
| that Serves an extremely tinfoil demographic.
|
| The #1 posture is that if we don't actually need the
| information for the application to run, we don't take it.
|
| I won't go into detail about how we do what we do, but we don't
| keep any data, other than the email the user chooses to send us
| (which can be a DEA or proxied one). We also never export that
| email outside the server. No marketing aggregations, no trend
| analysis, etc. The email stays inside the deployed server.
|
| This stance has not made me popular with my coworkers, but it
| has made our app quite popular with end-users.
| digitalsushi wrote:
| stances and postures sound like policies that are not written
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Nah, it's written. It's an iOS app, and Apple requires a
| well-written policy.
|
| Also, I have gotten used to doing things this way. I've
| been writing software for this particular demographic, for
| over 20 years.
| sterlind wrote:
| I'm incredibly curious about what this demographic is.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Won't mention it in public, but it's not a deep secret,
| or anything.
|
| Feel free to drop me a line.
| Runways wrote:
| Disgusting. Thought about creating an account several times to
| see more salary information, but now I guess I never will.
| nottorp wrote:
| I did that and they said I have to post information to see
| information, or something like that.
|
| Account is untouched since then.
| input_sh wrote:
| I made it a step further and shared some info and they were
| like "fuck you, we don't believe you".
| digging wrote:
| Well, I've understood Glassdoor to be useless for years due to
| supposedly allowing companies to control the existence of
| negative reviews, and I've never had an account. However, this is
| pretty disturbing and deserves to be more widely known if
| Glassdoor is actually now _hostile_ to employees who might review
| former employers.
| 1attice wrote:
| Done. Thank you for the headsup
| bilekas wrote:
| Surely this would discourage anyone posting legitimate reviews of
| their workplace but quite honestly, Glassdoor seems to only be
| for companies themselves to have a "badge" and not the potential
| employees.
|
| I don't think it would be missed if it were to disappear
| tomorrow.
| JCM9 wrote:
| Glassdoor seems very has-been at this point. They're trying to
| move beyond the mix of folks trashing their employers and then
| charging employers to make the profile look better to now trying
| to be more of a serious career site. The ship has sailed on that
| front and they just seem on a slow march to irrelevance as has
| happened to lots of other similar career and employer review
| sites.
| ipqk wrote:
| I just logged in for the first time in years to delete my
| account, and before letting me do anything they required me to
| add my full name and other employment info.
| bangaroo wrote:
| i did the same and was so, so infuriated by that.
| JimA wrote:
| My name is Joe Blow and my job is a Glassdoor Bankruptcy
| Advocate located in Antarctica.
| havefunbesafe wrote:
| This is very very illegal, depending on jurisdiction.
| zachmu wrote:
| Same. Thought I must not have been signed in and was getting
| pushed into a signup flow or something, so I cleared cookies
| and got the same behavior once I logged in.
|
| Forcing you to give them your real name before allowing you to
| use the site when logged in is incredibly scummy behavior I
| hope they are punished richly for.
| binarymax wrote:
| Was it possible to use a fake name?
| barbazoo wrote:
| It is
| bonton89 wrote:
| Always use a fake name, like we taught kids to do on the
| internet in the 1990s!
| f0xd13 wrote:
| I used the name "Nah Thanks" and selected that I was
| unemployed to pass on giving any legitimate information.
| thiele wrote:
| I got the same modal, but I opened up DevTools, deleted the
| modal and was able to then click into my account settings and
| delete my account.
| ajb wrote:
| Same, but instead of devtools I just found a longer URL in my
| history to get past it.
| tverbeure wrote:
| I'm now known as John Smith, student at Brookdale Community
| College with an associates degree, aspiring to be an "Assistant
| Dog Catcher" (yes, that was one of the options in their auto-
| complete field) in Lodi, CA.
|
| There was no option to delete the account, but after clicking
| "Deactivate", it still said that my account was now deleted, so
| who knows.
|
| Edit: And now I received 2 emails from them that my recent
| submissions (filling in that form?) violated community rules.
| freeAgent wrote:
| Oh dear, I hope they don't delete your account for violating
| their community guidelines!
| kirubakaran wrote:
| > Assistant Dog Catcher
|
| That's better than their other option: Assistant to the Dog
| Catcher
| suzzer99 wrote:
| I haven't logged in in years and I don't think I did much back
| then. Given everything I've read here, I think it might be
| safer just to let my account lie.
| jprete wrote:
| I reloaded until I was able to tap twice fast enough to reach
| the profile page, then "delete"/"deactivate" the account.
| jcoletti wrote:
| This is pretty shocking. I never use Glassdoor anyway, so deleted
| my account after reading. Worth noting that going to Settings
| only shows a button that says "Deactivate account", which seems
| misleading. Following this process does show a modal at the end
| that says "Account Deleted Confirmation. You have successfully
| deleted your account.", so seems like this is actually deletion
| vs. deactivation. (Your data stays in an archive DB for some
| period of time for legal reasons.)
| petsfed wrote:
| also worth noting that if you attempt to go in via the mobile
| page, specifically to delete an account that predates "fish
| bowl" and mandatory names, you'll be bombarded with cascading
| popups that _require_ your compliance (no x to exit, just
| "next" and filling in the relevant forms).
|
| Based on this story, I already knew to expect resistance, but
| jesus fuck that was far worse than I imagined.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| Careful: Those are just words, written by someone who thought
| that the difference between them is insignificant. (Maybe it
| was insignificant when it was actually written.) Without having
| concrete confirmation, all you have is just some optimistic
| assumption.
| Ecstatify wrote:
| At the bottom there's a Data Request Form.
|
| You have the option "Delete my personal data"
|
| https://help.glassdoor.com/s/privacyrequest?language=en_US
| hammock wrote:
| >they had updated my profile to add my real name and location,
| the name pulled from the email From line I didn't think to cloak
| because who does that?
|
| How did they get that if you never sent them an email? And if you
| sent them an email, you gave them your name (whatever name is in
| the from line)
| danudey wrote:
| > Recently I contacted Glassdoor for an account-related issue.
| This led to them sending me email that I had to respond to. Big
| mistake.
|
| So he put in a support request, likely via his account; they
| sent him an e-mail about it, likely to his Glassdoor account's
| e-mail. He replied from that e-mail address with his full name
| in the From: field, as most people do, and now they could link
| his full name with his e-mail address, and update his profile.
| dudul wrote:
| Tell me you don't understand what makes your own website mildly
| attractive to employees without telling Mr.
|
| Glassdoor has been mostly useless for quite some time now anyway.
| HR departments offer little trinkets to employees who leave a
| good review to boost their score, negative reviews can be taken
| down. Minimal value all around basically.
| moepstar wrote:
| German site kununu may also be forced to disclose clear names of
| previously anonymous reviews [0]
|
| So, what's left besides word of mouth?
|
| [0] https://www.golem.de/news/urteil-kununu-muss-im-
| streitfall-k... (sorry, article in german)
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > your Glassdoor account
|
| null pointer exception
| gxs wrote:
| Seriously, I've browsed some of those sites in the past and the
| info is always bad info. Or at the very least, it's not
| possible to discern the good info from the bad info on those
| sites.
|
| I've never understood what compels people to go to those sites,
| I suspect it's because people feel that it at least gives them
| a voice.
|
| The only site with a modicum of value is LinkedIn, and even
| then you can probably come up with a million reasons to not use
| it.
| harryquach wrote:
| This got a lol from me, well done
| tr3ntg wrote:
| Decided to visit the website to delete my account. Lo and behold,
| the "Deactivate Account" button kicks off a perpetual loop that
| asks you to "Sign In Again To Delete Account" then dumps you on
| the same profile setting page, which prompts you again to log
| in... so you can't really delete your account, at least on web,
| without the help of support.
|
| Edit: figured it out, is confusing
|
| 1. Remove social connection if this is how you logged in 2. Log
| Out 3. Upon login, request a password reset 4. Reset and login 5.
| Request Deletion 6. Enter newly created password
| jcoletti wrote:
| Strange, do you have any browser security extensions,
| aggressive cookie-blocking, or something similar? I was able to
| complete the process (see my comment below). I'm using Brave
| with ad blockers. The "deactivate" language is pretty
| misleading, but after entering account credentials, it did seem
| to delete the account completely.
| barbazoo wrote:
| It worked for me normally just now
| drdirk wrote:
| I have the same experience right now.
| xvector wrote:
| Sue the fuck out of them. Hope this company crashes and burns.
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| I keep thinking about this response from a glassdoor employee,
| and what it implies about their decision making processes:
| I stand behind the decision that your name has to be placed on
| your profile and it cannot be reverted or nullified/anonymized
| from the platform. I am sorry that we disagree on this issue.
| [...] This is my final determination. I, as well as multiple
| members of my team, have reviewed your request several times, and
| I am considering this matter closed.
| blibble wrote:
| this is why the GDPR right of erasure exists
|
| fuck these companies
| fmajid wrote:
| Also California's CCPA/CPRA.
| barrysteve wrote:
| There is no recourse except not to play. The end user has no
| choice. Sounds like a dictatorship.
| topikk wrote:
| Sounds like a platform that will wither away and die.
| Glassdoor users are emboldened by anonymity and know exactly
| what happens to people who put that kind of information on
| Facebook or LinkedIn next to their real name.
| m463 wrote:
| I can't help but think, how does glassdoor make money?
|
| Looking at this question it is clare - from employers.
|
| They help companies keep a clean image, and also sell them job
| listings and advertising.
|
| Scrubbing a company's image seems like it would be really
| lucrative.
|
| It doesn't seem like reflecting reality makes money. I actually
| don't know if there are any review sites where having accurate
| reviews makes it profitable.
|
| And it doesn't seem like employees are really a revenue stream,
| since they are not looking for a job.
| malloci wrote:
| Tend to use blind for the inside scoop these days anyway
| minimaxir wrote:
| Blind is 10% inside scoop, 90% shitposting.
| gxs wrote:
| You should request your data from a company like axciom. You can
| ask them to delete it while you're at it.
|
| They already know more about you than you'd ever want them to
| know. The fact that they hadn't automatically matched your name
| before was either incompetence or simply being blocked by some
| frayed little law somewhere.
|
| A little off topic, but his is a classic example of the problem
| where the laws just haven't kept up with the technology.
|
| Data collection and public government databases weren't a problem
| when you had to go into some big office building somewhere to
| make a request, or maybe wait a couple weeks to sort it out
| through the mail.
|
| Today, however, it's easier than ever to gather this data at
| scales people can't even imagine and this level of aggregation
| has eroded privacy to a degree that I don't think is reversible
| anymore.
|
| Anyway, here is a link to axcioms portal, although the cynic in
| me thinks that by requesting your data be deleted, all you're
| doing is confirming your identity.
|
| https://privacyportal.onetrust.com/webform/342ca6ac-4177-482...
| sambull wrote:
| we need strong laws on data brokers. to protect our privacy from
| foreign and domestic actors.
| ecshafer wrote:
| I think Glassdoor has the issue in that its not a growth
| business, but needs to be. You can't have a website like
| Glassdoor that is VC funded, owned by PE or publicly traded and
| not have it go to shit. The organic usage is people looking for
| new jobs, or posting about jobs they hate, or companies
| responding. A website that has <20 employees and is fine with
| being a $10M a year business living off of ad revenue could
| absolutely do this and be successful. A business seeking to
| double revenue can't.
| tadfisher wrote:
| This is the essential problem with any platform whose value
| consists of user-generated content. For example, Reddit doesn't
| _have_ to hold an IPO to continue being Reddit, they don 't
| _have_ to paywall their API, and they don 't _have_ to make
| their website a global dark pattern to force engagement; they
| _chose_ to sell stakes and play the growth game. Medium is
| another example, as is Quora, LinkedIn, and a hundred other
| tech companies that are essentially specialized takes on PhpBB
| forums.
| rurp wrote:
| Yep, it's so disappointing how many web projects provide
| solid value for many people, have a reasonable business
| model, but go to absolute shit and eventually fade to nothing
| chasing unsustainable returns. It's staggering how much
| better the web could be if the demand for exponential returns
| hadn't become so dominant on the business side.
| duxup wrote:
| It does sometimes feel like we're missing out on these
| "reasonable company with reasonable expectations" type
| businesses and funding and crashing a ton of companies that
| would otherwise maybe live on reasonably?
| ecshafer wrote:
| What is the line from The Social Network? "Its not cool to be
| a millionaire, its cool to be a billionaire" or something
| along those lines. I think a lot of people aren't happy with
| being just very wealthy I suppose.
| supportengineer wrote:
| There's even a stigma to being a "single digit millionaire"
| the_sleaze9 wrote:
| Greg: I'm good, anyway, cuz, uh, my, so, I was just
| talkin' to my mom, and she said, apparently, he'll leave
| me five million anyway, so I'm golden, baby.
| Connor: You can't do anything with five, Greg. Five's a
| nightmare. Greg: Is it? Connor:
| Oh, yeah. Can't retire. Not worth it to work. Oh, yes,
| five will drive you un poco loco, my fine feathered
| friend. Tom: The poorest rich person in
| America. The world's tallest dwarf.
| Connor: The weakest strong man at the circus.
|
| -- Succession
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Can't retire on $5M?
|
| At a 5%/year withdrawal rate, that's $250K/year. That's
| absolutely livable. You won't live like a king, but
| that's a solid middle-class living in most suburbs
| outside the Bay area.
| aftbit wrote:
| I dunno, I think it's pretty cool to be either a
| millionaire or a billionaire. That's probably why I'm not
| either.
| tivert wrote:
| > What is the line from The Social Network? "Its not cool
| to be a millionaire, its cool to be a billionaire" or
| something along those lines. I think a lot of people aren't
| happy with being just very wealthy I suppose.
|
| I think the founders of those companies would be fine with
| the millionaire outcome, as it beats crashing and burning
| in pursuit of billions.
|
| The problem is the VC mindset.
| whatindaheck wrote:
| It's not good enough to run a business that supports you,
| your family, and your employees families anymore. Everything
| has to be the next billion-dollar big idea that'll make the
| books. Even small businesses have the feel of soul-less big
| business because of this. It's disheartening that this is
| what the tech industry has become.
| Uehreka wrote:
| Yeah, and the problem is that if you try to start a
| bootstrapped company to compete with Glassdoor without ever
| taking funding, you'll be outspent on marketing by the
| companies that did take funding and you'll go under. There's a
| reason so many of these sites are VC funded even when it feels
| like they shouldn't be. And VCs are often willing to fund
| things with a 1% chance of success, so even if multiple VC-
| backed companies in a market have failed, it won't dissuade
| them from investing.
| Solvency wrote:
| Why is it impossible for communities to emerge organically in
| 2024? Why must you raise and spend $20m on marketing alone?
|
| I found Reddit literally through organic word-of-mouth when
| Digg went under. Never saw an ad for it in my life.
|
| Why does a Glassdoor alternative inherently need marketing?
| cchance wrote:
| The thing is you did find reddit via marketing, its just
| the marketing hit the people before it hit you, that guy
| that told you about it or the one that told him was the one
| that marketing got into reddit, which got them to a
| critical mass that word of mouth can take over.
| okanat wrote:
| Reddit didn't start to attract the critical mass until they
| became the top result in Google though nor it was able to
| keep its servers with its own profit. Until they squash all
| possible opponents, such social networks has never been
| profitable.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Fully agree with that. But you've just stated one of the major
| problems the software industry has in general. There's almost
| an inevitable flow that leads businesses that feed on VC
| funding to develop like this. They will turn shitty because
| they are as big as they _should_ get, but not as big as they
| _must_ get.
| FredPret wrote:
| Like a web mittelstand [0]
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelstand
| ipaddr wrote:
| Love the change. Now I can signup with employee name I dislike
| like a powerful manager and get them out.
| XCSme wrote:
| Glassdoor is one of the worst and first examples of "annoying
| paywalls" that I remember. (they don't require payment, but your
| login and personal info)
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| All US tech companies ever, they are out there to doing the right
| thing until money rolls in then profits take the priority over
| quality and they go down the shitter.
|
| 1) Evernote
|
| 2) Triplebyte
|
| 3) Glassdoor
|
| 4) Let's not forget Quora
| StressedDev wrote:
| Are you sure it's just profits? People need money to support
| themselves. Companies hire people and have to pay them because
| they can't work for free. This means companies need revenue.
|
| Now, with traditional companies, customers paid for products
| and services. This revenue allowed companies to pay employees.
| With the companies you listened, they gave away their product
| "for free". That meant they had to get revenue some other way.
| Usually, this either involved ads, spying (so ads could be
| better targeted), pay for advanced features (Evernote), or sell
| services to some third party (Yelp and Glassdoor are two
| examples of this).
|
| The problem with all of these new business models is companies
| often struggle to get enough revenue to survive. What is no
| called 'enshitification" is basically companies searchimng for
| a way to survive when their users will not directly pay for the
| service they are offering. Is this good for users? No, but then
| again the users refuse to pay for the service.
|
| My main point here is greed is not the only thing driving this
| process. In many cases, it is incentives and organizations
| trying to survive. If we want products which delight us, we are
| probably going to have to pay for them. If we want the cheapest
| thing possible, we are going to have to accept that it will get
| progressively worse as companies try to survive or keep their
| earning growing.
|
| Note that the above earnings growth is probably a short term
| phenomenon. My guess is that companies who push earnings over
| quality eventually destroy their product and get a bad product
| and lower earnings. This process can take years or decades.
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| This is just absurd, how much revenue does Facebook need to
| "survive"?
|
| I'd expect from society in 2024, platforms like Facebook,
| Quora, GlassDoor to not only exist but to work well in an
| established way. It's just greed, pure and simple.
|
| Nothing works, and everything is "shittified".
|
| For example, I was really excited about Triplebyte. I thought
| finally we may have a tool to separate the wheat from the
| chaff and hoped it would make it's way even to Europe but
| then it got shittified with dark patterns.
|
| The moment something becomes cool for a few months, it's
| already a cow to be milked endlessly and sold off to the
| highest bidder who will do the same and once it's _gone_ they
| 'll find someone to throw under the bus and move on to the
| next thing.
|
| And that's not even counting personal information which they
| consistently misuse or sell. I am terrified to use majority
| of services online with personal name/surname and recently my
| very unique(identifies just me) name:surname combo got
| hijacked and was used in a fake review site. I just don't
| trust any company when they say "your private notes" are
| private. Yes, they are, if they earn trillions and become
| like apple. But the moment money is tighter they change the
| tune.
|
| For example take a site like bumble. The frontend is junior
| level programming even HS. The backend is a simple DB. It
| can't cost billions of euros to run that.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Wow, big dark UX pattern when trying to sign in now. I'm quite
| positive that I never linked my glassdoor account to google. Yet,
| Glassdoor was ambiguously saying on login "use your google
| account to login for your @gmail address!". To which google asked
| "are you sure you want to share info with glassdoor."
|
| There was no way to enter my old password, I was forced to now
| link my account with google which force shared my email & name. I
| was really nervous about even enabling this linking... I bit the
| bullet, happily it looks like it is somewhat easy to delete
| reviews and finally the account. Getting there though, was forced
| to divulge new information.
|
| I don't think I could have a lower opinion of glassdoor now..
| jdowner wrote:
| I was able to login just now using an email address.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Was it an @gmail? I wonder if glass door forced the account
| linking because of that, or if the option to enter my
| password and not link accounts was just buried.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| The enshittification of the world continues apace.
| StressedDev wrote:
| I think you are fundamentally wrong. The world is getting
| better all of the time. Look at life 10 years ago, 30 years
| ago, 100 years ago, 200, years ago, etc.
|
| Life expectancy is up, people are richer, people are healthier,
| we have an amazing number of choices, we have amazing devices,
| etc.
|
| I think your view is very distorted and you really should check
| your facts. Here are some questions you should ask yourself:
|
| 1) What do you mean when you say "enshitification"? How is the
| world getting worse? By what measure?
|
| 2) Are there any counter examples which could disprove your
| thesis?
|
| 3) How does the world today compare to the world at other
| times? Why is the world better today? What was better before?
|
| Finally, you should consider individual things instead of the
| world. For example, you can look at your town, housing, food,
| culture, etc. Try going beyond good and bad and look at the
| benefits and drawbacks of various things. Consider whether you
| need a more nuanced view of the world.
| claytongulick wrote:
| I had an employee on my team at a company I worked for once who
| used the CFO's real name to post a review trashing the company.
|
| The real name policy had the opposite of the intended effect.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I have not logged into Glassdoor in a long time, I tried to log
| in after seeing this.
|
| I get a prompt that I cannot dismiss about "Communities at
| Glassdoor" that I can't get past without putting in my employment
| information and name...
|
| I can't even get too my account to delete it or emails support.
|
| Love dark patterns...
| irobeth wrote:
| I just lied about both things it wanted and it was fine with
| that, so it seems a little silly to make it a requirement
| ppetty wrote:
| Done, account deleted, and thank you for the heads up. Genuinely,
| thankful for that post and maybe the most important social
| network I'm a part of: Hacker News.
| rurp wrote:
| My God what a sleazy company this is. I just logged in for the
| first time in ages to delete my account and it immediately gave
| me an inescapable modal requiring personal information, including
| my name!
|
| I stopped using the site years ago once it became clear how
| corrupt they were about handling blatantly fake reviews, but this
| new name policy is a new low. Glassdoor can't be run out of
| business fast enough.
| blah-yeah wrote:
| Thanks! You're right.
|
| Just deleted all my glassdoor contributions, then deactivated my
| glassdoor account.
| gip wrote:
| As a senior manager I worked closely with a VP of engineering on
| the engineering culture - one of the expected outcome was the
| improvement of our Glassdoor company rating. But my VP (and
| probably the leadership) wanted to go fast. So my VP was in touch
| with someone at Glassdoor and had a way to 'tweak' or remove
| unpleasant reviews. I don't know the details but if there is
| definitely a way for companies to do that despite Glassdoor
| claiming that reviews can't be removed.
| freeAgent wrote:
| They can definitely manipulate the default ("recommended") sort
| to bury bad reviews. Companies do that all the time. They can
| also reply to reviews. I'm not sure about control over
| visibility if a user chooses to sort chronologically, though.
| gip wrote:
| I can confirm that at least 2 of the offending reviews simply
| disappeared after my VP talked to them.
| giantg2 wrote:
| When I signed up for Blind, I remember being a concerned that I
| had to use my work email to sign up. At the very least the
| employer can see that you signed up via the verification email.
| mysteria wrote:
| I've heard of people randomly signing up their coworkers to
| create plausible deniability.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I mean, I guess that could work at a company with horrible
| security practices that you could verify through their email.
| tomrod wrote:
| Weird. I only see the option to deactivate an account, not delete
| or even close.
|
| Damn this terribly company and their terrible, terrible dark
| patterns.
| jcoletti wrote:
| See my top-level comment. I went through this process and the
| confirmation message seems to indicate it does perform a
| deletion vs. a deactivation.
| tomrod wrote:
| Maybe. I don't trust Glassdoor to be honest though.
| fHr wrote:
| What the actual fuck, glasdoor just died for me. Tinker around
| with data to that degree is a nogo by all means.
| thraway3837 wrote:
| It's very possible that the full name from the email to the
| person's Glassdoor account was not manually performed by a human.
|
| More than likely, their CRM software automatically tied their
| user-facing account with their support ticket email. Especially
| if the only unique identifier is based on email address. It's not
| hard to remove the name and location from the CRM, but because it
| would become a manual process they just don't want to have to
| deal with it.
|
| FWIW, this theory could be put to test by signing up an account
| with username.extrachars@gmail.com and then sending a support
| email from username.extrachars+1@gmail.com, not sure if they
| would reject the support ticket as "emails not matched".
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Thank you, I deleted my account.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Shit, and I hate how all of these 'auto-login' prompts appear in
| Chrome, and if you accidentally click it, then boom, now your
| name is all over the place. Think this is how I ended up in
| GlassDoor to begin with.
| hedora wrote:
| UBlock Origin -> My Filters, add this:
|
| accounts.google.com/gsi/iframe
|
| the google popups go away, but if you click on a "login with
| google" button it will still work.
|
| (I use that filter with Firefox. It wouldn't surprise me if
| Chrome's bundled spyware somehow breaks this.)
| jdowner wrote:
| Out of curiosity, I had a look at my account on glassdoor and my
| name is "Rollo Tomasi". Seems about right :)
| SavageBeast wrote:
| If this is how they're going to play it, RIP Glassdoor. Seems
| like a MAJOR breach of trust to allow users to submit content and
| participate anonymously THEN start revealing their names!
|
| "If you are not willing to allow your name on your profile, you
| will again need to complete Data erasure once you are able to.
| However, we cannot remove this for you or make the changes you
| wish to see for your name."
|
| I guess we know the appropriate action to take here. This is an
| absolutely BONE HEADED decision with regards to the operation of
| Glassdoor but I wonder what was the impetus for this? It looks
| like they're trying to convert their anonymous, Reddit-like,
| users to First Class Named Users for the purpose trying to
| compete with Linkedin to me.
|
| I find the rationale here questionable and the execution plain
| nutty personally.
| throwaway892238 wrote:
| They're not revealing anyone's names. Names are anonymous by
| default until you elect to share yours.
| plz-remove-card wrote:
| This is precisely why I never created a glassdoor account. It's
| exactly the kind of thing I feared would happen.
| playa1 wrote:
| I haven't used Glassdoor for years. I just checked and my account
| didn't have any personal information listed. My name and other
| fields in my profile were "*"
|
| I didn't see a way to delete my data but I don't think they had
| much in the first place.
|
| I did use the "deactivate account" option.
| basisword wrote:
| Good luck 'deactivating' your account. Somehow I was registered
| via Facebook. I was able to sign in via Facebook. Then they force
| you to give your company, title, location, and name before they
| allow you access to anything, including settings (scum). Then
| when you click deactivate you have to sign in again, and the
| Facebook login just redirects to a blank page and deactivation
| doesn't occur.
| kdomanski wrote:
| Wow, in the EU one email to the local data protection office
| would set them on fire for this.
| junto wrote:
| I was thinking this too. I'm very thankful to live in the EU
| and have the right to have my PII data deleted.
| mock-possum wrote:
| > Glassdoor now requires your real name and will add it to older
| accounts without your consent if they learn it, and your only
| option is to delete your account.
|
| weird. I just logged in, and I can't confirm that this is
| happening. all of my reviews are still properly anonymous. my
| account knows my name and my email address, of course, but it
| does not appear anywhere on the site where I don't expect it to.
|
| > So all users will now receive a Fishbowl account once they
| login to Glassdoor
|
| I'm not real sure what this means - as far as I can tell, 'bowls'
| are just the equivalent of fb groups, and while there are a few
| automatically added to your account initially, you can just leave
| them, and proceed with an empty list of 'bowls' you follow (or
| whatever the terminology is)
|
| what am I missing here?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > my account knows my name and my email address
|
| you just said it yourself -- consider that the data that is
| collected and sold is not necessarily on the pages you see
| crotchfire wrote:
| Captcha Check
|
| Hello, you've been (semi-randomly) selected to take a CAPTCHA to
| validate your requests. Please complete it below and hit the
| button!
|
| Press to validate
|
| No thanks.
| tamimio wrote:
| All of these shenanigans occur because the laws favor employers
| over employees; there's no protection, or at least, proper
| freedom of speech. But what can you expect when employees can be
| fired on the spot for asking to unionize?
| smrtinsert wrote:
| Wow, never using that service again, thanks for the heads up.
| flemhans wrote:
| Danish payment app MobilePay also just revealed the full name of
| all its users, linked to the government database.
|
| You can enter any phone number and the full name of the user will
| be shown. Previously a user-selectable name, now it's coming from
| the government database of citizens.
| throwaway892238 wrote:
| It's both funny and sad when people find out how the real world
| works and get all indignant. "How dare they do a thing they're
| legally allowed to do! Rabble rabble rabble!!!" Glassdoor is
| trying to make money off you, like every other free site on the
| internet, and they will do whatever the law allows them to.
| Welcome to planet Earth.
|
| Meanwhile, all the commenters in here are overreacting as usual,
| clearly not having read any of the terms of the website, like the
| part where it says your name is not disclosed until you
| explicitly elect to share it. But hey let's not let facts stop us
| from freaking out.
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