
Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees - treebro
https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-manipulate-glassdoor-by-inflating-rankings-and-pressuring-employees-11548171977
======
fuzz4lyfe
I've had negative reviews flat out removed by a company that was paying glass
door for some sort of premium service. I extensively reviewed the rules and
reworded my comments and they were removed yet again. My points were fully
factually true and were not anything too untoward (pay raises were promised to
members of a new team, they never materialized, most team members left). For
what it's worth, Path Forward IT is not a great place to work. advancement
rarely comes with rewards and abuse of salary agreements abound(work all night
to get a system up and running, they still require 8 hours behind a desk even
if it would be unproductive. Flexibility works one way there).

~~~
sevensor
> Flexibility works one way there

A former boss put it like this, "Sure we have flex time! You can arrive any
time before 8 and leave any time after 6."

~~~
commandlinefan
Let me guess, he laughed when he said it like he was super funny, too, right?
Like when I used to ask one former boss which of the ten tasks he'd just
assigned to me was highest priority he'd say, "yes!" and laugh like he'd just
told the greatest joke and then run out of the room (seriously) before I could
pin him down on an actual decision.

~~~
chaostheory
imo this is endemic in areas with poor job markets where there's really about
1 or 2 large employers. It's not just time to leave the company; you need to
leave the whole area as well.

~~~
commandlinefan
I'm in an area with lots of employers, but 20 years ago I did some job-hopping
(four jobs in four years between 95 and 99), and that STILL comes up as a
negative in job interviews. If you bail on too many bad managers, you can find
yourself locked out anyway.

~~~
kevstev
At this point you should just have a >20 years ago section on there (I would
label it "prior history" myself), and include projects you worked on. That's
over 20 years ago. Unless you worked on something you really want to
highlight, just fudge them altogether.

I am guessing you don't work in tech in the US though? I was a bit worried
about doing a third "three and out" while looking, and 10 years prior in
finance, it may have been an issue, when I was looking at tech companies, no
one even batted an eyelash. One HR recruiter even quipped that these would be
relatively long tenures in the startup world.

~~~
zaphod12
Oh man, I know what you mean - it's kind of crazy. When I'm at a company for
more then 2 years, recruiters start joking that I'm an old timer and must be
dying for a change! I'm all for moving when the time is right, but I like my
job and looking for a new one is stressful!

------
cs702
By and large, GlassDoor ratings are no longer a good measure of how well a
company treats employees; they now measure, mainly, whether a company has the
ability to engineer and maintain artificially good GlassDoor ratings.

GlassDoor, in short, has become a textbook example of Goodhart's Law:

    
    
      "When a measure becomes a target,
       it ceases to be a good measure."[a]
    

The same phenomenon is known in some contexts as Campbell's Law:

    
    
      "The more any quantitative social indicator is
       used for social decision-making, the more subject
       it will be to corruption pressures and the more
       apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social
       processes it is intended to monitor."[b]
    

[a]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

[b]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law)

~~~
DamnInteresting
> _a textbook example of Goodhart 's Law_

I had never heard of Goodhart's Law by name until about 45 minutes ago, while
listening to an episode of Planet Money that originally aired last November.
And here it is again. This is one of the more striking examples of the Baader-
Meinhof phenomenon I've experienced in recent years.

~~~
shlomok
Once I learned about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon it seemed to pop up
everywhere.

~~~
tatami
It's spreading on HN this past week, you could say it's viral.

------
aerovistae
You don't say! I used to work as an engineer at a _truly_ awful little
company, the worst I've been at, and when I left I gave them a _scathing_
review. Not long after, several new reviews popped up. Here are some choice
excerpts, get a load of this:

> Pros: > For anyone reading these reviews, take it from someone who has been
> at this company for over 10 years, some people just like to use these review
> sites as a sounding board for their own distorted views of a company where
> they obviously were let go for good and obvious reasons.

> [skipping forward a bit]

>The truth is that every company will inevitably come across a "sour grape"
that was not meant to be part of that companies future. Its just a shame that
instead of trying to improve themselves they waste time trying to justify
their irrational beliefs and convince themselves that writing negative reviews
will somehow fortify their distorted view of what actually happened during
their time there.

>Cons

>Former employees that sit in dark rooms and write negative reviews in between
shifts at the local convenience store.

\---------------

Then they separately put up some absurd propaganda reviews. This one was
titled "Sunshine, Unicorns and GumDrops," if you can believe that:

> I have been with Snowbound for quite a long time(about 10 years) and I have
> been meaning to write a review. I am inclined to agree with the "like a
> family and home away from home” reviews. At least on my side of the office
> it’s the land of Sunshine, Unicorns and Gumdrops. We like to work hard but
> also have a good time doing it.

Then they had another one titled "Like a family", here's an excerpt~

> You aren't just a number or a body behind a computer screen. If you're going
> through a personal issue, …

Yeah, like when I was fired and the CTO coldly told me "We can do better than
you." This is the same guy who I watched stroke a waitress's hand as he passed
her a tip during a company lunch outing and tell her "You have a smoking ass."

\--------

There's another review titled "home away from home," and another called "long
time here and worth it," but you get the point.

~~~
NotHereNotThere
Since you opted to reveal the company's name (Snowbound software), I went
ahead and read the reviews on GlassDoor.

Your review is very emotionally charged and with very few facts or examples,
which makes it difficult to take seriously.

Since you were fired I can understand why you would write like this, but it is
a bit ironic considering the article is about manipulating reviews.

Yours is scathing indeed, but not in an insightful way and just seems like an
attempt to bash the company (1 star, all reds, only pros are low pressure
environment and parking?). I can understand why the company would want to
defend itself against this with actual facts (they state increased revenue,
staff seniority, customer names).

Anyways take whatever you want from this comment, I'm just a neutral observer
with limited information, but I don't think Snowbound's positive reviews show
manipulation

~~~
justin66
The negative review was informative enough. Political, negative work
environment and old, dead tech. Blah blah.

It's the context that is particularly damning. Whenever you see a heartfelt
negative review surrounded by obviously fake or reactionary (do you _really_
not see that?) positive reviews, that is a red flag. It is not uncommon.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
I totally disagree. When I read reviews (on Glassdoor or anywhere, really) I
try to discount any emotionally charged content and focus on the factual
elements of the reviews.

I mean, "Political, negative work environment"? _Every_ single group of humans
since the beginning of time has a level of political interaction, so when I
see comments about things being political I pretty much discount them unless
there are some level of specifics. I've also seen folks make the "political"
charge when what was really at issue is the person didn't communicate or work
well with others, and it takes a level of emotional maturity to realize why
this is important.

~~~
aerovistae
> factual elements of the reviews

What facts can you really share though? This isn't a court situation, where
evidence is scrutinized and held up to rigorous standards. So what are you
really expecting? Transcripts of conversations? Financial documents? I don't
really understand what kind of "facts" you would be looking for.

Reviews are all about "how was your subjective experience there." If the
answer is "awful, the company treated me poorly," then that's a legitimate
review. Why would you discount it?

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Because there is a big difference between "awful, the company treated me
poorly" and something like "I got 4 consecutive quarters of positive reviews,
including a bonus and a raise, but then when there was a change in management
I was let go with the reason being 'poor performance'." Something like that
would let me know the company is immature with respect to how it managed
employee growth.

~~~
chii
Just because there's some numbers doesn't mean it's factual.

Annecdotal, not factual. And both should be treated with same level of
scrutiny.

~~~
netheril96
> Annecdotal, not factual.

Anecdotes are not the opposite to facts. They are only opposites to whole
facts.

------
ticmasta
This article kind of misses the entire point; Glassdoor and the rest of these
"professional review" sites sell reputation management services to the
company. They use the negative reviews to push other high margin services to
the companies. The only one who should care about Glassdoor being gamed is
Glassdoor executives; anyone looking for a honest and balanced review of a
company workplace on Glassdoor is already getting a manufactured picture.

~~~
rashomon
It's the same business model as the Better Business Bureau and Yelp. It's a
manufactured perspective.

As a devil's advocate, how can a company expect to be viewed impartially if
the only folks who review them have tempers raged enough to motivate them to
leave a poor review in the first place? How can I, a potential employee, trust
said-reviewer wasn't let go due to Silo'd mismanagement, personal issues or a
company pivoting?

I'd rather a platform that lays out exactly what the working conditions would
be for most folks. Time in/out of office, salary merit increases or profit-
sharing, draconian work-attire policy, etc.

~~~
raverbashing
You need to leave a review if you want to access the data in the site. This
motivates people to leave a (neutral) review.

So it is not all ranting, and I'd say most companies have good (realistic)
scores and reviews

~~~
withdavidli
They don't check if you actually worked for the place reviewed. You can leave
a review for any company to gain access. Sorry GameStop, for my neutral review
even though I never worked there.

------
wrkdatroostify
"Jennifer Peatman, who headed Roostify’s human-resources team at the time many
of the negative reviews were written, surmised they came from disgruntled
former engineers who she said didn’t have the coding skills the company
believed it needed.... Ms. Peatman said she left the company a month later, in
December 2017, because of what she called poor leadership"

So I worked at Roostify and _none_ of these engineers were fired. They all
left for greener pastures. I think it is hilarious that Jenn can leave because
of poor leadership, but when engineers leave and cite poor leadership it is
because they suck.

------
mindcrime
My approach to Glasdoor reviews is similar to my approach to Amazon reviews...
ignore the positive reviews, and focus on the negative ones. Now, "absence of
evidence isn't evidence of absence", but a large number of negative reviews
_is_ a strong "stay away" signal. A small number of negative reviews is, more
or less regardless of the positive reviews, a "neutral" indicator to me.

~~~
Jach
Nitpick: Unless you're confusing "evidence" and "proof", absence of evidence
is evidence of absence. Proof:
[http://oyhus.no/absence/index.html](http://oyhus.no/absence/index.html)

~~~
throwawaymath
That site is pretty pretentious...all you have to do is replace it with,
"absence of proof is not proof of absence."

------
johnmarcus
Glassdoor is a joke. I left negative reviews for FigureEight (previously
Crowdflower) and they immediately went into review and were then deleted. The
positive reviews there are so obviously fake. ("cons: only one shower") lol.

They have had several rounds of layoffs and yet their reviews stayed positive.
Only now I see a few negatives are creeping through the cracks as I'm sure the
onslaught of negative reviews is much greater than what's posted.

Anyway, stay away from FigureEight, they have extremely shady employee
practices and have to be one of the worst companies in SF I've experienced or
witness. The only condolence I have is I see the entire C-team has been fired
or left. It's a dumpster fire.

Anyway, yeah, Glassdoor is trash.

------
coderintherye
They also sell your data now:

"We have updated our Privacy and Cookie Policy with changes to how we use and
share information.

Among other things, our updated Privacy and Cookie Policy: Allows Glassdoor to
share data with Glassdoor affiliates. Subject to user visibility and control,
permits Glassdoor to share a user's Profile or resume with prospective
employers when a user creates and saves a Profile and uploads a resume, and
allows Glassdoor, or a Glassdoor affiliate, to recommend a Glassdoor user (and
that user's Profile, resume or resume extract) to an employer with a presence
on Glassdoor or a Glassdoor affiliate's site.

You do not need to take any further action upon receiving this email. By
continuing to use our services, you agree to the updated policy. You can also
update your account information at
[https://www.glassdoor.com/member/account/settings_input.htm](https://www.glassdoor.com/member/account/settings_input.htm).
Thank you for being part of the Glassdoor community.

Who are Glassdoor affiliates? Glassdoor is now part of Recruit Holdings, a
leading HR company. Glassdoor affiliates include Recruit's family of
companies. Sharing data with Glassdoor affiliates will help improve your
experience and visibility in finding a job you love."

~~~
paavoova
Do any such services not engage in similar practices? Including LinkedIn? I'm
kind of dismayed at the state of the modern application process, where you
typically have to give your info to one or more third parties instead of being
able to submit directly to the company/recruiters.

------
freedomben
It's amazing, because I used to (naively perhaps) trust Glass Door reviews.
Then I started at Canopy Tax and heard in almost every weekly company meeting,
an encouragement to go on Glass Door and rate the company. They would also
brag during those weekly meetings about the current Glass Door rating. The
"Glass Door" rating was also reviewed in the meeting, with lamenting over any
negative reviews that would pop up. After that experience, I started viewing
Glass Door with a _very_ skeptical eye.

Overall Canopy Tax was a good place to work (for someone that meshes better
with the culture than I did). I have many friends still there that are very
happy, but I did find that Glass Door manipulation to be pretty distasteful.

If anyone from Glass Door is reading, please go back to your roots! You were
such a valuable resource for me in the past, and an important force to help
balance the power differential scales.

~~~
ryandrake
What’s amazing is that it’s 2019 and there are still people who trust online
reviews written by people they don’t know! Show me one online review system
out there that is not gamed in some way by the entities that stand to gain or
lose money due to the content in the reviews.

~~~
dabockster
> it’s 2019 and there are still people who trust online reviews written by
> people they don’t know!

I feel it's an extension of the old "innocent until proven guilty" thing. In
the Western world, especially in the United States, we have this belief of
trusting unless we are given a very high confidence level reason not to. It's
this belief that is being taken advantage of via online review systems. We do
not doubt them by default because it would be mean or rude to doubt the entity
behind the review (entity meaning person or bot).

~~~
gdy
But what happens with your "innocent until proven guilty" when you read a
negative review about a company and believe it without any proof?

------
sonaltr
A few friends of mine work for a company that most would consider terrible. I
know for a fact that when ex employees do leave bad reviews, they have a line
to call Glassdoor, and get it taken down under promise of buying a new
subscription or renew existing subscriptions.

I know this because it's one of my friend's responsibilities - He does this on
a monthly basis (based on the whims of the owner)

The main use of Glassdoor as an employee is not the company reviews - it's for
interview questions.

~~~
52-6F-62
> _The main use of Glassdoor as an employee is not the company reviews - it 's
> for interview questions._

I'll add that it's salary survey information as well. Similarly with Indeed.
They've saved me a lot of time when I've had companies want to set me up with
unpaid hours upon hours of interviews and testing while offering effectively
half of what I was seeking, with few other benefits.

At one company, the reviews did inform me, and in numbers, that they promoted
pair programming to the extent that you were assigned a fixed station and
_shared_ that station with another—not as onboarding, but as a fixture of your
role. I killed that one, and fast.

That said, I view all the other reviews with a high degree of skepticism. I
prefer to talk to people directly to get a feel.

~~~
digitalixus
> I'll add that it's salary survey information as well.

Not really. Here in Germany (where Glassdoor isn't even as popular as in
US/English speaking countries) I've noticed the salary skews towards the low
end because A) employers are bombing their profiles with fake salary figures
and/or B) entry-level to lower-mid tier employees are more likely to drop
numbers. Can't imagine how much worse the propagation of false info is in
other countries where Glassdoor is more popular.

Specifically in Berlin, where "bErLiN iS a PoOr N cHeAp CiTy So ThE sAlArIeS
aReN't HiGh" might as well be a meme because it's the standard welcome message
for foreigners, if you negotiate your pay based on Glassdoor info, you're
going to be screwing yourself out of thousands of €€€.

None of the non-tech crowd is going to admit they're being paid 55-65k brutto
(before taxes) with 3-5 years of experience. I know people like this and have
seen their payslips so I know they aren't lying. You only hear about the non-
techies making 24-35k from their small startups or Zalando.

Same for dev/tech. You'll only hear the same bit of info that "45-60k is a LOT
for a dev with 5-10 years experience, because cost of living in Berlin is low
(it's not) so come on over and relocate!". The devs/engineers making 65k
starting with 2 years of experience, mid-level devs pulling 70-90k and
management/directors pulling 120-200k in Berlin aren't opening their mouths.

If I put my tinfoil hat on, I'd say there's a concerted effort in Europe to
keep salaries down by keeping information suppressed/spreading lies (I see
this a lot on Reddit/HN too in the form of comments)

~~~
52-6F-62
Honestly hadn't considered that they might be doing that as well.

Just the same, if the company is trying to bomb average salaries, then they're
posting that they don't pay what I want and I'm avoiding them anyway. (and it
sounds like a good thing if that's how they operate)

But good points. It's certainly something to be skeptical about, even if one
doesn't want to go full tin-foil about it. ;)

------
SketchySeaBeast
Is there any service that actually is fair? When Ubisoft makes Forbe's "Best
Places to Work" I don't feel like I can trust anything to make an objective
measure other than organic word of mouth and simply experiencing it for
myself.

~~~
alexandercrohde
It's the natural cycle of the internet.

1\. Be a nobody company

2\. Utilize generous user content to build up an important knowledge-
base/economy

3\. People begin to trust the information in the system and come to rely on it

4\. Sell-out entirely and make a lot of money letting people buy influence

5\. People abandon the site realizing it has no signal anymore

(Digg, Reddit, Amazon, Glassdoor, experts-exchange, facebook, google search
~ish)

Notable exceptions: Craigslist, HN, stackoverflow, wikipedia, youtube

~~~
snicker7
HN as an exception? Astroturfing seems pretty common here.

~~~
RomanPushkin
It's not exception, I've been trying to ask some questions about Coinbase (YC
company) in "Who Is Hiring" post, they all got removed. I reworded these
comments multiple times, after ~10 attempts I gave up.

------
sharadov
This happened at my previous company when they had bad glassdoor reviews.
Every new person through the door, was sort of forced to write a glassdoor
review. They would be given a nice welcome, some schwag, sell them on the
company. People inevitably wrote good reviews, alas once the honeymoon period
ended, they were in for a rude shock.

~~~
yoz-y
But when the people left they changed their review to something awful no? I
mean, in the long run such behavior should not work.

~~~
Profan
Consider that if they know when you wrote your review, they know which your
review is, if you then change your review, that's a pretty blatant way of
telling them exactly who you are, which might not go over well if they have
any sway at all (or if they know someone who might be able to block your
progress later).

~~~
yoz-y
I see. I suppose this is also a problem in small companies in which the
reviews could be easily identified as well.

------
adamzerner
I worked for a company where we were told to post good reviews on Glassdoor.
The engineering team was small, there was about six people in the room. The
CTO called for our attention. He told us to go on Glassdoor and leave a good
review. He explained that they are trying to hire more people and that good
Glassdoor reviews really help. He also ended by telling us that management
will be checking in to make sure that we all actually did leave reviews.

I felt really upset at the fact that we were _told_ to do this, and basically
threatened that if we didn't, management would know, and presumably there
would be some sort of consequences. When the CTO left the room we all kinda
mumbled something along the lines of "um, that was kinda screwed up", but no
one really voiced that opinion loudly or strongly. Probably due to the fear of
getting punished for it.

This whole situation is really sad. It's probably in the companies best
interest financially to do this. It forces employees to respond, because
employees don't want to be punished. And there isn't a way to punish employers
for this. I doubt that it is illegal. I doubt that Glassdoor would care if you
went to them. If you publish a public review, you'll almost certainly lose
your job, and even so, the company can just claim that you are lying, and
probably pay to get the review removed.

On the other side of the coin, there is Glassdoor. They exist to make money,
so if a company wants to pay them to remove bad reviews or something, why
wouldn't they say yes. There is no third party monitoring them, making sure
that they are being honest.

Maybe one day society will figure out a way around these issues, but for now,
I think a good first step is to spread an understanding that what you read on
sites like Glassdoor should be taken with a big grain of salt. And so I am
glad to see this getting attention on Hacker News.

------
ta1548177231
And that's why there is Blind
[https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics](https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics)

I highly recommend everyone signs up their company and gives honest feedback
there. Closing the Asymmetric Information gap will only help workers (the vast
majority of us) make better choices about where to work, how much to charge
employers and what really goes on (not the propaganda campaigns that are
online resources and interviews)

~~~
tomatotomato37
The level of discourse on this place is horrid; it's like a SV 4chan.

Why does a workplace opinion site need a "relationships" category anyway?

~~~
bduerst
Yeah, I just checked it out and the topics seem like troll bait with toxic
comments. People actually verify their identity with their employer before
posting these things?

~~~
bradlys
I mean, all you're identifying with is that you have a company email address.
That's all that is known. For really big orgs, this is not an issue.

~~~
bduerst
Right - the company has a link between everyone commenting and their work
email address. It would be naive to assume that won't ever be sold as lead gen
or part of a premium model for employers, even if the Blind claims otherwise
right now.

------
decebalus1
Honestly, the only place where you can currently get genuine company reviews
today is Blind, if you can stomach the trolling. The so-called 'kool-aid
drinkers' or 'hr puppets' are called out (often humorously) all the time.

For Glassdoor, I am not surprised, this is not news. I interviewed at an awful
company once which had stellar - I mean actually straight-A's 'nothing wrong
here, we're the best, if God came down from heaven and founded a company, this
would be it' reviews. Found out from an ex-employee after they've been
acquired by the company I worked at that they were pestered daily to write
positive reviews.

~~~
yasp
What is Blind? Went to blind.com and didn't seem to be what you were referring
to.

~~~
decebalus1
Say goodbye to the rest of your day:

[https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics](https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics)

~~~
ddebernardy
Just took a brief look, and it all looked like whining and trolling. Am I
missing something?

~~~
jurassicfoxy
Agree. I was "invited" to Blind and every thread or comment were useless,
antagonistic personal attacks, complaining, etc. It was very immature.

------
rchaud
I've been fortunate to not have to use GD for anything other than a quick
salary lookup and some reviews about the interview process.

Even then, it's been mostly useless as it forces you to sign in after viewing
a couple of pages, and the reviews are written mostly by people who didn't get
the job.

As you can imagine, most don't put a lot of thought into writing their
reviews, or even recalling what the interview was like.

If knowing about company culture is important to you, you're better off
messaging someone on LinkedIn and ask for a quick coffee chat or something.

~~~
souprock
I can tell you that the salary can be ridiculously wrong. For a high-
experience specialist position in a high-cost city, Glassdoor has a salary
number that is well below what we would pay for a freshman college intern in
our lowest cost-of-living location.

I hope you didn't decline to apply to us based on Glassdoor.

------
dunpeal
Some of the worst companies I ever encountered also had the best Glassdoor
reviews and scores.

Sounds ironic, but makes perfect sense when you consider:

1\. When a system is so easy to game simply by acting dishonestly, score will
correlate with unscrupulous willingness to lie to your future workforce.

2\. For these kinds of unscrupulous terrible employers, Glassdoor is seen as
nothing more than an easy way to market themselves. Certainly cheaper than
investing in your workforce, trying to make your employees happy, or fixing
any of your real issues.

~~~
throwaway032120
I've seen and heard plenty of horror stories from companies with good
Glassdoor scores.

I wonder how many people lie to themselves when evaluating their jobs.

~~~
dunpeal
From what I know, it's not that "people lie to themselves" about those
terrible jobs, but more like the article describes: concerted effort by the
employer to flood their reviews pool with inaccurate positive reviews, and
muzzle accurate negative ones.

------
rurp
I flagged some posts and reported a former employer who was posting fake
positive reviews in the most obvious way possible: 2-3 short generic positive
reviews per week, all posted from the office during normal business hours.

Glassdoor did nothing and the company has a great rating, despite being a
terrible place to work.

------
descentintomael
FWIW, I used to work at one of the companies mentioned. Tara was a good
employee who resigned. She was not fired as Ms. Peatman claims. Its sad that
Glassdoor is just another gaslighting outlet on the internet.

------
donretag
Fakespot needs to get into the Glassdoor game. They already analyze Yelp.

Some companies are just not subtle about their reviews, just like on Yelp. You
will see a flurry of positive reviews posted within days from each other. Or
some have straight marketing talk.

I do find it interesting that some of the worst companies I have worked for
have been averages than some of the good ones, but I guess that is the point
of the article. These bad companies need to boost their ratings since they are
bad.

~~~
mikestew
_Some companies are just not subtle about their reviews_

Here, let me help seed that ML algorithm:

"Advice to management: keep doing what you're doing!"

Not hotdog. I'm shocked at how many times I see that. It's like the HR people
all went to the same convention at some point.

~~~
cdolan
This is on at least one review for companies I’ve seen actively game the
system. It’s truly absurd

------
SalesDevRep
I've worked at good and bad companies that do this, and their number one
target (in enterprise software at least) tends to be the SDR team - Sales
Development Representatives. These are usually fresh college grads or
salespeople with limited experience that are excited to take their first steps
into the world of tech sales.

I've seen companies initiate SPIFF programs and other competitions as a way to
incentivize new employees, sometimes with only days of experience, to post a
glowing review of their new employer.

Before you work for a company, make sure to filter on Glassdoor and understand
how many positive reviews are coming from "Sales Development" and "Business
Development" reps. Don't get me wrong, their opinions are valid, but if you
see a flood of very generic 5-star reviews, that's not a good sign.

------
mevile
Glassdoor is paid by companies, not by employees, so nobody should trust it.
Our HR department is frequently asking everyone to leave good reviews on
Glassdoor. 0 credibility.

It's like that scummy business magazines who give awards are in. I worked at a
place where I heard our VP of marketing say because we paid this really well-
known travel magazine tons of money for ad placement that we should win a spa
award. The only review site I trust is Consumer Reports, there should be a
Consumer Reports alternative for Glassdoor.

------
all_blue_chucks
Considering salaries listed on Glassdoor for tech companies in my area are
about half of what engineers actually make, employers would be much better
served by publishing accurate salary info (including RSUs, not just base) if
they want to attract candidates.

~~~
throwaway032120
Glassdoor seems to be very biased toward low salaries globally -
unsurprisingly.

That only benefits employers in general.

------
michaelbuckbee
Former company found out that they had more or less solid negative ratings on
Glassdoor. The next day heads of HR and Marketing went around to every
employee and stood behind them and had them write up a positive review of the
company.

This was couched in: "It's not a bad place, these were just disgruntled
people. Don't you want to be a team player and help out the company?"

Place has since cratered under the weight of its poor management.

------
apohn
I've got a Glassdoor story from a previous employer. The company went through
a MAJOR restructuring and a series of smaller reorgs over the course of ~18
months. The work environment wasn't great, morale was really bad, and the
exodus of employees was tough to handle.

The company rating really started to trend downwards on Glassdoor. Then
probably 6 months into it, suddenly there were a lot of solid or glowing 4-5
star reviews from an office overseas. These basically overpowered the negative
reviews in US/Europe and the company rating was basically back to where it was
before.

I don't think they paid for good reviews. I suspect what they did was simply
pressure new employees in that country to write reviews before they really
knew what was going on in the company. It just looked very strange that all of
a sudden everybody in that country wanted to write reviews, whereas before all
the reviews were dominated by US/Europe. The distribution of values is also
telling if you look at the differences in means between that country versus
everywhere else.

------
RomanPushkin
It's not only about Glassdoor. There is also censorship in HN's "Who Is
Hiring" threads. You can't say a bad word about a company, even if you
reworded and your question is within the post rules.

~~~
ghostly_s
Well, they also allow companies to publish want ads to the front page with
comments disabled, and no indication that they are paid placements. But HN
also doesn't bill itself as a neutral review aggregator.

~~~
rcfox
I always assumed that was a free service for YC companies.

------
lordnacho
The whole online referral "industry" piggy backs on people's old instinct: if
another person says it's good, I'll probably like it too. This might have
worked in the village.

Before you had online reviews, people were stuck with either newspaper product
reviews, in which case there would be a paper name and a writer's name
attached, or celebrity endorsements, where at least you knew they were being
paid.

With online reviews, even with real names, the person is as good as anonymous
to you. There's no knowing their motivations, and you have to shake your old
instinct to trust social proof. This is not as easy as it sounds because it's
probably deeply ingrained in people.

Nowadays I rarely believe any kind of online review, and it's a bit tragic.
I'm sure there's a lot of honest ones there, but a few bad apples...

------
pseudolus
I was curious to see whether the Wall Street Journal itself had any anomalous
reviews and was pleasantly surprised to find out that apparently they don't
seem to have engaged in any of the behaviour they describe. Of course, that
doesn't mean it's a great place to work [0].

Also, I guess the takeaway from the article is that there's no substitute for
reaching out through one's own personal network or the networks of
acquaintances and trying to speak to someone who actually works for the
company in question.

[0] [https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wall-Street-Journal-
Review...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wall-Street-Journal-
Reviews-E22431.htm)

------
sandrobfc
Isn't it possible to rig Glassdoor by using multiple accounts? It may be
harder to achieve in huge corporations, but for small companies, it's way too
easy to make the bad reviews seem meaningless.

In any case, it's easy to spot when a review isn't honest, good or bad. They
often seem scripted, pointing out some bad aspects that aren't really bad, and
highlighting the same upsides over and over again.

It's just a question of filtering those and getting to what really matters. As
for the companies that are forcing employers to write good reviews... how can
they be sure of which review was done by who? Can't they just give a bad
review instead when asked? I can see that backfiring really quick.

~~~
throwaway032120
> Isn't it possible to rig Glassdoor by using multiple accounts?

Yes, they don't check your identity.

And HR departments have paid to improve companies public perception... It's
easy to guess they'll spend time rigging Glassdoor.

------
yingw787
This is absolutely true. Definitely trust your instincts when looking at
Glassdoor reviews; do NOT accept them at face value. If there are positive
reviews that sound a bit off, take that as a major red flag, as the company is
not honest.

If you're just starting off, and you're an honest, hard-working person, it
doesn't matter how much little experience or knowledge you have, you don't
deserve to work at a dishonest company. They're always shit, you don't get too
much out of it, and it mars your soul. It's okay to wait a little longer for
the right company. So don't be afraid of them (or other pressures) when they
try to screw you over. I wish I knew this.

------
sharms
I was taking a look at companies and saw a fair amount of this. The influenced
positive reviews do appear to have a pattern to them and are fairly easy to
spot, but it skews the numbers if you were not digging that deep.

~~~
colechristensen
Looking at the dates of reviews really helps. They tend to cluster when people
are being asked to review.

------
midway
Don't forget that there are also folks writing bad reviews and often not just
one. Sometimes they are toxic and got fired for a good reason. We know all
these borderliners where everybody wonders how they passed the interviews.

So, there are always two sides of a story. And compared to an Amazon review
it's much harder to tell if the product is wrong or its user.

People also tend to forget that they just help Glassdoor's sales. Every
negative review they write is another reason for the reviewed company to
subscribe for Glassdoor. It's not cheap but even early stage startups can
easily afford this.

------
ltbarcly3
The reviews tend to be extremely accurate from what I have seen. I used to
complain about the salary quotes being low or outdated, but it seems like they
have improved that quite a bit.

I'm sure that there are small, paranoid companies trying to manipulate it, but
who cares about the actual ratings on glassdoor? I mean if 37% of the
employees 'approve of the CEO' does that even matter?

I recommend just reading the negative reviews and ignoring the ones that seem
like sour grapes. From what I can tell this gives a pretty good read on what
you are getting into.

------
clavalle
To be fair, people tend to post on Glassdoor when they have a negative
experience.

I was dinged for having the audacity of asking a potential data analyst hire
simple SQL questions...and SQL was listed on their resume.

~~~
ionforce
Wait, this needs context. You, a current employee of a company, are
interviewing a person who listed a skill on their resume, and then you got
reprimanded for asking that candidate to demonstrate that skill?

~~~
clavalle
Not by the company, of course; the candidate.

~~~
ionforce
That makes even less sense. How does the candidate "ding" you? That's just a
rude, incompetent interviewee. "How dare you ask me about this thing I claimed
to know!"

~~~
clavalle
They go on Glassdoor, write up a bad review for the company, and mention me,
specifically.

I mean, it's not affecting me in any real way but I have to admit, it bugs me.

------
zapita
Glassdoor is designed to be manipulated. Employers encourage positive reviews
and censor negative ones. Employees with an axe to grind leave exaggerated
negative reviews. Executives leave astroturfed positive reviews. Everything
about Glassdoor is designed to encourage extremes, because that’s how they get
“engagement” and, of course, upsell opportunities.

If you interpret Glassdoor reviews as anything more than a battleground of
vocal minorities, you’re making a mistake. The sample is so biased that you’ll
never know how representative they are.

------
momentmaker
Glassdoor was acquired by Indeed which was acquired by Japan's Recruit Co.
Ltd. So keep that in mind.

~~~
clamprecht
I just searched "Glassdoor acquired" and the results say that Glassdoor was
acquired by Recruit, not by Indeed. As a former Indeed employee, I hope they
don't mix the Glassdoor review slime with Indeed.

~~~
momentmaker
[https://www.geekwire.com/2018/glassdoor-
acquired-1-2-billion...](https://www.geekwire.com/2018/glassdoor-
acquired-1-2-billion-japan-based-hr-giant-recruit-holdings/)

I stated Indeed was acquired that holding company.

------
jameane
Now I don't even post Glassdoor reviews until I have been gone for 6 months or
more. And particularly with a small team, wait until there is significant
turnover so my review won't be easily attributed to me.

I have worked at a few places, when responding to Glassdoor reviews, have sent
out a solicitation to current employees to leave review to drown out the
negative ones.

It's too bad what started as a good way to get some insight into companies has
turned over once it monetizes...

------
portugu
I made a Portuguese alternative to Glassdoor (IT only), and I confirm that is
a daily challenge and time consuming find what reviews are honest or not.
Fortunately many HR and marketeers use their company email to create fake IT
reviews, and a cross check with linkedin handle many cases. Using blockchain
is also useful to guarantee that reviews are not manipulated or deleted. I
don't want to create spam here, but if anyone has curiosity check for
Teamlyzer.

~~~
blotter_paper
I just read the crypto-reporter piece on Teamlyzer. My understanding is that
you're just putting hashes of reviews on chain and not the full reviews
(correct me if I misunderstand). I'm really glad you're doing this, it seems
like a move in the right direction, but I have questions about the details.
How do you intend to handle posts that need to be taken down for legal
reasons? This could be libel or links to illegal content (copyrighted torrent
files, child pornography). Do you intend to remove these from your stored
review log, and replace them with a message explaining why? Do you prescreen
reviews? Prescreening should work in most cases, but could fail when links
point to content that changes, and libel laws are tricky (I assume hiring
lawyers to review reviews would be prohibitively expensive). Prescreening also
raises some of the same questions that redactions do, albeit without the
retroactive element. If reviews do start getting redacted, leaving obvious
unaccounted for hashes in your blockchain records, how are users supposed to
know whether you're responding to legitimate legal problems or just playing
the same game Glassdoor is? I'm really interested in your answers, because I
like this direction but I don't see obvious answers to the problem of laws
(besides hosting on the darknet).

~~~
portugu
Hi. We store the complete review in IPFS using the Po.et network. Before that,
each review is manually checked by the community (similar reputation and
moderation system in stackoverflow) and controversial or danger content is
just rejected. The trusted timestamp is locked, some implementations like
BigchainDB (if i remember correctly) use versions to handle the needed of
update a previous hashed content. Po.et doesn't have that feature currently.
Thanks

------
dccoolgai
See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

------
code4tee
These review sites come and go and all end up “going” for the same reason—-it
becomes a polluted mess of marketing and manipulated data. Then some new site
comes out claiming to be the “new” raw review site where none of this
happens... until it does. Rinse and repeat.

Glassdoor is now going through it’s jumped the shark moment where everyone
catches on that it’s the same BS as all the sites Glassdoor claimed to be
replacing. History repeats itself again.

------
newnewpdro
At a past startup that had become overrun with back-stabbing middle-management
obsessed with building their own respective empires and in permanent cover-
your-ass mode, regularly throwing people from engineering or operations under
the bus, the glassdoor reviews predictably became overwhelmingly negative.

Every all-hands meeting started concluding with requests that the staff make
glowing company reviews. It was a scene straight out of the movie Office
Space. The first couple times they did this, the Glassdoor reviews would get a
bunch of 5-star contrived "Everything's perfect, best company ever." additions
within the same day or two. We in engineering and operations knew they were
coming out of the sales & marketing departments, since we all wanted to burn
the place to the ground thanks to the awful management.

I've seen very similar patterns on other glassdoor company pages. When you see
a bunch of positive reviews clustered around the same time period for a
company otherwise full of negative stuff, the positive is probably more sales
& marketing propaganda, it's their job.

------
jecxjo
Having worked with a company that does shady stuff like this I eventually
changed how I worked to match it.

I had a boss who thought it would be useful to track line of code changes per
developer, number of features implemented and bugs fixed weighted by original
estimates and other non-useful metrics to grade employees during their
reviews. I was asked to implement the tools to scrape that info.

So what did I do? I used the same metrics and automated my todo list to make
sure that I was always in the top 1% of the results. Since I was a lone wolf
on a massive multi-year project it wasn't hard to find stuff to do. But when I
got to the end of the month and it was trending to show I wouldn't drop a spot
my scripts informed me that I was done working. I would also prioritize the
level of effort to time left in the month. So if there was only two days left
I'd pick up more small tasks to pad my output rather than taking on a bigger
task I wouldn't complete in that month.

I started doing this after having been there 10 years. 10 years of me doing
other jobs that were not mine "for the good of the company." 10 years of me
traveling when travel wasn't part of the job. During this time having great
number not much happened with regards to compensation. I went from being a
team player to doing just as much as I needed to.

When I finally left and had my exit interview one of my managers noticed my
marks were always top 1%...even in months when the company's total output was
shitty. Since I was on my own projects there was no reason why I would have
had a dip when other divisions dropped. So I asked, "if I had output 30% more
than any other group...would you have given me a 30% raise? a 3% raise?" He
said, "no we probably wouldn't have done anything beyond the standard cost of
living increase."

------
dgzl
I recently quit a software company that spent _a lot_ of time doing two
things: fluffing the employees with various benefits, and asking them to write
reviews on Glassdoor.

Pretty much everyone understood that the actual job sucked in several ways,
but the company also had fairly low requirements for acceptance (i.e. don't
necessarily need CS degree). Since this type of job is usually considered out
of reach for many people, they feel thankful for being accepted, take
advantage of the benefits (free dinners and drinks, yearly vacations), and try
to work through the daily pain. (pain such as: working in places with low
quality of living/food, working for clients who have employees that pee on the
bathroom floor, using very small desks in small offices)

Every once in a while I would review them on Glassdoor, describing the very
real pitfalls of working for the company in various ways. It doesn't take long
for the review list to be flooded with people praising the benefits, and I
felt like the more honest reviews get buried.

------
mushufasa
There are so many comments here complaining about Glassdoor's business model.

I'm really genuinely curious -- what do you folks thing is a better option for
them?

Given the constraints that they are a job review site, and they have to make
the service free to the people leaving reviews (low barrier to entry), how do
you propose they make money as a sustainable business?

~~~
mratzloff
Why does everything need to be a business? It's a review site. You could run
it for next to nothing.

~~~
mushufasa
Unfortunately I don't think that's the case. There's substantial work that
goes on beyond server hosting costs, for which you would need human staff.

I agree that VC-style astronomical expectations may be misplaced, but they
need to have a team of talented people, which means steady income of some
sort.

------
kevstev
I have long suspected this, I actually discussed this about a year ago in an
HN comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17027287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17027287)

To restate- I think there are tells you can use to figure out when reviews are
being manipulated:

Does the distribution make sense? Is it "hollow" in the middle and surrounded
by 1's and 5's? Are the 5's just a bit over the top, do they sound overly
generic, like there is no passion behind them and/or written in the same
style?

Does the data add up? Does everyone seem to love the CEO but the overall
rating is low, or vice versa?

Are the complaints a lot more consistent with the compliments? Even if they
aren't being manipulative, if everyone is bitching about the hours or deadline
pressure, then there is probably something to it. That can also work the other
way too.

------
Animats
This is a great opportunity for a union. The organization that should be
running a site like Glassdoor is the AFL-CIO.

~~~
mushufasa
I agree there should be some opportunity for them to participate somehow. Any
ideas of what that would look like?

ALF-CIO and other unions aren't setup to be tech companies themselves, and I
don't think they have the internal talent to build and operate a popular web
app well on their own. It would have to be some other way for them to interact
with a tech company in a mutually beneficial manner.

~~~
Animats
There are more union tech people than you might think.[1]

[1] [https://www.unions-america.com/](https://www.unions-america.com/)

------
weliketocode
A past colleague of mine reached out to see if I had written a negative review
on glassdoor. I left on good terms, but the company was going through some
very real challenges.

Several scathing, albeit somewhat accurate, reviews had been written.

Looking now, all but one of the negative reviews have been removed.

In short, glassdoor is worthless.

------
redm
We know what Glassdoor is supposed to do, but it doesn't because the
incentives for Glassdoor aren't aligned with its mission. Their real customers
are companies that are willing to pay to have good reviews/ratings. They tell
you as much if you have ever contacted them about a review problem. For a site
like a Glassdoor, to be honest, its customers need to be the job seekers or
the job seekers + and the companies.

Additionally, people driven to write reviews are often unhappy as most people
don't bother. That provides a skewed view of a company and leads to employers
trying to encourage employees to post. I'm not sure that there's anything
wrong with because that's the system that Glassdoor built. Either way, it's
hard to trust it.

~~~
mushufasa
I think you've nailed the problem.

What's the solution? (I have no affiliations with Glassdoor, I'm just
curious).

I don't think you can charge jobseekers to use the site (they are looking for
a job, after all). It has to be free to use by the end user.

How can you build a business that aligns revenue with the end-user incentives,
when the end-users are unlikely to pay directly?

------
black_puppydog
If only we had had indications that centralizing all reputation management
into one or few places might have adverse effects.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law)

------
bogomipz
>"Ms. Jacobson took credit for the campaigns on her LinkedIn profile, writing
that she executed “company-wide employer branding campaigns” on Glassdoor,
increasing the number of reviews by more than 1,000, raising the company’s
overall rating to 4.4 stars from 3.8 and resulting in SpaceX landing on
Glassdoor’s “Best” list two years in a row.

Ms. Jacobson didn’t respond to requests for comment. She removed the reference
to Glassdoor on her LinkedIn page in mid-December after being contacted by the
Journal."

So they used a shitty website to boast about an "achievement" that they
carried out using another bullshit website. Meanwhile the same HR department
is probably ghosting and flaking on candidates. That sounds about right.

------
LinuxBender
This sounds like a system that is no longer valuable for it's original
intended use case.

I am just thinking out loud, but maybe one feasible response would be for
people to create their own anonymous blogs about their experience at a
company. I consider that a more distributed approach that may be more
difficult for companies to game. If I were to create such a blog, I might use
a disposable email address and create a blog on something like neocities [1]
and other free static web site providers. Perhaps some of these sites would
even allow access via Tor or other proxies.

Can you think of any other mediums that may be useful for this purpose?

[1] - [https://neocities.org/](https://neocities.org/)

------
pthomas551
FWIW, my company is highly ranked on Glassdoor and they applied the opposite
of pressure to leave a review - in fact they said to please wait a few months
post-onboarding before reviewing so that reviews were substantive rather than
honeymoon period stuff.

------
scarface74
I saw that at my old company. All of the people who left our office gave
scathing reviews but all of the people who remained mostly from the main
office, gave great reviews.

Of course the company ignored the bad reviews but thanked everyone who gave
great reviews.

------
sn41
Absolutely. I worked in a small software firm in the midwest. I felt bullied
and victimised on certain occasions. It was absolutely horrible, and I later
came to know that many former employees agreed. I left it about 5 years ago.
(I'm keeping the name of the company and the area vague just because I think
that they are dangerous, and scour media for former employees dissing on them
- reading "Bad Blood" by Carreyrou only confirmed that companies actually do
this.) Just out of curiosity, I looked up the company on Glassdoor recently.
It was one of the best rated companies in that area. The disingenuousness is
unbelievable.

------
vanadium
I'm well aware of the last company I worked for requiring reviews of all
fresh-from-college hires. HR would press them right after onboarding, and
boom, you'd see 6-7 new reviews all following a similar style and template
before they even touched code.

More recently (and I'm years gone from the company at this point yet can still
recognize it) they've been doing the same to their offshore teams in India,
and by no means are they in a position to refuse.

It isn't even close to hidden, as you can discern the pattern/template six
ways from Sunday. If it weren't for those forced reviews, they'd be tanked.

------
AndyKelley
Here's a fun one: [https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Backtrace-
Reviews-E1742217...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Backtrace-
Reviews-E1742217.htm)

Excerpts from one of the reviews obviously written by the CTO:

> Also two other huge tech companies I can't name without getting fired; their
> names start with letter A.

> Co-founders do talk about successes like winning Amazon's contract (huge!)

This silly thing of saying the first letter of a client (and then forgetting
that they did this and revealing the client anyway) is a dead giveaway. The
CTO did that all the time.

Never work there!

------
mancerayder
So isn't this a business opportunity for a Glassdoor 2.0 competing company?

~~~
TomMckenny
There's only one possible barrier (but it's a big one)

Do they hold a broadly worded patent making competition impossible?

------
gavman
Textbook case of Goodhart's law:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

------
duxup
Not too surprising. On my last job hunt I looked around and a lot of the
praise felt buzzword-ish and such.

Then again the negatives too seemed very specific to a user or department or
just weird.

------
xtat
Also lot of times current or even former employees wont speak out things like
this for fear of being identified and retaliated against. The bay area startup
world is a small and dare I say insecure place in particular and people are
wary of what people will say. The number of miserable employees putting on a
happy face for their managers every day is way bigger than I ever understood
until I took a break from mgmt and started working alongside them as an IC.

------
an4rchy
I still do think reviews are the best way to get aggregated feedback on
established (companies, products, restaurants etc).

In order to normalize reviews for myself, I try go through them and sort by
least and quickly skim a few reviews to see if it was something that was very
personal/one-off to the affected person or more systematic and then it gives
me a better picture. Obviously, no perfect way but would love to hear if/how
others take review feedback into consideration.

~~~
AJ007
The whole issues of reviews and ratings remains a pretty big issue across all
platforms. Some of these shortfalls may be unsolvable, like predicting a high
consequence, low probability future action, like being murdered by your Uber
driver.

A larger issue is platforms enabling the reviewed parties to game their
reviews, e.g. Yelp, Glassdoor, and employee corruption. This is preventable.

------
kansface
The capture of rating agencies by the entities they would rate seems to be
common if not inevitable given the incentives - the companies being rated have
a strong financial incentive to fix their ratings while at the same time, the
consumers don't pay for the service. So, the agencies eventually go after the
only money in play and turn into a protection racket, and perhaps make room in
the market for a new agency subject to the same incentives.

~~~
mushufasa
Yes this is the dynamic.

Is it inevitable? Are there solutions, or at least mitigations?

This is also a problem (huge problem) with credit ratings and investment
rating agencies.

~~~
kansface
> Is it inevitable?

How would you change the incentives? The incentive for a restaurant to leave a
fake review is much higher than the incentive for a customer to leave any
review. For crowd sourced reviews, introducing a trust model opens the door to
account selling/paid reviews. You can't really punish the bad actors or you
open yourself to a different kind of abuse. You really need a PageRank
equivalent for reviewers? Is there some feedback loop (like following clicks)
to the things you recommended (and seeing engagement on that page from GA)?

~~~
mushufasa
I'm not affiliated with glassdoor, but I would hope that they already do some
data analysis to weed out biased reviewers.

You're right that reviewers have less incentive to participate than the
targets of the review, employers.

Is there a different business model where a site like Glassdoor could align
their incentives with the free-user employees?

------
NegativeLatency
Is this actually a surprise to anyone?

In my own experience I've seen/heard of this many times, and heard of it from
many friends (inside and outside of tech).

------
chasingthewind
What if Glassdoor added a checkbox on the review that says "This review was
requested by my employer" or "This review was coerced by my employer". That
information would be anonymous but shown with the company rating so the person
submitting the review would be able to secretly rat them out while still
appearing to comply with the employer's request.

------
klenwell
I'm enjoying this thread. Maybe HN needs a new monthly "Glassdoor HN" or
"Who's Reviewing" thread.

~~~
abraae
Would the coverage include YC companies?

------
dreamcompiler
Bad companies try to manipulate perception rather than fix problems.

Good companies fix problems and let perception take care of itself.

------
Cyclone_
I've been a little skeptical at how overwhelmingly positive some of the
reviews on glassdoor seem. There's ones that turn the cons into positives and
seem like they were written by fake accounts. All jobs have at least some bad
things, to say that there are none seems a little strange to me.

------
aiisahik
Nobody should on Glassdoor to determine if they should work at a company. One
should always rely on back channel contacts, preferably of people who no
longer work at that company.

Can one of you smart people here at HN develop a Glass Door competitor that
only allows FORMER employees to review a company?

~~~
AngeloAnolin
Having FORMER employees do some authentic reviews for companies they've last
left is also quite difficult - in the sense that this person may fear the
repercussions should they write something about the company that places the
organization in a bad light.

One way I can think of is a service, where companies sign up, and let
potential employees be able to speak in an anonymous manner with real (albeit
anonymized) employees so that real feedback on actual working conditions are
provided. The key here though is that all current employees should feel safe
that they are speaking about what's the real conditions of work at the
workplace, as well as providing enough credibility to the applicant that they
are actually speaking to someone working there.

Of course having companies sign up for this will be inherently difficult, as
each company always wants to maintain their shining standards in any form, and
does not want for only a group of certain individuals to tarnish their good(?)
reputation.

------
CedarHill
I experienced this at a small cyber security business. They didn't pressure
but they REALLY insisted that we review them on GlassDoor in order to get more
people to apply for the jobs. In reality, their problem was they were paying
ALL the staff compared to the market average.

------
josh_carterPDX
I won't name the company, but I watched a prominent startup CEO stand in front
of the entire company and angrily scold everyone about bad reviews on
Glassdoor. He didn't understand why someone would post a negative review
online instead of just coming straight to him.

~~~
cdolan
Was this company based out of Pittsburgh perhaps? Because I've heard of the
same.

------
stefek99
Why would be otherwise?

[https://twitter.com/marsxrobertson/status/108837592864696729...](https://twitter.com/marsxrobertson/status/1088375928646967297)

Good rankings help them hire, why wouldn't they optimise the ranking?

------
ortl
My company recently started a campaign of leaving "honest positive" reviews of
your work experience. There was quite a bit of pressure on me since I have
only been here a year. They also have been bugging the guy who was hired onto
my team six months after me.

------
BlameKaneda
I'm not surprised.

If you're interested in looking up the pros that a company has to offer, then
Glassdoor is great.

If you're interested in the cons, then you have to go into Glassdoor knowing
that information can be manipulated and/or inflated.

~~~
Cofike
I go into it thinking the opposite. Reviews clearly written by management or
someone trying to paint a better picture of the company than there really is.
Cons can still be misleading but I’d be more weary of a fake positive review
than a negative one. Maybe I’m being gamed too.

------
mud_dauber
I was approached by a manager at a previous employer & asked if a scathing
review on GD was mine. (It was.) He then asked me to remove it (I did) because
he feared the topic would be broached on a quarterly investor call.

------
eclat
Was recently looking at ratings for Revolut again and they massively increased
their overall ranking in comparison to a year ago, seemed really fishy to me,
I presume they did this as their reputation is atrocious.

------
jethro_tell
This is the yelp problem too and the Better Business Bureau as well. It turns
out, the business is the party with the money. So in the end, the only viable
business is to let them pay to take down reviews.

------
Zaheer
I'm from Levels.fyi and we're in early stages of launching Company reviews.
Would love suggestions on how we can build the best review experience. Feel
free to comment or DM at: hello@levels.fyi

~~~
Phlarp
Read the thread and it should be relatively obvious: Don't sell out and let
companies alter, remove, bury, hide or disguise negative reviews (or do so on
the companies behalf).

If you really want to beat the incumbents scrape their sites and rehost the
deleted content. (If they DMCA you then publish the DMCA notice and note which
company the content was related to and when it was published/removed/DMCA'd so
as to preserve a record of removed reviews related to that company)

------
liam_mc
This is not even news... I know of one tech outsourcing company, and another
utility provider who requires all new hires to complete a (predictably
positive) Glassdoor review as part of on boarding.

------
tomashertus
Look, Glassdoor is complete bullshit. It's unbelievably biased against
companies and the CEOs. Basically, the simplest way for an unhappy employee is
to write a stupid review to Glassdoor. I used to work in a company which
didn't suite everyone and the Glassdoor reviews were brutal. The HR tried to
adress these issue and encouraged people to talk with their managers and with
HR if they had issues. None of my coworkers ever did that, they just wrote a
Glassdoor review and never bothered to talk it out with the managers.

The company was receiving calls on daily basis from Glassdoor and their
affiliates offering to remove the negative reviews for thousands of dollars.
If somthing, this is at least unethical business practice.

------
artaak
It is very known thing. Whatever reasons were to create Glassdoor, but now in
practice, it became an instrument of misdirection and is used to
_deliberately_ and _intentionally_ mislead people.

------
BadassFractal
Fake news, fake reviews, fake users, fake user groups.. How does one have a
relationship with the Internet that is not as abusive as it is today? Can this
network work without any trust?

------
mathattack
If people game Yelp and Google reviews, why not Glassdoor? I’ve seen companies
go from 3 to 4.5 after a concerted push.

The truth comes out though. The pie in the sky reviews just aren’t believable.

------
manigandham
Welcome to reality. Human nature and behavior doesn't magically change just
because there's a webapp. Trust is incredibly hard to create, perhaps harder
than ever before.

------
randycupertino
I worked with a woman whose father owned the company and she openly bragged to
us she was dating a guy a Glassdoor and had him remove all our company's
negative reviews.

------
painful
As a reader, I skip the fake positive reviews and pay attention to the
negative reviews. As a reviewer, I make sure my review stays posted, otherwise
I will choose to repost.

------
arthurjj
Anyone have a good alternative to Glass Door. Googling the company is probably
the easiest but then you run the risk of data biased the other way.

~~~
arthurjj
[https://www.levels.fyi/SE/Google/Facebook/Microsoft](https://www.levels.fyi/SE/Google/Facebook/Microsoft)
seems like the best one.

------
liquid153
To get some juicy details try reading thelayoff.com of your employer or future
employer. But remember take things with a grain of salt lol

------
babyslothzoo
Are any online reviews even vaguely reliable? What's the percentage that are
either from insiders or marketers or spammers?

------
jiveturkey
nooo ... you don't say ... unthinkable!

this has been well known for so long. but yeah, it deserves to be exposed.
unfortunately, it's behind a paywall and outline.com isn't working (did wsj
C&D them?), but my guess is they are not comparing the business to yelp.

glassdoor == yelp.

so this is completely expected and actually the desired behavior.

------
miguelmota
Glassdoor never published my review that had a negative outlook on a company.
Never gave me an explanation why

------
richeyrw
You need look no farther than Theranos.

------
scottlocklin
What? Next thing you'll tell me Yelp takes protection money to remove bad
reviews.

------
jt2190
Could LinkedIn be mined for a more reliable stat, say turnover by job title?

~~~
LoSboccacc
Likely but they API access is throttled. They sell recruiting services after
all.

The % of actively searching in a company (by job title) could also be a proxy
or part of the mix.

------
hsnewman
Don't believe anything you read on the internet (except this).

------
eecc
Well I guess this is the nail that seals the coffin of Glassdoor.

------
acroback
Oh yes, we were asked to write positive reviews on Glassdoor.

Guess heat I did? :)

------
rogerkirkness
All review sites eventually learn who their real customers are.

------
justapassenger
Crow-sourced data being manipulated? I'm shocked! /s

------
_bxg1
Yikes. Guess I won't be using it any more.

------
burtonator
YCombinator is a great VC.. I sware!

------
man2525
I haven't bothered to leave reviews. The Dunning-Kruger effect would cause
many to see it as the ramblings of a loser, anyway. Sucks that the average two
year tenure looks like:

Year one: "You aren't doing everything you need to be doing for a promotion."
Year two: "You did everything we asked. Unfortunately, things are little tight
right now."

A little reason annual reviews are still a thing...stringing people along.

------
endlessvoid94
In other news, the sky is blue.

------
Benlights
url to get around the paywall
[https://outline.com/y4krPm](https://outline.com/y4krPm)

------
amai
Is that a surprise to anyone?

------
unclebucknasty
Nothing is real anymore.

------
mangatmodi
Sign up required :(

------
throwawaysldf
HubSpot does this.

~~~
lazlohollyfeld
HubSpot is the king of BS and turned BS into a business model. Just read Dan
Lyons' book.

------
graphememes
Just like yelp.

------
etjossem
... news at 10.

------
LarryDarrell
This is not the late stage capitalist dystopia I was looking forward to.

------
pnutjam
paywalled, but I've seen this in action.

~~~
longerthoughts
Meaning you were pressured by an employer? Would be interesting if Glassdoor
periodically reached out to users to revise reviews and capture sentiment
"before and after" working at a given company.

~~~
expathacker
Glassdoor does provide the ability to review the interview process itself
which somewhat fits the bill.

------
thisisweirdok
Yeah this happened at my old employer. They got one bad (warranted) review and
told everyone to get on their phones (off the company network) to give good
reviews.

They'd push this initiative occasionally.

I reported it to Glassdoor and they never did anything about it.

~~~
iamdave
_They 'd push this initiative occasionally._

I wonder if anyone has any experience in flat out refusing to participate in
this sort of thing. I did it once, but was already on my way out the door/in
my two week notice period and HR would ask me once a day, every day for almost
two weeks to write a review before I left.

I say "almost two weeks" because I finally told the HR person that I would be
talking to the local workforce commission if they came to my desk one more
time and asked me to write a review.

~~~
thisisweirdok
I never participated. They had no way to enforce it without being really
creepy. Younger employees always did it, a lot of people generally felt like
they weren't doing their job if they said no.

~~~
ben509
Just do it and write, "Cons: we're pressured to leave positive reviews here."

