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I have a friend who left Yelp after 2 months. Told me that he'd get aggressive legal action if he revealed "how Yelp really makes money".
by HappyTypist 9y ago
I have a friend who left Yelp after 2 months. Told me that he'd get aggressive legal action if he revealed "how Yelp really makes money".
- swalsh 9y agoWould whistle blowing laws apply to private companies?
- goseeastarwar 9y agohttps://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:YELP https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:YELP
- swalsh 9y agoInteresting, looking more into it... there seems to be an expansion of SOX to protect employees. Seems to have been created post Enron.
- timr 9y agoI worked there for years. Your "friend" is wrong. The way they make money is rather transparently described in their quarterly filings with the SEC. Since they're a public company. Actually, I'm not sure what your "friend" is accusing them of doing, so it's a hard claim to rebut. It's embarrassing that a vague hearsay accusation (of...what, exactly?) is considered worthy of attention here.
- mustacheemperor 9y agoCan you comment on the link in the OP? I thought at this point it's almost assumed yelp removes negative reviews from advertising customers and posts fake negative reviews when customers have cancelled. There's plenty of similar experiences just in these comments.
- timr 9y agoIt is "assumed", but these assumptions are false. See my other comment on this subthread for the actual reason why you see these stories.
- Someone1234 9y agoAs someone who worked there, what is your take on these fake review stories? I've read the same or highly similar accounts from other small businesses over years. Did you do this when you worked there? Did your colleagues?
- timr 9y agoTo be blunt, they're total bullshit. Which is why you never see any evidence, outside of vague hearsay from someone's uncle. Yelp has a small army of people cold-calling every business in the country to sell ads. Simultaneously and independently, they have a system that filters out bad reviews, all day, every day. Just by chance, someone is going to get called soon after reviews have been filtered. This leads, inevitably, to third-hand stories of someone's Uncle Walter who got called right before/after some reviews were removed.
- smt88 9y agoHave you ever worked at Yelp?
- chinathrow 9y ago"Yelp has a small army of people" Like how big is that small army? Your terms imply like, I dunno, maybe more than 1000?
- tulop 9y agoThey do have more than 1000 sales people. Their data sheet shows 2,400
- Rexxar 9y agoIt could be a small part of those people who are doing this in order to have a bigger bonus. Bad incentive structures that cause bad behaviours is not an unknown phenomenon.
- timr 9y ago
- strictnein 9y ago> "Since they're a public company" A public company has never, ever engaged in shady behavior. It is simply unheard of.
- ryanwaggoner 9y agoThis is such garbage. Yelp might be the worst company on the planet, but "anonymous internet poster who has a friend who worked there two months and claims something unspecified-but-fishy is going on" is completely worthless. "A friend of mine said he'd be threatened with legal action if he revealed what HappyTypist does on Saturday nights."
- chinathrow 9y agoWhat I learned from all those stories about Yelp: If there's smoke there must be a fire. Lot's of smoke recently.
- ryanwaggoner 9y agoYou didn't learn that, you decided that. Unless you've seen the fire and can point us to it?