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Large companies have enough disgruntled employees that even the laziest journalists can find a few to generate some outrage, which drives views/clicks to their

Large companies have enough disgruntled employees that even the laziest journalists can find a few to generate some outrage, which drives views/clicks to their site. Since AirBNB is a well-known name, people on HN will tend to upvote it and commenters will self-select for people who want to rant about AirBNB. That's 3 selection biases here: Visibility on HN(selects for an "interesting" story, not truth), disgruntled employees, comments will want to rant about AirBNB. It's almost certainly a mistake to judge them negatively based on this story. > In 2015, Glassdoor ranked the company as the #1 place to work, in 2017 that ranking dropped to 35th, and many employees are speaking out. 35th "best place to work" and "people are treated like cattle"? Somebody's giving you misleading statistics: Either it's Glassdoor.com, or the managing editor of "broke-ass stuart". I don't think there's a single company above 10,000 employees that you couldn't force a similar framing on.

exBarrelSpoiler 9y ago
#36 is Apple and #37 is Microsoft. I suspect that once you get to that level those happiness ratings spiral into meaninglessness. Especially when the companies involved are huge.
- lostlogin 9y ago
  Good point. Ranking it by company is rather meaningless when they are multinational. How else could it be done though? By country? State/province?
  - user5994461 9y ago
    Glassdoor has ranking by country.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    For Microsoft, ranking by building might be effective. Happiness in building 12 vs. building 42 will be very different.
    - akhilcacharya 9y ago
      I'm not familiar with buildings at MS - what is the significance?
      - grogenaut 9y ago
        Departments usually are in the same building. I think 12 may be some of the studios as well
    - MiddleEndian 9y ago
      It also really depends on your interests. Much of my dissatisfaction with Microsoft was due to its heavy integration with a suburban lifestyle (Bellevue and Redmond), but some people are into that. A vague metric like happiness isn't really something that will be universal.
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Work environment toxicity isn't really related to where you live. Many Microsofties commute from Seattle, and they have Connect/Kinect buses to support that (like Googlers who commute in from the city, only that Seattle is much closer to Redmond than SF is to MV). I mean, if you are going to ding Microsoft for that, you might as well ding Google and Facebook as well. Heck, only Amazon and some smaller companies have true urban campuses.
        MiddleEndian 9y ago
        I did move to Seattle and the commute was pretty terrible, via driving or the shuttle, sometimes upwards of ninety minutes. I really like working at a Google satellite office but I would absolutely never work in the Mountain View campus for similar reasons. I found it easier to get into a Google satellite office while Microsoft wanted me to work on the main campus.
        seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Good for you, simplifying your life is useful (I work in LA but live two blocks from my job in Westwood). It depends on when you want to commute, if you want to fight it out 7-9:30/4:30-6:30 with rush hour traffic, then ya, it might take 90 minutes (wait, no, it would never actually take 90 minutes unless you were commuting from north or south of Seattle....or maybe West Seattle, I guess you are exaggerating a bit here). If you travel off peak, its like 20 minutes between OTC and downtown by bus. That being said, if I had to choose between a toxic work environment with a great location and a great work environment with a crappy location, I would probably pick the latter for my own sanity (best to have both, though).
cooper12 9y ago
Yep, I've noticed this trend for any article even remotely related to Apple. Everyone just uses the comments to rant about how Apple is gonna fail because of their newest product, yet barely any comments will be about the contents of the article itself. There's also an alarming trend of people just reading the titles and going off of them. Careful disrupting the circlejerk though, you'll just quickly be flagged.
hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
I think you're also likely to see widely differing points of view based on the department in question. In general, departments that are essentially "cost centers" with lower skilled workers will feel more pressure to operate more efficiently (i.e. more work for same or less pay), while the opposite can actually happen for higher skilled, differentiated workers: critical employees will be lavished with pay and benefits as their skills and importance to the company increase.
- eru 9y ago
  Definitely! At Google I saw some first-hand evidence of those principles. Outsourcing the uncritical would-be employees makes that kind of differentiated treatment even easier to pull off for our monkey brain without losing any sleep over moral qualms at night. But that's probably a good thing: at least the outsourced eg cleaners have a better chance of being the profit centres of the cleaning company than they ever would at eg a bank or Google. Ultimately, if anyone has a moral burden to help lower income people, it's society as a whole (and that means mostly its richest members who bear the brunt of taxation) instead of just eg Walmart (and Walmart's mostly poor customers): we can't afford to penalize companies whose business model hinges on employing low-skilled people. Otherwise we'll get even less opportunities for people low on opportunities already.
vosper 9y ago
Also, IMO, the media love any story that makes tech upstarts look bad (or maybe everyone does, and they know what gets the clicks). I doubt that the same story about General Mills or John Deere would get the same attention, or would even be written.
dieterrams 9y ago
> It's almost certainly a mistake to judge them negatively based on this story. Logically speaking, it would also be a mistake to dismiss every report of poor employee treatment where those selection biases apply.
- whitemale 9y ago
  > Logically speaking, it would also be a mistake to dismiss every report of poor employee treatment where those selection biases apply. Remarkable claims require remarkable evidence, claims that are made without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. If a handful of people complain out of thousands and there is no hard evidence, then I see no reason not to just dismiss it.
  - dieterrams 9y ago
    On what grounds do you consider a claim "remarkable"? This also isn't a standard of admittance that would work terribly well for minorities.
bogomipz 9y ago
>"I don't think there's a single company above 10,000 employees that you couldn't force a similar framing on" Do you have a citation for AirBnB having greater than 10K employees? Their Linkedin page specifies 1001-5000 employees: https://www.linkedin.com/company/airbnb https://www.linkedin.com/company/airbnb
FT_intern 9y ago
I am very skeptical of these types of stories about tech companies. The outrage is generally misplaced. People see one bad incident and think that there is an issue with the entire company. The fact is that there will always be bad incidents at any company with > 2000 people. It isn't reasonable to be outraged at one incident. It is reasonable to be outraged if the incidents occur more frequently at a particular company or in tech than at other companies or fields. I believe that these types of incidents occur far less in tech than in other fields (with the exception of tiny, scrappy start ups). Reporters just don't bother reporting the issues in other fields. There is also the issue that almost every one of these 'outrage' articles are deceptive and written by a journalists who have no context about working in tech.
simonebrunozzi 9y ago
And what's your vested interest in defending AirBnB at all costs? You raise good concerns, yes... But you shouldn't take for granted that AirBnB is a work heaven.
- tptacek 9y ago
  First, writing a short comment on HN about trends in HN comments isn't really a cost at all, let alone "all costs". Don't insinuate that other commenters are writing in bad faith.
  - mythrwy 9y ago
    I fully agree about the insinuation of posting in bad faith but suspect poster didn't really mean "at all costs" but rather something more along the lines of "in spite of this evidence". (which I wouldn't agree with anyway for reasons others mention above).
abronan 9y ago
Just talking about glassdoor, and their rankings are to take with a big grain of salt, especially for early stage startups and medium sized companies. I worked for a company that had some issues with management and saw its glassdoor ranking plummet after several low scores were given by past employees with mention of harassment. They didn't claim the profile on glassdoor at the time. Unsurprisingly, after a few really negative reviews, they most likely encouraged current employees to post positive reviews to counter-balance for the purpose of claiming the profile. It was obvious because positive reviews were for most of them on the same date or very close to each other and came in bulk while reviews were spaced by weeks or months before (most of them rather negative). The gist of it is that while negative reviews may not reflect the current state and culture of a company (disgruntled employees happen), positive reviews could also be misleading. And I'm not even accounting for people that have an interest for putting up positive reviews regardless of the working environment because they have big stakes into the company. Best thing to do is to chat with several employees in different departments and ask for their honest opinion and share their experience. Generally people are open about the pros and cons of their own working environment if you talk to them behind closed doors.

exBarrelSpoiler 9y ago

#36 is Apple and #37 is Microsoft. I suspect that once you get to that level those happiness ratings spiral into meaninglessness. Especially when the companies involved are huge.

lostlogin 9y ago
Good point. Ranking it by company is rather meaningless when they are multinational. How else could it be done though? By country? State/province?
- user5994461 9y ago
  Glassdoor has ranking by country.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  For Microsoft, ranking by building might be effective. Happiness in building 12 vs. building 42 will be very different.
  - akhilcacharya 9y ago
    I'm not familiar with buildings at MS - what is the significance?
    - grogenaut 9y ago
      Departments usually are in the same building. I think 12 may be some of the studios as well
  - MiddleEndian 9y ago
    It also really depends on your interests. Much of my dissatisfaction with Microsoft was due to its heavy integration with a suburban lifestyle (Bellevue and Redmond), but some people are into that. A vague metric like happiness isn't really something that will be universal.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Work environment toxicity isn't really related to where you live. Many Microsofties commute from Seattle, and they have Connect/Kinect buses to support that (like Googlers who commute in from the city, only that Seattle is much closer to Redmond than SF is to MV). I mean, if you are going to ding Microsoft for that, you might as well ding Google and Facebook as well. Heck, only Amazon and some smaller companies have true urban campuses.
      - MiddleEndian 9y ago
        I did move to Seattle and the commute was pretty terrible, via driving or the shuttle, sometimes upwards of ninety minutes. I really like working at a Google satellite office but I would absolutely never work in the Mountain View campus for similar reasons. I found it easier to get into a Google satellite office while Microsoft wanted me to work on the main campus.
        seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Good for you, simplifying your life is useful (I work in LA but live two blocks from my job in Westwood). It depends on when you want to commute, if you want to fight it out 7-9:30/4:30-6:30 with rush hour traffic, then ya, it might take 90 minutes (wait, no, it would never actually take 90 minutes unless you were commuting from north or south of Seattle....or maybe West Seattle, I guess you are exaggerating a bit here). If you travel off peak, its like 20 minutes between OTC and downtown by bus. That being said, if I had to choose between a toxic work environment with a great location and a great work environment with a crappy location, I would probably pick the latter for my own sanity (best to have both, though).

cooper12 9y ago

Yep, I've noticed this trend for any article even remotely related to Apple. Everyone just uses the comments to rant about how Apple is gonna fail because of their newest product, yet barely any comments will be about the contents of the article itself. There's also an alarming trend of people just reading the titles and going off of them. Careful disrupting the circlejerk though, you'll just quickly be flagged.

hn_throwaway_99 9y ago

I think you're also likely to see widely differing points of view based on the department in question. In general, departments that are essentially "cost centers" with lower skilled workers will feel more pressure to operate more efficiently (i.e. more work for same or less pay), while the opposite can actually happen for higher skilled, differentiated workers: critical employees will be lavished with pay and benefits as their skills and importance to the company increase.

eru 9y ago
Definitely! At Google I saw some first-hand evidence of those principles. Outsourcing the uncritical would-be employees makes that kind of differentiated treatment even easier to pull off for our monkey brain without losing any sleep over moral qualms at night. But that's probably a good thing: at least the outsourced eg cleaners have a better chance of being the profit centres of the cleaning company than they ever would at eg a bank or Google. Ultimately, if anyone has a moral burden to help lower income people, it's society as a whole (and that means mostly its richest members who bear the brunt of taxation) instead of just eg Walmart (and Walmart's mostly poor customers): we can't afford to penalize companies whose business model hinges on employing low-skilled people. Otherwise we'll get even less opportunities for people low on opportunities already.

vosper 9y ago

Also, IMO, the media love any story that makes tech upstarts look bad (or maybe everyone does, and they know what gets the clicks). I doubt that the same story about General Mills or John Deere would get the same attention, or would even be written.

dieterrams 9y ago

> It's almost certainly a mistake to judge them negatively based on this story. Logically speaking, it would also be a mistake to dismiss every report of poor employee treatment where those selection biases apply.

whitemale 9y ago
> Logically speaking, it would also be a mistake to dismiss every report of poor employee treatment where those selection biases apply. Remarkable claims require remarkable evidence, claims that are made without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. If a handful of people complain out of thousands and there is no hard evidence, then I see no reason not to just dismiss it.
- dieterrams 9y ago
  On what grounds do you consider a claim "remarkable"? This also isn't a standard of admittance that would work terribly well for minorities.

bogomipz 9y ago

>"I don't think there's a single company above 10,000 employees that you couldn't force a similar framing on" Do you have a citation for AirBnB having greater than 10K employees? Their Linkedin page specifies 1001-5000 employees: https://www.linkedin.com/company/airbnb https://www.linkedin.com/company/airbnb

FT_intern 9y ago

I am very skeptical of these types of stories about tech companies. The outrage is generally misplaced. People see one bad incident and think that there is an issue with the entire company. The fact is that there will always be bad incidents at any company with > 2000 people. It isn't reasonable to be outraged at one incident. It is reasonable to be outraged if the incidents occur more frequently at a particular company or in tech than at other companies or fields. I believe that these types of incidents occur far less in tech than in other fields (with the exception of tiny, scrappy start ups). Reporters just don't bother reporting the issues in other fields. There is also the issue that almost every one of these 'outrage' articles are deceptive and written by a journalists who have no context about working in tech.

simonebrunozzi 9y ago

And what's your vested interest in defending AirBnB at all costs? You raise good concerns, yes... But you shouldn't take for granted that AirBnB is a work heaven.

tptacek 9y ago
First, writing a short comment on HN about trends in HN comments isn't really a cost at all, let alone "all costs". Don't insinuate that other commenters are writing in bad faith.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  I fully agree about the insinuation of posting in bad faith but suspect poster didn't really mean "at all costs" but rather something more along the lines of "in spite of this evidence". (which I wouldn't agree with anyway for reasons others mention above).

abronan 9y ago

Just talking about glassdoor, and their rankings are to take with a big grain of salt, especially for early stage startups and medium sized companies. I worked for a company that had some issues with management and saw its glassdoor ranking plummet after several low scores were given by past employees with mention of harassment. They didn't claim the profile on glassdoor at the time. Unsurprisingly, after a few really negative reviews, they most likely encouraged current employees to post positive reviews to counter-balance for the purpose of claiming the profile. It was obvious because positive reviews were for most of them on the same date or very close to each other and came in bulk while reviews were spaced by weeks or months before (most of them rather negative). The gist of it is that while negative reviews may not reflect the current state and culture of a company (disgruntled employees happen), positive reviews could also be misleading. And I'm not even accounting for people that have an interest for putting up positive reviews regardless of the working environment because they have big stakes into the company. Best thing to do is to chat with several employees in different departments and ask for their honest opinion and share their experience. Generally people are open about the pros and cons of their own working environment if you talk to them behind closed doors.