5 ms·

I don't really trust any Glassdoor reviews. I've always figured many positive reviews are fake, and the problem with negative reviews is that they're often writ

by nilkn 9y ago

I don't really trust any Glassdoor reviews. I've always figured many positive reviews are fake, and the problem with negative reviews is that they're often written by disgruntled employees who are unable to reliably assess their own contributions to problematic situations. The company I'm at -- the best company I've ever worked for, hands down -- has a few negative reviews from over the years that were written by employees who were fired for basically being awful, hostile, aggressive people who fought with everyone and refused to do work. These are the folks who are technically competent and think that gives them a pass for generally being an awful human being to work with. Being willing to fire people like this has resulted in this company having the happiest and most productive culture I've ever personally worked in, but it does lead to some pretty harsh reviews on Glassdoor. You're not going to get any of this context from the reviews. The most informative reviews are the negative ones written by folks who left voluntarily and were not fired. In fact, these reviews, if they exist, can be a gold mine of valuable information. But it can sometimes be hard to pick these out, as folks who were fired sometimes lie about it and make it seem as if they chose to leave. A generic tip when reading negative reviews is to look for specific details and concrete examples. The more details -- and the more specific they are -- the more likely the review is to have some basis in fact. This tip alone can filter out a lot of noise in both positive and negative reviews. If you ever want to write a negative review, the corollary is that you should include specific, concrete examples to convince the reader that you're not just disgruntled. Avoid emotional language. A negative review written with a calm, collected tone is also a sign that there might be something there. It's also worth looking for themes that seem to be consistent across multiple negative reviews. As with Amazon reviews, it's often best to look at distributional properties of Glassdoor reviews rather than focus on specific reviews too much.

bonestamp2 9y ago
Agreed. There was one company I worked for that made all the employees write reviews for the company, but the boss asked each person one after the other so that he knew who wrote each review. So of course everyone wrote a good review. I tried to make mine so over the top that it would obviously be spotted as fake but still within the "compliment" range that I thought my boss would accept it as genuine. Then when I left I wrote a proper review and indicated that most of the other reviews were probably untrustworthy since everyone was asked to write a review.
wavefunction 9y ago
'Disgruntled' just means 'unhappy,' so a negative review is understandable.
john_moscow 9y ago
The company I'm at -- the best company I've ever worked for, hands down -- has a few negative reviews from over the years that were written by employees who were fired for basically being awful, hostile, aggressive people who fought with everyone and refused to do work. These are the folks who are technically competent and think that gives them a pass for generally being an awful human being to work with. If this happens consistently over a longer period of time, I'd say there's a problem with conflict management in that company. Technically competent people usually start pushing back if they see a better/simpler way of solving the problem they are given, but instead of taking their feedback or giving constructive criticism, the management just tries to shut them up.
- nilkn 9y ago
  It's just a few cases in 10 years. I don't think there's much of a pattern there. It's certainly not a perfect company, and conflict management is one of the hardest parts of being a manager. But overall the situation you describe was not the issue in these cases.
yellowbeard 9y ago
Any chance you can share the name of the company where you work now? Would love to know.

by nilkn 9y ago

bonestamp2 9y ago

Agreed. There was one company I worked for that made all the employees write reviews for the company, but the boss asked each person one after the other so that he knew who wrote each review. So of course everyone wrote a good review. I tried to make mine so over the top that it would obviously be spotted as fake but still within the "compliment" range that I thought my boss would accept it as genuine. Then when I left I wrote a proper review and indicated that most of the other reviews were probably untrustworthy since everyone was asked to write a review.

wavefunction 9y ago

'Disgruntled' just means 'unhappy,' so a negative review is understandable.

john_moscow 9y ago

The company I'm at -- the best company I've ever worked for, hands down -- has a few negative reviews from over the years that were written by employees who were fired for basically being awful, hostile, aggressive people who fought with everyone and refused to do work. These are the folks who are technically competent and think that gives them a pass for generally being an awful human being to work with. If this happens consistently over a longer period of time, I'd say there's a problem with conflict management in that company. Technically competent people usually start pushing back if they see a better/simpler way of solving the problem they are given, but instead of taking their feedback or giving constructive criticism, the management just tries to shut them up.

nilkn 9y ago
It's just a few cases in 10 years. I don't think there's much of a pattern there. It's certainly not a perfect company, and conflict management is one of the hardest parts of being a manager. But overall the situation you describe was not the issue in these cases.

yellowbeard 9y ago

Any chance you can share the name of the company where you work now? Would love to know.