4 ms·

This article kind of misses the entire point; Glassdoor and the rest of these "professional review" sites sell reputation management services to the company. Th

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.

gtirloni 8y ago
Their policy on negative reviews seems pretty decent. https://help.glassdoor.com/article/I-m-an-employer-What-can-I-do-about-negative-reviews-on-Glassdoor/en_US/Legal_FAQs https://help.glassdoor.com/article/I-m-an-employer-What-can-...
- i_cant_speel 8y ago
  Their Legal Action section sounds vaguely threatening. > Also, if we feel strongly that your lawsuit is primarily intended to chill free speech, we may take extra steps to let the world know what you are up to.
  - FireBeyond 8y ago
    "may" is such a weasel word. If you're a cellular company, "may" means "will". "If you are in the higher tiers of data use, we may throttle your bandwidth". If you're Glassdoor who sells reputation management and HR services to the very employers being reviewed, "may" means "we're paying lip service to our critics".
    - smelendez 8y ago
      May throttle doesn't necessarily mean "will throttle." The company is giving itself the latitude not to throttle, or to not throttle exactly at the data cap. In other words, you can't rely on that throttling if you're, say, connecting to some cloud service that's charging you by the gigabyte to transfer data.
      - FireBeyond 8y ago
        No, it doesn't, canonically. But it equally can. Witness Verizon, throttling first responders in California wildfires. At 3.45am. Despite their verbiage about usage limits, above which "may be throttled depending on network capacity", it was obvious that after limit+1 bit, regardless of network capacity, you would be throttled, no ifs, buts or may(be)s.
- freedomben 8y ago
  I thought that too, except for this: > Ask Your Employees to Leave More of Them. We encourage you to ask your employees to leave honest reviews on Glassdoor. I personally see this as manipulating and watering down. It's not an ethical problem IMHO, but I'd rather hear from the people that were motivated enough by their love or hate to go out and leave a review. Also as an employee, I've had an employer ask me to leave an honest review, and there is no question in my mind what they really meant :-)
  - ben509 8y ago
    I wonder how it would change things if there was a question on the review, "were you asked by your employer to leave a review?"
  - strictnein 8y ago
    Previous employer (a large division of a very large software company) had signs up in our offices that actively encouraged reviews. The selling point was that it would help make it easier to get quality coworkers. Kind of made sense, but it was still shady.
rashomon 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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.
- scirocco 8y ago
  Remember: Reviews are written by the kind of people who write reviews
  - theshadowmonkey 8y ago
    Or reviews are written mostly by people who had a bad experience yelp or glassdoor - same thing. Look at a few profiles. They have nothing but negative reviews.

gtirloni 8y ago

Their policy on negative reviews seems pretty decent. https://help.glassdoor.com/article/I-m-an-employer-What-can-I-do-about-negative-reviews-on-Glassdoor/en_US/Legal_FAQs https://help.glassdoor.com/article/I-m-an-employer-What-can-...

i_cant_speel 8y ago
Their Legal Action section sounds vaguely threatening. > Also, if we feel strongly that your lawsuit is primarily intended to chill free speech, we may take extra steps to let the world know what you are up to.
- FireBeyond 8y ago
  "may" is such a weasel word. If you're a cellular company, "may" means "will". "If you are in the higher tiers of data use, we may throttle your bandwidth". If you're Glassdoor who sells reputation management and HR services to the very employers being reviewed, "may" means "we're paying lip service to our critics".
  - smelendez 8y ago
    May throttle doesn't necessarily mean "will throttle." The company is giving itself the latitude not to throttle, or to not throttle exactly at the data cap. In other words, you can't rely on that throttling if you're, say, connecting to some cloud service that's charging you by the gigabyte to transfer data.
    - FireBeyond 8y ago
      No, it doesn't, canonically. But it equally can. Witness Verizon, throttling first responders in California wildfires. At 3.45am. Despite their verbiage about usage limits, above which "may be throttled depending on network capacity", it was obvious that after limit+1 bit, regardless of network capacity, you would be throttled, no ifs, buts or may(be)s.
freedomben 8y ago
I thought that too, except for this: > Ask Your Employees to Leave More of Them. We encourage you to ask your employees to leave honest reviews on Glassdoor. I personally see this as manipulating and watering down. It's not an ethical problem IMHO, but I'd rather hear from the people that were motivated enough by their love or hate to go out and leave a review. Also as an employee, I've had an employer ask me to leave an honest review, and there is no question in my mind what they really meant :-)
- ben509 8y ago
  I wonder how it would change things if there was a question on the review, "were you asked by your employer to leave a review?"
- strictnein 8y ago
  Previous employer (a large division of a very large software company) had signs up in our offices that actively encouraged reviews. The selling point was that it would help make it easier to get quality coworkers. Kind of made sense, but it was still shady.

rashomon 8y ago

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
scirocco 8y ago
Remember: Reviews are written by the kind of people who write reviews
- theshadowmonkey 8y ago
  Or reviews are written mostly by people who had a bad experience yelp or glassdoor - same thing. Look at a few profiles. They have nothing but negative reviews.