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I am a Goodreads employee. this is a burner account. i could be fired for posting. we love Goodreads and we know it is bad today. we are working to fix it.
by anonreader123 6y ago
I am a Goodreads employee. this is a burner account. i could be fired for posting.
we love Goodreads and we know it is bad today. we are working to fix it. there are very few of us. we are trying. we are making big changes soon.
- zygy 6y agoMany thanks.
- jonathanwallace 6y agoBest of luck and thank you.
- recuter 6y agoHow many of you are there?
- anonreader123 6y agonot enough.
- O_H_E 6y agoMy heart by with you fellow human. Thanks for trying to make the world a little better even under less-than-ideal conditions.
- darkerside 6y agoWhat are the most important changes that your team is prioritizing? What are your biggest challenges with making them?
- anonreader123 6y agoI want to be specific but I would get fired if they saw. but we read EVERY post about us. we are being ambitious and big changes are coming. biggest challenge is there is too much to do and we have so few staff.
- acchow 6y agoHow many engineers?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- darkerside 6y agoThis is so vague that if you're not faking it, you might as well be. Sorry, but don't bother posting, even under a throwaway, if you're not going to engage.
- immy 6y agoAll it does is discourage timid people from making an innovative competitor.
- Shared404 6y agoGood luck.
- Paul_S 6y agoDo you recommend books based on ML or do you hand pick books you want to promote because you think they should be promoted or have been paid to promote them?
- anonreader123 6y agoonly ML. no promo -- nothing sneaky -- we hate sneaky
- Paul_S 6y agoThanks. I checked out recommendations just now and indeed they make sense. I swear at some point in the past when I last tried it had very suspicious results, hence my question.
- anaganisk 6y agoThere's an Ex-NSA in the board of Amazon now.
- rexpop 6y ago> i could be fired for posting. Yikes, that's rather dramatic! Especially since all you've said is "we're working to fix it. changes soon." That's a pretty harmless statement, I would think. What gives you the idea that such statements put your employment at risk?
- Infinitesimus 6y agoIt might be the general fear present in some Amazon corp offices? (PIP stories, etc.)
- rexpop 6y ago> general fear present I don't know about this. Is it documented, or have you "heard it through the grapevine," so-to-speak?
- Infinitesimus 6y agoJust the minority of people who had bad experiences and shared them. Stack ranking almost always creates such environments.
- toyg 6y ago> there are very few of us. we are trying This implies support for Goodreads at Amazon is very thin. It could be read as a critical statement (even though it's pretty clear to everyone that the site very clearly stagnated since the acquisition, focusing almost exclusively on Kindle integration). Amazon management is famously militaristic in attitude and would likely take action against a low-level employee criticizing the company in public
- rexpop 6y ago> management is famously militaristic Although I know that Amazon is hiring intelligence operatives[0] to bust unions, this aspect (militaristic middle management) is news to me. Where can I learn more? 0. https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/1/21417401/amazon-job-listing-delete-labor-organizing-threat-union https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/1/21417401/amazon-job-listin...
- SECProto 6y agoCan we have half stars or quarter stars? I read a lot of books, and choosing full-star 1 to 5 makes the ratings pretty useless for people who read a lot. My internal rankings are: 1 hated it/was offended/didn't finish 2 disliked it/likely didn't finish 3 finished but it was a struggle 4 finished/enjoyed/had some issues 5 finished fast/really enjoyed/may or may not have still had issues. If I look back at the 30 to 50 books I read in a year, it's really difficult to get any sort of ranking out of them. I've only got two choices for books I liked (4 or 5) and two choices for books I disliked (1 or 2). Having half stars would help my ratings relative to one another.
- heurist 6y agoI have been rating a year or so after reading based on how much of the book I remember or how much it influenced me. It's made rating much easier.
- SECProto 6y agoThat doesn't fundamentally change that there are only 2 choices available for books I've enjoyed. Also, if you asked me about a book I read a year ago, I wouldn't be able to do much more than confirm I read it. That's part of why I use Goodreads.
- macobo 6y agoWhy take 60% of the rating space up by negative ratings? It seems like what you really care about is degrees of goodness. An alternative approach: 1 - I disliked it. 2 - It's OK 3 - This is good 4 - This is great 5 - This is a must-read
- SamBam 6y agoIt's the problem with star systems, which is that we'll always have different definitions. Your 3s are living next to the other poster's 3s and mean very different things. That said, I think the world has also suffered from ratings inflation. I tend to assume anything under a 4 means "bad" or "meh" myself.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- JesseMReeves 6y agoHappy to read that you are working on improvements! GoodReads is my most-used and most important database. I love it, I also actually like that it feels more like an “older” webpage before all this craziness with stealing the attention and time of users came up (Goodread in its current state is already addictive enough for me). I hope you fix the bigger issues (like slow loading times, recommendations, convoluted UI) but keep the aim-at-making-the-page-actually-useful (and not a manipulative time sink) approach. Feature wishes: Extensions on book statistics, a function for discovering like-minded users, marking books as „finished“ / „decided not to finish“ and showing this information (this could provide some very useful additional information on books), and maybe a „listened to the audiobook“ marker.
- jimmySixDOF 6y agoPlease find someone there who can explain why it's not possible to link GoodReads with my Audible history. They are both Amazon properties!
- replwoacause 6y agoThe way this is phrased is odd and makes me question the company culture. There is nothing in the content of your post that could be deemed as fireable by any reasonable person so I am left to conclude the work environment is a hostile one.
- anonymous_too 6y agoAt many large companies, you need to have permission to post about the company. When the number of employees gets into the tens of thousands, odds get very good someone will say something that reflects badly on the company. Generally, it's not that you can't post, you just can't post an an employee. The companies generally don't want something like: "I am a Goodreads employee." "we know it is bad today."
- sigstoat 6y ago...what have you guys been doing for the last 10 years?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- clubdorothe 6y agoThanks for sharing that, looking forward to the changes. genuinely curious, why would you get fired?