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In 2016, I wrote a scathing, negative Glassdoor review about a company that truly was a developer sweatshop. It had only 1 review at the time. The review got cl

In 2016, I wrote a scathing, negative Glassdoor review about a company that truly was a developer sweatshop. It had only 1 review at the time. The review got close to 50 upvotes and was one of the top Google search results for the company name. A second negative review came up not too long after that. Within weeks, the company had at least 20 5 star reviews added to this. The entirety of the company was no more than 30 employees, leading me to conclude that someone was directing employees to write positive reviews. This seemed to violate Glassdoor's rules on "incentivized reviews", but when contacting Glassdoor, the response I got was that they investigated the situation and determined that there was no violation of the rules. I stopped taking the site seriously after that.

ShakataGaNai 6y ago
This is true of most companies reviews. If they are reasonably small enough (say under 500 to 1000 employees), they all have the same pattern (chronologically): Sparse to no reviews for a while. One or two negative reviews. A few days to weeks later... a huge influx of positive reviews for a few days. Then back to nothing.
redisman 6y ago
I've seen this happen at a previous place I worked at too. One extremely on-point and constructive review with low stars and tons of likes that was then followed by a flood of junk 5 star reviews that obviously the CEO or his lieutenants wrote. There doesn't seem to be any way to combat those fake reviews now.
KingNoosh 6y ago
I've seen the exact same thing as a small-mediumish (100-200 now) start-up I used to work for, there'd be an email sent around to encourage employees to leave a good review, seeing as you can't change your review after it's a scary way to waste your shot. But I guess that shots wasted anyways if the system is rigged to begin with.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  I generally don't bad-mouth previous employers, as it risks limiting your career. However, the only review I ever left on Glassdoor was of the most toxic software job I ever had. The company basically had nothing but dozens of 1 and 2 star reviews. A few months later I checked again and there were about 10 brand new vague 5-star reviews that were all submitted within a day of each other. One of them even said right in the review something like "boss told us all to write 5 star reviews, so here's mine: This place is horrible." Just checked the company again, and my review has since been removed (but some other 1 star reviews are still there).
RobertKerans 6y ago
At job before last, we were offered a large bar of Cadbury's chocolate (a 200g Dairy Milk if I remember correctly) as a sweetener (hoho) for writing a Glassdoor review. Which would be written and emailed to the person who came up with the wheeze and... anyway, afaik all those chocolate bars are still in a cupboard somewhere at the offices

ShakataGaNai 6y ago

This is true of most companies reviews. If they are reasonably small enough (say under 500 to 1000 employees), they all have the same pattern (chronologically): Sparse to no reviews for a while. One or two negative reviews. A few days to weeks later... a huge influx of positive reviews for a few days. Then back to nothing.

redisman 6y ago

I've seen this happen at a previous place I worked at too. One extremely on-point and constructive review with low stars and tons of likes that was then followed by a flood of junk 5 star reviews that obviously the CEO or his lieutenants wrote. There doesn't seem to be any way to combat those fake reviews now.

KingNoosh 6y ago

I've seen the exact same thing as a small-mediumish (100-200 now) start-up I used to work for, there'd be an email sent around to encourage employees to leave a good review, seeing as you can't change your review after it's a scary way to waste your shot. But I guess that shots wasted anyways if the system is rigged to begin with.

ryandrake 6y ago
I generally don't bad-mouth previous employers, as it risks limiting your career. However, the only review I ever left on Glassdoor was of the most toxic software job I ever had. The company basically had nothing but dozens of 1 and 2 star reviews. A few months later I checked again and there were about 10 brand new vague 5-star reviews that were all submitted within a day of each other. One of them even said right in the review something like "boss told us all to write 5 star reviews, so here's mine: This place is horrible." Just checked the company again, and my review has since been removed (but some other 1 star reviews are still there).

RobertKerans 6y ago

At job before last, we were offered a large bar of Cadbury's chocolate (a 200g Dairy Milk if I remember correctly) as a sweetener (hoho) for writing a Glassdoor review. Which would be written and emailed to the person who came up with the wheeze and... anyway, afaik all those chocolate bars are still in a cupboard somewhere at the offices