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My first thought reading this is that I'm happy Glassdoor is actually having an impact. 15 months ago I started work as a Software Manager at a large arts and

My first thought reading this is that I'm happy Glassdoor is actually having an impact. 15 months ago I started work as a Software Manager at a large arts and crafts retailer. Much of the job seemed completely in line with my interest and what I wanted to do, but two weeks in I figured out the place was clownishly toxic and the CTO, despite an impressive educational background, had a cartoonish understanding of how software is made. So I resigned and sought new opportunities. I've never worked less than 18 months at any job, and that made leaving a tough pill to swallow. Looking at the reviews on Glassdoor (and TeamBlind) left since my departure, I can see my intuitions were spot on. Reviewers' descriptions of the environment seem absurd, but unfortunately they are completely consistent with what my spider-sense was telling me. I hope Glassdoor has helped others avoid the misery of employment there.

georgeecollins 5y ago
I feel like savvy companies can game Glassdoor. Like reviews online, it may be useful to learn what to look for but not so useful as an overall raring.
- rchaud 5y ago
  Glassdoor is like Yelp, bad reviews can be scrubbed for a price. Companies like these may have a noble mission at the start, but housing people's reviews isnt' profitable. Acting as a PR firm however, is.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    Feels like it wouldn't be too hard to make a simple review site on IPFS. Have a client based filter for spam - but then the filter can be confirmed by every client by visiting the blacklisted reviews. Honestly might be a fun weekend project...
    - dwaltrip 5y ago
      What happens when fake reviews come pouring in?
      - vorpalhex 5y ago
        Glue reputation information to the reviews. Maybe have an adjustable tool to filter on reputation metrics. Obviously that means the system can be used as an oracle, but it avoids the pay-to-play possibilities.
  - eunos 5y ago
    Idea : Offer enterprise package for companies to scrub bad review, but also offer premium account to see unscrubbed reviews. Win-win.
    - dkarl 5y ago
      The way you pitch it makes it sound reassuringly unrealistic, but it's easy to say the same thing in a more palatable way. How about this: Users can see the first page of a company's reviews for free, or pay for a premium account with full access. Companies can pay for access to select the "highlighted" reviews that appear on the first page.
  - f68yuvibhjk 5y ago
    Throw away account for obvious reasons: Someone made a claim in a review that I, or someone on my team (it was unclear which from the review), tried to cover up a sexual assault [and some other claims that we were nasty people in general]. Investigative lawyers were hired in relation to the sexual assault cover up claim, and they spent the next few months trying to get to the bottom of what might have happened. In the end, nothing could be found. No person came forward, the lawyers investigated with current and past team members, it was exhausting and painful. A lot of time and money was spent, but we didn't get any sign that the claim was in fact true. The company asked for people to come forward with more information, nothing happened. Further, the original poster from Glassdoor could not be reached, it was a dead end. At the end of the day, the post survived. The company tried to get it removed yet Glassdoor wanted no part in censoring the claim, despite it being backed by zero evidence. It hurt me, it was difficult to manage with my relationship, my team members...it still upsets me today. I am torn between thinking maybe there was something that happened I didn't know about, and that this is just an angry person trying to cause trouble. I'll possibly never know, but it continues to upset me even now as I write this. I just went back now and checked, the post has been modified to remove this claim. I know it was there for about 12 months. So yeah, based on this, I don't know Glassdoor offers the flexibility some imply it does. I don't know what resulted in it finally changing, but the damage is done in my opinion.
    - mrtksn 5y ago
      I think this comment is a brilliant exposition on how anonymity can be good and bad. I guess you want leave these things behind and don't make them public, you post an anonymous comment. The worst thing that could have happened is that you are astroturfing for Glassdoor but it's harmless and the sincere tone makes me think that you are not astroturfing. On the the other hand we also have people who will lie, pretend to be multiple people, cause trouble with no repercussion to their characters. I have this idea of censorship free web where you have your identity stored but not disclosed. So the content moderators can choose to delete your comments but you can un-delete those if you accept revealing your identity. So in your situation, you should be able to tell Glassdoor, here is our investigation and we couldn't find anything to indicate that the claims are true therefore please remove this comment. Glassdoor removes the comment and if the poster of the comment is still behind the claims, clicks a button and the comment is restored but this time with the identity exposed. This way, you can have anonymous comments that can be challenged and the commentators have a mechanism to counter censorship as they have the power to override censorship if they are willing to stake their persona.
- monksy 5y ago
  Oh they do. I worked for a place that decided to start doing quarterly layoffs. Their approval raiting for the ceo was 80%, recommend to a friend in the 60%s. The reviews were vague but still pointed out staginating business and one even mentioned that the ceo was like a drunk pilot.
- cookie_monsta 5y ago
  They don't even have to be that savvy. I worked for a company that got bought out and the new owners were terrible. The CEO was a friend of the owner, had no experience in the sector at all so he brought in consultants to tell us everything that was wrong with this profitable enterprise, the redundancies and cost-cutting started and people who had been there for years started jumping before they were pushed or just literally stopped working altogether and waited for their redundancy offer. The company started losing money, more cost cutting, that spiral. The Glassdoor reviews reflected all of this - generally positive until change of ownership, then a steep downhill. This was a while ago and I don't think the new management were even aware of Glassdoor to start off with, but somebody must have showed them because all of a sudden as soon as somebody posted what sounded like a very genuine negative review there would be a corresponding one that was just so glowing they were comical. This was around the time of the Trip Advisor scandal, after which they quietly dropped the "reviews you can trust" slogan. The two things have stuck in my mind together ever since.
- rurp 5y ago
  You don't even need to be savvy. I worked for a company that turned out to be really scummy in a number of ways. To combat the terrible ratings on Glassdoor they implemented the most obvious fake review process possible where every week two employees would have to create an account and write a positive review. Of course the reviews people wrote were obvious fakes, just a line of two of meaningless platitudes. They were posted on a consistent schedule for months while pretty much every review of substance was terrible. After leaving I flagged the fake reviews and reported them to Glassdoor. Glassdoor did absolutely nothing. I tried reporting them again a few months later and again got nowhere. Last I checked the company's page was still full of blatant fake 5 star reviews.
  - muttled 5y ago
    This is why I always check the 1-3 star reviews. If they sound rambling and angry, they're probably just rambling and angry. If they're well-written, I know they're likely the truth.
  - rstuart4133 5y ago
    I've seen company's with Glassdoor reviews similar to your description while job hunting. You see the high star rating and look further, but then start reading and it sticks out like dogs balls. At least I thought so. It was exactly the pattern you described - lots of short pure fluff reviews giving high stars, with long detailed reviews giving low stars. The impression was enough to put me off - but the grapevine later confirmed it. It was so obvious, I don't see how anybody doing their due diligence during a job search could possibly miss it. Speaking for myself it was the nail in the coffin. A company could get a lot of low star reviews for any number of reasons - maybe they went through a rough patch and had to let go of a lot of people. A company that holds all their best people might not get many reviews at all. In other words, if there aren't hundreds of reviews, I'd take the overall rating with a grain of salt and perhaps go to the interview anyway. But flagrant manipulation like this leaves no doubt. Not only are they prepared to blatantly deceive new employees, it confirms no one likes working there. Which means the people who do end up being employed there either didn't bother putting in the work, or have a low EQ. Just as painted by the article.
- BFLpL0QNek 5y ago
  My ex company had a single review for 12 months. The review wasn’t a good one for the company but I didn’t disagree with anything in the review. My company went through a big hiring spree during the pandemic. They found out about the review from candidate feedback and it was supposedly having a negative effect hiring. Still that single negative interview remained. Then more negative reviews appeared a few months on from new hires who where treated badly and let go or left. All off a sudden with a handful of extremely one star negative reviews which I would say are true, factual and reflect the company correctly, the negative reviews disappeared and a stream of five star positive reviews appeared specifically debunking each previous negative point from previous reviews with a positive spin. I know the company and CEO, the CEO is a text book psychopath. It was fairly obvious he’d written the reviews and somehow got the negative reviews taken down. If it was by contacting Glassdoor or sending threats and lawyer letters to the recent staff who left I don’t know but either wouldn’t surprise me. Any company on Glassdoor with endless positive reviews I’d treat as suspicious. The useful reviews are the informative negative reviews.
- anitil 5y ago
  At a previous employer we were asked to do 'anonymous' Glassdoor reviews. Which they scheduled for us to do so that there wouldn't be a glut of reviews. I just quietly did nothing at all and left shortly after.
- z303 5y ago
  At a previous place. The Head of HR emailed everyone to leaving positive reviews, a couple of days after a very negative one appeared. Proper old school astroturfing. Lots of way to game the system
Cullinet 5y ago
I gather that you didn't look at your employers Glassdoor reviews until after you left? I'm really confused about your apparent conflict with having quit a toxic employer. Remaining only enables the a##holds to survive by pointing at nice guys like you. So being conflicted about leaving is likely down to the similar kind of human collective survival instinct kicking in that kept the 3rd Reich functioning until the organisational Medusa was finally beheaded. Surveys like Glassdoor probably (in my hand wavy land of concrete civic ethical computability probably proven, but it does seem necessary to appeal to more than one kind of human evaluation to break chains like these) only contribute to the problem by giving antisocial and anethical CEOs sources for deriving operating limits that I suspect wouldn't work if more good folk such as yourself heeded Glassdoor information prior to accepting employment instead of maintaining a impossible to calibrate open book according to our individual experiences, which we then go right ahead and discount for being outliers based on our total presumptuous imagination that the obscenity of a organisation we're suffering from is actually quite good and normal because obviously we started giving the boss a neutral score because that's what fair unbiased scientific folk do. That's exactly what fair unbiased scientific folk do also with great results, only every other situation where we apply our fair logic we're using wildly capable arrays of the most sophisticated linearized SI / ANSI calibrated measuring equipment that leverage chains of custody for reference and operating systems maximising the cumulative learning of mankind and human ability to reject misleading but tempting fallacies for fair fact.
- trentnix 5y ago
  > I'm really confused about your apparent conflict with having quit a toxic employer. After only two weeks (and having never experienced such a thing before), it seems pretty natural to second guess one’s intuition.

georgeecollins 5y ago

I feel like savvy companies can game Glassdoor. Like reviews online, it may be useful to learn what to look for but not so useful as an overall raring.

rchaud 5y ago
Glassdoor is like Yelp, bad reviews can be scrubbed for a price. Companies like these may have a noble mission at the start, but housing people's reviews isnt' profitable. Acting as a PR firm however, is.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  Feels like it wouldn't be too hard to make a simple review site on IPFS. Have a client based filter for spam - but then the filter can be confirmed by every client by visiting the blacklisted reviews. Honestly might be a fun weekend project...
  - dwaltrip 5y ago
    What happens when fake reviews come pouring in?
    - vorpalhex 5y ago
      Glue reputation information to the reviews. Maybe have an adjustable tool to filter on reputation metrics. Obviously that means the system can be used as an oracle, but it avoids the pay-to-play possibilities.
- eunos 5y ago
  Idea : Offer enterprise package for companies to scrub bad review, but also offer premium account to see unscrubbed reviews. Win-win.
  - dkarl 5y ago
    The way you pitch it makes it sound reassuringly unrealistic, but it's easy to say the same thing in a more palatable way. How about this: Users can see the first page of a company's reviews for free, or pay for a premium account with full access. Companies can pay for access to select the "highlighted" reviews that appear on the first page.
- f68yuvibhjk 5y ago
  Throw away account for obvious reasons: Someone made a claim in a review that I, or someone on my team (it was unclear which from the review), tried to cover up a sexual assault [and some other claims that we were nasty people in general]. Investigative lawyers were hired in relation to the sexual assault cover up claim, and they spent the next few months trying to get to the bottom of what might have happened. In the end, nothing could be found. No person came forward, the lawyers investigated with current and past team members, it was exhausting and painful. A lot of time and money was spent, but we didn't get any sign that the claim was in fact true. The company asked for people to come forward with more information, nothing happened. Further, the original poster from Glassdoor could not be reached, it was a dead end. At the end of the day, the post survived. The company tried to get it removed yet Glassdoor wanted no part in censoring the claim, despite it being backed by zero evidence. It hurt me, it was difficult to manage with my relationship, my team members...it still upsets me today. I am torn between thinking maybe there was something that happened I didn't know about, and that this is just an angry person trying to cause trouble. I'll possibly never know, but it continues to upset me even now as I write this. I just went back now and checked, the post has been modified to remove this claim. I know it was there for about 12 months. So yeah, based on this, I don't know Glassdoor offers the flexibility some imply it does. I don't know what resulted in it finally changing, but the damage is done in my opinion.
  - mrtksn 5y ago
    I think this comment is a brilliant exposition on how anonymity can be good and bad. I guess you want leave these things behind and don't make them public, you post an anonymous comment. The worst thing that could have happened is that you are astroturfing for Glassdoor but it's harmless and the sincere tone makes me think that you are not astroturfing. On the the other hand we also have people who will lie, pretend to be multiple people, cause trouble with no repercussion to their characters. I have this idea of censorship free web where you have your identity stored but not disclosed. So the content moderators can choose to delete your comments but you can un-delete those if you accept revealing your identity. So in your situation, you should be able to tell Glassdoor, here is our investigation and we couldn't find anything to indicate that the claims are true therefore please remove this comment. Glassdoor removes the comment and if the poster of the comment is still behind the claims, clicks a button and the comment is restored but this time with the identity exposed. This way, you can have anonymous comments that can be challenged and the commentators have a mechanism to counter censorship as they have the power to override censorship if they are willing to stake their persona.
monksy 5y ago
Oh they do. I worked for a place that decided to start doing quarterly layoffs. Their approval raiting for the ceo was 80%, recommend to a friend in the 60%s. The reviews were vague but still pointed out staginating business and one even mentioned that the ceo was like a drunk pilot.
cookie_monsta 5y ago
They don't even have to be that savvy. I worked for a company that got bought out and the new owners were terrible. The CEO was a friend of the owner, had no experience in the sector at all so he brought in consultants to tell us everything that was wrong with this profitable enterprise, the redundancies and cost-cutting started and people who had been there for years started jumping before they were pushed or just literally stopped working altogether and waited for their redundancy offer. The company started losing money, more cost cutting, that spiral. The Glassdoor reviews reflected all of this - generally positive until change of ownership, then a steep downhill. This was a while ago and I don't think the new management were even aware of Glassdoor to start off with, but somebody must have showed them because all of a sudden as soon as somebody posted what sounded like a very genuine negative review there would be a corresponding one that was just so glowing they were comical. This was around the time of the Trip Advisor scandal, after which they quietly dropped the "reviews you can trust" slogan. The two things have stuck in my mind together ever since.
rurp 5y ago
You don't even need to be savvy. I worked for a company that turned out to be really scummy in a number of ways. To combat the terrible ratings on Glassdoor they implemented the most obvious fake review process possible where every week two employees would have to create an account and write a positive review. Of course the reviews people wrote were obvious fakes, just a line of two of meaningless platitudes. They were posted on a consistent schedule for months while pretty much every review of substance was terrible. After leaving I flagged the fake reviews and reported them to Glassdoor. Glassdoor did absolutely nothing. I tried reporting them again a few months later and again got nowhere. Last I checked the company's page was still full of blatant fake 5 star reviews.
- muttled 5y ago
  This is why I always check the 1-3 star reviews. If they sound rambling and angry, they're probably just rambling and angry. If they're well-written, I know they're likely the truth.
- rstuart4133 5y ago
  I've seen company's with Glassdoor reviews similar to your description while job hunting. You see the high star rating and look further, but then start reading and it sticks out like dogs balls. At least I thought so. It was exactly the pattern you described - lots of short pure fluff reviews giving high stars, with long detailed reviews giving low stars. The impression was enough to put me off - but the grapevine later confirmed it. It was so obvious, I don't see how anybody doing their due diligence during a job search could possibly miss it. Speaking for myself it was the nail in the coffin. A company could get a lot of low star reviews for any number of reasons - maybe they went through a rough patch and had to let go of a lot of people. A company that holds all their best people might not get many reviews at all. In other words, if there aren't hundreds of reviews, I'd take the overall rating with a grain of salt and perhaps go to the interview anyway. But flagrant manipulation like this leaves no doubt. Not only are they prepared to blatantly deceive new employees, it confirms no one likes working there. Which means the people who do end up being employed there either didn't bother putting in the work, or have a low EQ. Just as painted by the article.
BFLpL0QNek 5y ago
My ex company had a single review for 12 months. The review wasn’t a good one for the company but I didn’t disagree with anything in the review. My company went through a big hiring spree during the pandemic. They found out about the review from candidate feedback and it was supposedly having a negative effect hiring. Still that single negative interview remained. Then more negative reviews appeared a few months on from new hires who where treated badly and let go or left. All off a sudden with a handful of extremely one star negative reviews which I would say are true, factual and reflect the company correctly, the negative reviews disappeared and a stream of five star positive reviews appeared specifically debunking each previous negative point from previous reviews with a positive spin. I know the company and CEO, the CEO is a text book psychopath. It was fairly obvious he’d written the reviews and somehow got the negative reviews taken down. If it was by contacting Glassdoor or sending threats and lawyer letters to the recent staff who left I don’t know but either wouldn’t surprise me. Any company on Glassdoor with endless positive reviews I’d treat as suspicious. The useful reviews are the informative negative reviews.
anitil 5y ago
At a previous employer we were asked to do 'anonymous' Glassdoor reviews. Which they scheduled for us to do so that there wouldn't be a glut of reviews. I just quietly did nothing at all and left shortly after.
z303 5y ago
At a previous place. The Head of HR emailed everyone to leaving positive reviews, a couple of days after a very negative one appeared. Proper old school astroturfing. Lots of way to game the system

Cullinet 5y ago

I gather that you didn't look at your employers Glassdoor reviews until after you left? I'm really confused about your apparent conflict with having quit a toxic employer. Remaining only enables the a##holds to survive by pointing at nice guys like you. So being conflicted about leaving is likely down to the similar kind of human collective survival instinct kicking in that kept the 3rd Reich functioning until the organisational Medusa was finally beheaded. Surveys like Glassdoor probably (in my hand wavy land of concrete civic ethical computability probably proven, but it does seem necessary to appeal to more than one kind of human evaluation to break chains like these) only contribute to the problem by giving antisocial and anethical CEOs sources for deriving operating limits that I suspect wouldn't work if more good folk such as yourself heeded Glassdoor information prior to accepting employment instead of maintaining a impossible to calibrate open book according to our individual experiences, which we then go right ahead and discount for being outliers based on our total presumptuous imagination that the obscenity of a organisation we're suffering from is actually quite good and normal because obviously we started giving the boss a neutral score because that's what fair unbiased scientific folk do. That's exactly what fair unbiased scientific folk do also with great results, only every other situation where we apply our fair logic we're using wildly capable arrays of the most sophisticated linearized SI / ANSI calibrated measuring equipment that leverage chains of custody for reference and operating systems maximising the cumulative learning of mankind and human ability to reject misleading but tempting fallacies for fair fact.

trentnix 5y ago
> I'm really confused about your apparent conflict with having quit a toxic employer. After only two weeks (and having never experienced such a thing before), it seems pretty natural to second guess one’s intuition.