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Sadly, that didn't surprise me at all. Only keeping the positive feedback is a time honored tradition with some groups in corporations. It is amazing how usef

Sadly, that didn't surprise me at all. Only keeping the positive feedback is a time honored tradition with some groups in corporations. It is amazing how useful it is to control your own feedback for people wanting to look good.

Volundr 5y ago
To be honest, I've kind of lost all faith in user generated feedback. The first employee I ever had to fire was an internal help desk style person. After firing them for unrelated reasons I started getting all sorts of feedback about how it was time, and people were glad someone finally dealt with the issue. I start digging in and it turns out this person had just been closing tickets they didn't feel like dealing with, with no response. I also heard stories of some pretty hostile interactions with out users. The thing is, we sent out a short little survey to the user after every ticket closed. A little two question thing, "Did we solve your problem?" and "Are you satisfied with the service your received?". This person had a 99% satisfied rating. Getting accurate feedback from employees is hard, and I can only imagine new employees feel even more pressure to say positive things.
- hobs 5y ago
  I read this as your company culture is really bad if no one can complain about the negative person everybody hates - there's almost always someone who either is too honest or too talkative who lets on what's up - if you dont have those characters the company might have punished them already as well. There's always an in-group/out-group in any group and if you're not aware who the current "least favored" person is in a social circle, its probably you.
  - Volundr 5y ago
    > I read this as your company culture is really bad I'm certainly not claiming we had a great culture, but I don't think it was that bad. > There's always an in-group/out-group in any group and if you're not aware who the current "least favored" person is in a social circle, its probably you. If I'm not hearing gossip on who the "out" person is, it's me? If this is good culture I'll take bad any day.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Consumer products have ruined the notion of feedback and surveys for me and I suspect others might be in the same boat. The amount of times things are asking for feedback has increased by orders of magnitude in the last decade and yet things keep getting shittier and shittier. I have never ever got any perceptible improvement or even follow-up from leaving detailed feedback so I no longer bother - instead I do whatever is easiest to make the thing get out of my way so I can get back to my actual work, so everyone gets 5 stars or whatever is the “good” answer because I don’t want to get some poor soul in trouble in case there’s a “if avg_feedback < 99: fire()” somewhere. Yes, in enterprise situations you’d hope the feedback actually gets looked at by a competent person and doesn’t just go into a black hole, but as a user I have no way to tell, so either I just write off the issue or I will do the thing that will guarantee the issue is resolved which is to email their manager instead of gambling my time on whether the feedback system works or even gets looked at.
  - Aachen 5y ago
    > I do whatever is easiest to make the thing get out of my way so I can get back to my actual work, so everyone gets 5 stars or whatever is the “good” answer because I don’t want to get some poor soul in trouble in case there’s a “if avg_feedback < 99: fire()” somewhere. How about you just don't respond instead of lying? That saves even more time! I understand why you pick 5 stars instead of giving bad ratings but why bother faking a response at all. What situation is it where you're forced to give a rating (is this irl or something) until you're allowed to leave the session?
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      It sometimes takes more clicks to not respond or they will keep pestering you with email notifications assuming that you “forgot” the last one. I’m not saying I lie in the ratings on purpose, but I’m not going to do extra work to find the ignore option - I’ll use whatever option is more prominent. > What situation is it where you're forced to give a rating (is this irl or something) until you're allowed to leave the session? Email-based systems will often send multiple follow-up ones and the only way to stop it is to essentially submit. If it’s a system I use often I’ll make an email rule to trash them (or passive-aggressively send them back to someone at their company) but if it’s an unexpected one I’ll just respond to prevent the next one. Some mobile apps make the dismiss option hard to find/reach (literally - it’s at the top corner of the screen on a big phone) while the 5-star option is more prominent. IRL I would also answer since declining is essentially implicitly admitting that something isn’t right and could get someone in trouble. Ideally there should be a “don’t ask me ever again” option to disable that behaviour somewhere but I have yet to see it since every company seems to have a “feedback monster” that they need to continuously feed with ratings, even if they are meaningless.

Volundr 5y ago

To be honest, I've kind of lost all faith in user generated feedback. The first employee I ever had to fire was an internal help desk style person. After firing them for unrelated reasons I started getting all sorts of feedback about how it was time, and people were glad someone finally dealt with the issue. I start digging in and it turns out this person had just been closing tickets they didn't feel like dealing with, with no response. I also heard stories of some pretty hostile interactions with out users. The thing is, we sent out a short little survey to the user after every ticket closed. A little two question thing, "Did we solve your problem?" and "Are you satisfied with the service your received?". This person had a 99% satisfied rating. Getting accurate feedback from employees is hard, and I can only imagine new employees feel even more pressure to say positive things.

hobs 5y ago
I read this as your company culture is really bad if no one can complain about the negative person everybody hates - there's almost always someone who either is too honest or too talkative who lets on what's up - if you dont have those characters the company might have punished them already as well. There's always an in-group/out-group in any group and if you're not aware who the current "least favored" person is in a social circle, its probably you.
- Volundr 5y ago
  > I read this as your company culture is really bad I'm certainly not claiming we had a great culture, but I don't think it was that bad. > There's always an in-group/out-group in any group and if you're not aware who the current "least favored" person is in a social circle, its probably you. If I'm not hearing gossip on who the "out" person is, it's me? If this is good culture I'll take bad any day.
Nextgrid 5y ago
Consumer products have ruined the notion of feedback and surveys for me and I suspect others might be in the same boat. The amount of times things are asking for feedback has increased by orders of magnitude in the last decade and yet things keep getting shittier and shittier. I have never ever got any perceptible improvement or even follow-up from leaving detailed feedback so I no longer bother - instead I do whatever is easiest to make the thing get out of my way so I can get back to my actual work, so everyone gets 5 stars or whatever is the “good” answer because I don’t want to get some poor soul in trouble in case there’s a “if avg_feedback < 99: fire()” somewhere. Yes, in enterprise situations you’d hope the feedback actually gets looked at by a competent person and doesn’t just go into a black hole, but as a user I have no way to tell, so either I just write off the issue or I will do the thing that will guarantee the issue is resolved which is to email their manager instead of gambling my time on whether the feedback system works or even gets looked at.
- Aachen 5y ago
  > I do whatever is easiest to make the thing get out of my way so I can get back to my actual work, so everyone gets 5 stars or whatever is the “good” answer because I don’t want to get some poor soul in trouble in case there’s a “if avg_feedback < 99: fire()” somewhere. How about you just don't respond instead of lying? That saves even more time! I understand why you pick 5 stars instead of giving bad ratings but why bother faking a response at all. What situation is it where you're forced to give a rating (is this irl or something) until you're allowed to leave the session?
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    It sometimes takes more clicks to not respond or they will keep pestering you with email notifications assuming that you “forgot” the last one. I’m not saying I lie in the ratings on purpose, but I’m not going to do extra work to find the ignore option - I’ll use whatever option is more prominent. > What situation is it where you're forced to give a rating (is this irl or something) until you're allowed to leave the session? Email-based systems will often send multiple follow-up ones and the only way to stop it is to essentially submit. If it’s a system I use often I’ll make an email rule to trash them (or passive-aggressively send them back to someone at their company) but if it’s an unexpected one I’ll just respond to prevent the next one. Some mobile apps make the dismiss option hard to find/reach (literally - it’s at the top corner of the screen on a big phone) while the 5-star option is more prominent. IRL I would also answer since declining is essentially implicitly admitting that something isn’t right and could get someone in trouble. Ideally there should be a “don’t ask me ever again” option to disable that behaviour somewhere but I have yet to see it since every company seems to have a “feedback monster” that they need to continuously feed with ratings, even if they are meaningless.