4 ms·

This is actually an amazing opportunity for Glassdoor. Just put a "badge" next to companies known to sue employees who post reviews on Glassdoor. No reviews a

This is actually an amazing opportunity for Glassdoor. Just put a "badge" next to companies known to sue employees who post reviews on Glassdoor. No reviews are even needed from that point on to signify a shitty company; for all anyone knows all negative reviews may have been taken down through legal action, but the badge stays, signifying that there was at least one review so damaging that they had to get lawyers involved (or that the company climate is of that toxic kind that sues its own disgruntled employees more generally). In the end suing will end up acting as the ultimate bad review for that company on the site.

dhosek 4y ago
Except where’s the money in that for Glassdoor? Glassdoor makes money from job listings and it’s in their interests to have positive reviews of companies as that’s going to get companies to pay for job listings because they’ll get more/better applicants if they have positive reviews.
- tpoacher 4y ago
  "Good"companies will continue having positive reviews. I'd argue that "bad" companies with predominantly positive reviews, were the negative reviews were all effectively sued away, presumably hurt Glassdoor's model more than they help it, so it's in their best interests to flag "bad" companies using other means. Also, "good" vs "bad" is an oversimplification. In reality the most likely outcome is that this badge will become another point for companies to game. But if the result of that it acts as a disincentive to suing employees that leave bad reviews, to me that's presumably a good outcome.
  - dhosek 4y ago
    The thing is, that companies tend to irrationally chase money, damn the consequences. I used to work for eHarmony and despite consistent user complaints, they continued to run ads for paying users because they made money from that. They didn’t care about the reputation hit or the quality of the experience, just the revenue that the ads generated. I don’t think that eHarmony was particularly unique in that respect. Everything gets A/B tested to maximize revenue and that’s all anyone seems to care about.
- wutbrodo 4y ago
  The foundation of the site's usefulness is that the ratings have some signal. The value of job listings to a Glassdoor user is that they're from companies that Glassdoor rates as positive: an undifferentiated mass of ratings would be a completely useless site. The idea that they have no incentive to improve discriminativity (at the expense of company rating) proves way too much. Eg by that logic, Yelp would have no incentive to allow bad reviews. Hell, they could just be a listing site that puts "5 stars (10,000 reviews)" next to every listing.
  - Gareth321 4y ago
    This is true but there is enormous pressure for these businesses to directionally encourage review scores to trend north. Higher reviewed locations and businesses always garner far higher engagement, and this directly impacts top line. As you point out, there is some ephemeral point at which users might begin distrusting the site en masse, but this inflection point is always easy to ignore as "a problem for another day far in the future." In the mean time, tiny but substantial changes occur all the time which nudge that score higher and higher. In my experience, that macro trust issue is rarely discussed, even though, at some undefined point in the future, it could pose a serious existential threat.
    - wutbrodo 4y ago
      Sure, I agree there's an incentive force pushing scores up. I was responding to a comment asking what possible countervailing force could push scores towards accuracy. The answer is pretty obvious, as the yelp reductio ad absurdum shows.
goatcode 4y ago
What about a badge for companies who unsuccessfully sued for the info? This would both guard against bad companies who are the genuinely litigious jerks we want to see hurt, and give pause to employees to frivolously libel themselves to attack a company without ground (something that would be clear were the company to successfully sue).
amadeuspagel 4y ago
They already do that.
game-of-throws 4y ago
They already do that. https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ZURU-Reviews-E2286297.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ZURU-Reviews-E2286297.htm > Glassdoor Alert: Employer Legal Action > This employer has taken legal action against reviewers and/or Glassdoor for the reviews that have appeared on this profile. Please exercise your best judgment when evaluating this employer. Learn more about Glassdoor Alerts.
- m0th87 4y ago
  That's interesting, I didn't know they did that. But it could be better: 1) This alert doesn't show up at all on mobile. 2) IMO this should either affect the overall score or be displayed in search results as well, which is not currently the case: https://www.glassdoor.com/Search/results.htm?keyword=ZURU https://www.glassdoor.com/Search/results.htm?keyword=ZURU
  - harnomik 4y ago
    Imo its good enough, doing more visible thing or showing them even worse might make them walk on thin line for another lawsuit
  - tpoacher 4y ago
    I didn't know this either. I stand corrected. Having said that, apart from what you also flagged, it's also a bit bland. Like "there's some legal stuff here, exercise caution". Instead the badge could have symbolic character, an emotive icon ... something. Something that strongly implies "Danger Will Robinson" without explicitly saying so. Something any company would want to avoid risking that thing showing next to their logo, unless it was absolutely necessary. As it is now, all I'm getting is a bland "huh, something legal must have happened here".
    - neon_electro 4y ago
      But it does give you enough to start doing more searching to understand the greater context, no?
    - 4y ago

dhosek 4y ago

Except where’s the money in that for Glassdoor? Glassdoor makes money from job listings and it’s in their interests to have positive reviews of companies as that’s going to get companies to pay for job listings because they’ll get more/better applicants if they have positive reviews.

tpoacher 4y ago
"Good"companies will continue having positive reviews. I'd argue that "bad" companies with predominantly positive reviews, were the negative reviews were all effectively sued away, presumably hurt Glassdoor's model more than they help it, so it's in their best interests to flag "bad" companies using other means. Also, "good" vs "bad" is an oversimplification. In reality the most likely outcome is that this badge will become another point for companies to game. But if the result of that it acts as a disincentive to suing employees that leave bad reviews, to me that's presumably a good outcome.
- dhosek 4y ago
  The thing is, that companies tend to irrationally chase money, damn the consequences. I used to work for eHarmony and despite consistent user complaints, they continued to run ads for paying users because they made money from that. They didn’t care about the reputation hit or the quality of the experience, just the revenue that the ads generated. I don’t think that eHarmony was particularly unique in that respect. Everything gets A/B tested to maximize revenue and that’s all anyone seems to care about.
wutbrodo 4y ago
The foundation of the site's usefulness is that the ratings have some signal. The value of job listings to a Glassdoor user is that they're from companies that Glassdoor rates as positive: an undifferentiated mass of ratings would be a completely useless site. The idea that they have no incentive to improve discriminativity (at the expense of company rating) proves way too much. Eg by that logic, Yelp would have no incentive to allow bad reviews. Hell, they could just be a listing site that puts "5 stars (10,000 reviews)" next to every listing.
- Gareth321 4y ago
  This is true but there is enormous pressure for these businesses to directionally encourage review scores to trend north. Higher reviewed locations and businesses always garner far higher engagement, and this directly impacts top line. As you point out, there is some ephemeral point at which users might begin distrusting the site en masse, but this inflection point is always easy to ignore as "a problem for another day far in the future." In the mean time, tiny but substantial changes occur all the time which nudge that score higher and higher. In my experience, that macro trust issue is rarely discussed, even though, at some undefined point in the future, it could pose a serious existential threat.
  - wutbrodo 4y ago
    Sure, I agree there's an incentive force pushing scores up. I was responding to a comment asking what possible countervailing force could push scores towards accuracy. The answer is pretty obvious, as the yelp reductio ad absurdum shows.

goatcode 4y ago

What about a badge for companies who unsuccessfully sued for the info? This would both guard against bad companies who are the genuinely litigious jerks we want to see hurt, and give pause to employees to frivolously libel themselves to attack a company without ground (something that would be clear were the company to successfully sue).

amadeuspagel 4y ago

They already do that.

game-of-throws 4y ago

They already do that. https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ZURU-Reviews-E2286297.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ZURU-Reviews-E2286297.htm > Glassdoor Alert: Employer Legal Action > This employer has taken legal action against reviewers and/or Glassdoor for the reviews that have appeared on this profile. Please exercise your best judgment when evaluating this employer. Learn more about Glassdoor Alerts.

m0th87 4y ago
That's interesting, I didn't know they did that. But it could be better: 1) This alert doesn't show up at all on mobile. 2) IMO this should either affect the overall score or be displayed in search results as well, which is not currently the case: https://www.glassdoor.com/Search/results.htm?keyword=ZURU https://www.glassdoor.com/Search/results.htm?keyword=ZURU
- harnomik 4y ago
  Imo its good enough, doing more visible thing or showing them even worse might make them walk on thin line for another lawsuit
- tpoacher 4y ago
  I didn't know this either. I stand corrected. Having said that, apart from what you also flagged, it's also a bit bland. Like "there's some legal stuff here, exercise caution". Instead the badge could have symbolic character, an emotive icon ... something. Something that strongly implies "Danger Will Robinson" without explicitly saying so. Something any company would want to avoid risking that thing showing next to their logo, unless it was absolutely necessary. As it is now, all I'm getting is a bland "huh, something legal must have happened here".
  - neon_electro 4y ago
    But it does give you enough to start doing more searching to understand the greater context, no?
  - 4y ago