Personally, I've worked at companies far worse than described in this letter, and if you think places like this don't exist you're young or foolish, or both. I've seen real emotional, and psychological violence at companies treated as everyday business. As an employee I was threatened for almost any reason whereas managers sexual/racial harassment, rape, yes rape, were dismissed as "he's just like that."
Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?
11–20 of 163 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?
#12Any anonymous system is open to abuse, or at the very least to distortion of the truth. People who didn't like a company who left can say whatever they like and are free to stretch the truth, and likewise companies can write their own exaggeratedly positive reviews. If you want to know what a company is like... go look for yourself?
Companies are generally pretty good at not letting people who aren't company cheerleaders do interviews.
I have two counter-examples to this from my own experience.
The first is when I was asked to do interviews for my replacement after I handed my notice in at one company. Everyone knew that I was leaving because I hated it, I didn't even have another job lined up. But I was the person on my team _least_ likely to give a bad impression of the company.
The second is when I was interviewing for a startup tech lead role. One of the engineers gave me a tech test, then we had a chat, and I asked, "What's the worst thing about the company?" She told me: "Basically the CEO has no idea how software development works, or agile development, and we have loads of arguments and it's really frustrating. We're trying to hire a tech lead to shield us from that." Needless to say, I didn't take the job...
Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?
#13I wouldn't trust one bad review. There are a lot of "haters" out there that like to unfairly review some companies.
I would trust the ensemble and the overall tone of reviews
Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?
#14[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?
#15Yeah this is a very tricky thing to do well as it will always be abused. Glassdoor has been struggling (they've raised a bunch of flat rounds) and there are so many cases i've seen of bad reviews, followed by HR getting wind of it and burying them in a ton of fake positive reviews. I run a site called TransparentCareer ( https://www.transparentcareer.com ) and we've tried to make all of this data quantitative and ver…
> followed by HR getting wind of it and burying them in a ton of fake positive reviews.
Or even worse, from https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Lab49-Reviews-E257101.ht...
> * Requiring new joiners to write a Glass Door review as part of their on-boarding process, presumably in an attempt to improve their rating.
Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?
#16>Perhaps unsurprisingly, a couple of extremely positive reviews by current employees have suddenly cropped up for that company as well. So positive they feel a bit like HR plants.
Most of the responses here are spot on but I want to address that one specific point. It's highly unlikely those new reviews are HR plants. Instead, the company is clearly aware of the negative review and the fact that it's getting publicity and has asked/encouraged their current staff to post their own reviews.
Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?
#17Negative reviews can be removed from Glassdoor if the company works hard enough. I know of a local employer who has tons of terrible feedback on Glassdoor and devoted someone full time for several weeks to comb through the reviews and get the most inflammatory removed.
I would take Glassdoor with a few grains of salt.
Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?
#18I worked for QSuper in Brisbane, Australia. All the negative reviews are accurate.
Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?
#19Yeah this is a very tricky thing to do well as it will always be abused. Glassdoor has been struggling (they've raised a bunch of flat rounds) and there are so many cases i've seen of bad reviews, followed by HR getting wind of it and burying them in a ton of fake positive reviews. I run a site called TransparentCareer ( https://www.transparentcareer.com ) and we've tried to make all of this data quantitative and ver…
> followed by HR getting wind of it and burying them in a ton of fake positive reviews. Or even worse, from https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Lab49-Reviews-E257101.ht... > * Requiring new joiners to write a Glass Door review as part of their on-boarding process, presumably in an attempt to improve their rating.
My last company was like this. Desperate to get people to write reviews their first week.
Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?
#20Negative reviews seem to be pretty reliable, you have to have a motivation to post them, even if the content may not be objectively accurate. I worked for a company with terrible management and every time an employee would leave they would leave a negative review. However, glassdoor is not completely objective-- companies can get negative reviews removed simply by complaining about them, and the quality control on th…
> Negative reviews seem to be pretty reliable, you have to have a motivation to post them, even if the content may not be objectively accurate.
I agree with this. I'm usually more suspect of the glowing, very positive reviews, particularly a bunch in a row within a certain time period. I've read at least once that I can remember where employers were essentially providing incentives for employees to go out and write positive things on Glassdoor, in an effort to clean up its image on that site.
I'd say look for themes. I'm interviewing with a company right now where the reviews are overwhelmingly positive, but I've turned the mental alarms off for now because it's totally backed up by all of my interaction with anyone associated with the place. Genuinely great culture in play. I only say this to balance out any message I might be giving to not trust any positive reviews.
You really are best off reading through and looking for themes, rather than relying on the aggregate ratings, or categorical statements of "good" and "bad" in any particular review. Culture is totally subjective, so look for a description of what that culture is, versus whether the reviewer thinks its good or bad.