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Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?

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Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?

#21

Post by rco8786 »

Peroni wrote: post #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 publicit…

This is the way I’ve seen it happen as well. I even had a past employer reach out to me and straight up say that someone had left a nasty review and asked if I would mind sharing my opinion of my time at th company on there. I did so happily, and he obviously reached out knowing that I left on good terms and would likely leave a positive review, but it was far from an HR plant.

Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?

#22

Post by Mitchhhs »

1_2__4 wrote: post #19
nailer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Interesting, sounds like it would be useful to understand how long the person has been at the company when the review was written.

Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?

#24

Post by vanadium »

nailer wrote: post #15
Mitchhhs wrote: post #5

Yeah 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.

The company I left a few years ago did this in order to obfuscate the rampant issues that were being unaddressed.

The recipe was to hire in a bunch of college grads, and while they're still nervous about their first corporate gig, have the VP of Human Resources email a demand that they post a glowing review.

And, when the rating inevitably continues to be hammered by negatives, instead of addressing the patterns within the negative reviews, HR would send that review demand to the overseas team(s) where the jobs were even more tenuously-held.

While HR made glaringly obvious positive reviews, themselves, of course. Pretty insidious.

Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?

#25

Post by xenophon »

rothbardrand wrote: post #7

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 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…

There are all kinds of motivations to post a negative review, and not all of those motivations map "reliably" to accuracy. Leaving a job can be traumatic for employees for reasons that have nothing to do with the company's culture or behavior--a disgruntled employee fired for cause has a strong motivation to leave a bad review, but that doesn't mean it is reliable.

Glassdoor has the same pros and cons of any review aggregator. It is susceptible to gaming (perhaps uniquely so, like Yelp, because the companies being reviewed are also Glassdoor's advertisers). But it provides a directionally accurate view of a corporate environment given a large enough sample size of reviews--and as with any review, more credence should be given to examples that are clear, detailed and well-written.

Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?

#26

Post by blakesterz »

I've looked at a few companies only, and from what I've seen, in my limited experience, is that the only people motivated to leave reviews were those who were fired/layedoff/let go. So we're left with 100% negative reviews. These are not tech companies, so no one working there has any idea that glassdoor even exists. The place I work now has TERRIBLE reviews, and it's pretty obvious who left the reviews, and it's obvious to me why they left those reviews, but it does not reflect the reality of working here at all.

I guess I should go leave a positive review, but the motivation of an angry/hurt person is WAY higher than those of us who are happy.

Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?

#28

Post by basseq »

Glassdoor is an interesting data point, but not "reliable" as a standalone rating system for multiple reasons:

1. It tends to attract complaints and unhappy (ex) employees more than anything else. The ratings tend to skew low as a result. Look for common themes, and take them with a grain of salt.

2. Complaints can be specific to a department or role. Complaints about Amazon, e.g., may be related to working in one of their distribution centers, not in HQ/IT.

3. Current employees don't tend to leave reviews. Unlike an annual employee survey—which would be a better indicator if companies chose to publish them—Glassdoor tends to ignore current employees.

Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?

#29

Post by scalesolved »

basseq wrote: post #28

Glassdoor is an interesting data point, but not "reliable" as a standalone rating system for multiple reasons: 1. It tends to attract complaints and unhappy (ex) employees more than anything else. The ratings tend to skew low as a result. Look for common themes, and take them with a grain of salt. 2. Complaints can be specific to a department or role. Complaints about Amazon, e.g., may be related to working in one of…

A counter to your point #1, a few companies ago where I worked we were asked on mass to provide positive reviews on Glassdoor to attract new candidates.

I think overall it's good for a quick check on morale if there are >20 reviews. The salary data is worthless, high earners within companies do not advertise what they earn.

Re: Ask HN: Are Glassdoor reviews a reliable indicator of a company's culture?

#30

Post by shivaodin »

oceanghost wrote: post #11

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."

This is painfully accurate. With the recent barrage of sexual molestation cases against employees at Uber, Akamai and the ilk, it is all the more important to develop a transparent platform which rates companies.
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