41–50 of 163 posts
I once got a bad review because I had the audacity to quiz a candidate that said they'd done work with databases before about SQL. We're talking 'what's the difference between INNER and OUTER JOIN' level of questions. They were interviewing for a position where they'd be expected to write plenty of SQL. At that moment I completely discounted Glassdoor.
In my experience, the negative ones are usually absolutely reliable! When I have left a place happy, I usually forget to write a good review. When I leave a place that was a nightmare to work at, I don't forget to spill the beans to warn people away. It's not uncommon for a company to have some sort of management shuffle, a new (worse) culture is imposed, and people start to leave and write negative reviews. Then the…
I'd often remember to look up a company on Glassdoor after an iffy interview. It sent me running away from a couple places I was on the fence about.
And it's just as llaith says. I'd usually have to wade through the sockpuppet froth at the top to find the detailed reviews from developers 3-6 months ago describing the dysfunctional culture or 60+ hour workweeks.
For example: I came across a company with many glowing 5-star reviews, and one of those reviews was from a software developer who very matter-of-factly stated that it was not a place for people who take issue with working overtime on a regular basis, as if doing so was somehow a point of pride within that company's culture.
Yeah, no thanks.
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 a…
The negative reviews are pretty much the only interesting data points on the site. Take them with a grain of salt, sure. But you have to take the positives (especially large cohorts of positives over short time intervals) with the whole freaking salt shaker. The aggregate scores offer some directional guidance, but bear in mind that you are not looking at the total sample size of reviews; you are looking at the sample size after the company has culled and gamed what it can, which is often quite a lot of the original pool.
This is sort of like the directional reliability of eBay scores, now that there is a short decay on past reviews, and pretty much anyone with 10 minutes on their hands can get negative reviews expunged.
The Old School method was to ask around, find actual company insiders or former employees.
These days it's relatively easy to find these individuals via a quick sort on Linkedin. Simply, reach out and talk to these people direct.
From what I've seen, a lot of good or decent places tend to have a general positive rating, and the really bad ones are going to have multiple negative reviews.
Take individual reviews with a grain of salt, but as a group I think it's fairly accurate.
In my experience, the negative ones are usually absolutely reliable! When I have left a place happy, I usually forget to write a good review. When I leave a place that was a nightmare to work at, I don't forget to spill the beans to warn people away. It's not uncommon for a company to have some sort of management shuffle, a new (worse) culture is imposed, and people start to leave and write negative reviews. Then the…
One company (Series D, 300+ employees) that I worked at did this, sort of. It was less a hired firm, and more the CEO posting.
> and the BS positive ones like 'it's a challenging place to work, the people posting negative reviews are used to workplaces where they need less initiative blah blah blah.
Absolutely. There are a few key phrases that are huge red flags for me. Consistent "themes" showing up on Glassdoor along the lines of "people who can't stand the heat need to get out of the kitchen" or "people are used to the old ways and need to grow up" or "this is a fast paced work environment and not everybody can handle it" are red flags that the company is trying to influence their Glassdoor rankings. It's like the opposite of sandbagging... if they make enough of the same comments, then Glassdoor will pick up a theme that provides an "excuse" for the company's legitimate bad reviews.
Example of the first: when evaluating one employer there were many negative reviews, but mostly from a particular high-churn part of the company; the experience of easy-come easy-go customer-facing support may not tell you much about the experience of someone even one level removed from that position. The odd positive review was usually a higher-level tech, and even if they had a negative outlook on the company or its future, such reviews would still add "but don't listen to these guys--they just couldn't hack it."
Example of the second, same company: it's very easy to get hired by this company but training is limited and you could just as easily get fired for poor performance -- i.e., the company's hiring requirements were significantly less than their actual on-the-job skill requirements.
So I applied to this company based on mostly negative reviews. I was aiming for a higher position, and I was confident in my ability while having very little evidence of it: if their hiring requirements had actually matched the job I got, I would never have gotten it.