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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?

#81

Post by sevensor »

giobox wrote: post #66
llaith wrote: post #34

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…

This is purely speculation, but I've often wondered if some of the inexplicable positive reviews at bad places I've worked are the product of the company HR team - I wouldn't be surprised at all if some companies try to game their glass door rating if it gets too bad. I've certainly worked some places where there were a bunch of positive reviews that looked suspiciously like the work of a single person.

This is absolutely, with no exaggeration or guesswork required, true. I had friends in HR at a former employer who were asked to do this. It was hardly a secret within the company.

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

#82

Post by throw-away-8 »

capkutay wrote: post #68
ransom1538 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In my experience, the negative ones are usually absolutely reliable!" Yes. In my experience: Only people extremely pissed off take the time to open their macbook and write a truthful rage at 2am. There are good reviews, but they just don't have the same soul crushing honest factor. Comically, people think they are being anonymous -- but you can't soul crush without knowing -- and people (engineers) quickly put thing…

That doesn't make any sense. I've come across colleagues who wrote scathing reviews...typically consistent with their work ethic. Hard to work with, quick to blame others..then it's no surprise when they go to Glassdoor and say 'the people here are morons!' when they get let go for performance reasons.

I saw truly malicious and dishonest interview reviews written out of spite after a failed interview with the intent to harm both the company and the interviewer.

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

#83

Post by ep103 »

blakesterz wrote: post #26

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 obv…

My company has two departments, a lot of amazon turk like manual labor for things that haven't been automated yet, and a dev team automating the crap out of everything. Dev is pretty good to work, most of the time. Manual labor department is hell on earth. Reading glassdoor, the reviews are 95% negative from the manual labor department, mixed with reviews from people we turned down during interviews (our interview process used to be horrible), and about two bad reviews from previous devs. One who was let go for basically being as asshole (bad hire, not really his fault, life just got hard and he was young), and one that had some legitimate complaints.

(shrug)

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

#84

Post by gdilla »

ransom1538 wrote: post #37
llaith wrote: post #34

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…

"In my experience, the negative ones are usually absolutely reliable!" Yes. In my experience: Only people extremely pissed off take the time to open their macbook and write a truthful rage at 2am. There are good reviews, but they just don't have the same soul crushing honest factor. Comically, people think they are being anonymous -- but you can't soul crush without knowing -- and people (engineers) quickly put thing…

With NLP and ML any company can know who wrote what review if they wanted to. They have all your emails and thus writing style is easily ascertained.

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

#85

Post by jghn »

s73ver_ wrote: post #74
jghn wrote: post #32

For my employer I'd say they are if you manage to link the reviews to the particular organizational unit as the culture and life of these can vary wildly. Unfortunately an outsider is unlikely to be able to do this.

I think that's also a red flag. Do I really want to essentially play roulette with hoping I find the one good team, or don't land on the one bad team?

It's a pretty multidisciplinary company. What I mean is if you're interested in life as a software engineer it's going to be a lot different than life for a bench biologist. There's no roulette involved, but it's not always obvious which is which from the reviews.

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

#86

Post by whalesalad »

Looking at Glassdoor for every company I have ever worked at: it's a mixed bag. There are truthful reviews and then there are the really unhappy individuals who can be overdramatic. Unhappy folks are usually not reviewing the company from an impartial position and the stories can be misleading.

For instance: looking at a recent review of my company from a few days ago, it saddens me to read something written so well that is so inaccurate. The content opines that people of color would not be welcome at our organization. I cannot tell you how completely FAR off that is from the truth. Diversity is something we value tremendously. That being said, we are a tech company in the agricultural space that is located in the midwest. The fact of the matter is: our pool of candidates is simply not that diverse to begin with.

Because we are a small startup focusing on survival, we hire the right person for the job, regardless of their background! Ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, etc... is never part of the decision! When this sentiment was shared with the organization, the reviewer interpreted it as "we do not care about diversity and people of color". Not making a specific point to hire diverse folks is NOT the same as not appreciating a diverse team!

Now this is almost a self fulfilling prophecy: a person of color might read that post and be completely turned off from even giving our company a shot. It hurts to imagine this scenario.

Long story short: the unhappy folks are usually the loudest and so I think you'll tend to get the 'jade colored' glasses.

Another anecdote: my fiancee was warned by a friend who previously worked at a company she was interviewing at. This person warned her that her manager was mean and grumpy and she'd be unhappy there. My fiancee has been there for months now without any problems whatsoever, and this manager tends to confide in her more than others on the team.

So I think you need to use every available resource you can to gather data points that can feed into your decision... but a lot of it needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

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

#87

Post by audleman »

gdilla wrote: post #84
ransom1538 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In my experience, the negative ones are usually absolutely reliable!" Yes. In my experience: Only people extremely pissed off take the time to open their macbook and write a truthful rage at 2am. There are good reviews, but they just don't have the same soul crushing honest factor. Comically, people think they are being anonymous -- but you can't soul crush without knowing -- and people (engineers) quickly put thing…

With NLP and ML any company can know who wrote what review if they wanted to. They have all your emails and thus writing style is easily ascertained.

> With NLP and ML any company can know who wrote what review if they wanted to

And the motivation to dedicate resources to this is...? You already fired the person, what does it matter if you find out who they are?

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

#88

Post by Waterluvian »

llaith wrote: post #34

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…

That made me think about the reviews in app stores these days. There will be a valid complaint and rating, followed by a response from the company that might be something like, "this has been addressed in the next version. we're sorry you had a bad experience." Something like that turns a 1 star rating into a positive signal to me.

Maybe Glassdoor reviews need the opportunity for a company representative to say, "this is valid criticism and we are addressing it."

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

#90

Post by demygale »

whalesalad wrote: post #86

Looking at Glassdoor for every company I have ever worked at: it's a mixed bag. There are truthful reviews and then there are the really unhappy individuals who can be overdramatic. Unhappy folks are usually not reviewing the company from an impartial position and the stories can be misleading. For instance: looking at a recent review of my company from a few days ago, it saddens me to read something written so well…

Your comments contain a lot of red flags for me. Appreciating diversity is not the same as implementing a diverse team. Many dysfunctional organizations hide behind hiring practices of color blind meritocracy.
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