I experienced this at a small cyber security business. They didn't pressure but they REALLY insisted that we review them on GlassDoor in order to get more people to apply for the jobs. In reality, their problem was they were paying ALL the staff compared to the market average.
Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees
121–130 of 500 posts
Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had this happen as well! Basically I think they use the removal option as their revenue model....until people figure out that their reviews are not accurate.
Next-level revenue model: users can pay to read removed reviews.
Somebody give this guy a raise.
Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees
#123I haven't bothered to leave reviews. The Dunning-Kruger effect would cause many to see it as the ramblings of a loser, anyway. Sucks that the average two year tenure looks like:
Year one: "You aren't doing everything you need to be doing for a promotion." Year two: "You did everything we asked. Unfortunately, things are little tight right now."
A little reason annual reviews are still a thing...stringing people along.
Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me guess, he laughed when he said it like he was super funny, too, right? Like when I used to ask one former boss which of the ten tasks he'd just assigned to me was highest priority he'd say, "yes!" and laugh like he'd just told the greatest joke and then run out of the room (seriously) before I could pin him down on an actual decision.
imo this is endemic in areas with poor job markets where there's really about 1 or 2 large employers. It's not just time to leave the company; you need to leave the whole area as well.
That's pretty much how it's like in most cities in Europe apart from the few large tech hubs. If you burn yourself with a couple of bad managers you might not have anywhere else to go without leaving your family behind and being accused of job hopping so employees just have to put up with it.
At my second to last job I put up with a manager that had severe anger management issues and would swear at employees and throw things at staff. I left over 2 years ago. Since then he's been promoted. The company had also won several "Best place to work" awards in the past.
Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees
#125I've had negative reviews flat out removed by a company that was paying glass door for some sort of premium service. I extensively reviewed the rules and reworded my comments and they were removed yet again. My points were fully factually true and were not anything too untoward (pay raises were promised to members of a new team, they never materialized, most team members left). For what it's worth, Path Forward IT is…
I've had this happen as well! Basically I think they use the removal option as their revenue model....until people figure out that their reviews are not accurate.
I just went over to glassdoor, curiously after signing up a dummy account they have a banner claiming:
"Your trust is our top concern, so companies can't alter or remove reviews."
But, I noticed from a past review that there is some kind of 'approval' required. So, yes it seems they can remove reviews by not approving. Sigh.
Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees
#126Don't forget that there are also folks writing bad reviews and often not just one. Sometimes they are toxic and got fired for a good reason. We know all these borderliners where everybody wonders how they passed the interviews.
So, there are always two sides of a story. And compared to an Amazon review it's much harder to tell if the product is wrong or its user.
People also tend to forget that they just help Glassdoor's sales. Every negative review they write is another reason for the reviewed company to subscribe for Glassdoor. It's not cheap but even early stage startups can easily afford this.
Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees
#127I made a Portuguese alternative to Glassdoor (IT only), and I confirm that is a daily challenge and time consuming find what reviews are honest or not. Fortunately many HR and marketeers use their company email to create fake IT reviews, and a cross check with linkedin handle many cases. Using blockchain is also useful to guarantee that reviews are not manipulated or deleted. I don't want to create spam here, but if…
I just read the crypto-reporter piece on Teamlyzer. My understanding is that you're just putting hashes of reviews on chain and not the full reviews (correct me if I misunderstand). I'm really glad you're doing this, it seems like a move in the right direction, but I have questions about the details. How do you intend to handle posts that need to be taken down for legal reasons? This could be libel or links to illegal content (copyrighted torrent files, child pornography). Do you intend to remove these from your stored review log, and replace them with a message explaining why? Do you prescreen reviews? Prescreening should work in most cases, but could fail when links point to content that changes, and libel laws are tricky (I assume hiring lawyers to review reviews would be prohibitively expensive). Prescreening also raises some of the same questions that redactions do, albeit without the retroactive element. If reviews do start getting redacted, leaving obvious unaccounted for hashes in your blockchain records, how are users supposed to know whether you're responding to legitimate legal problems or just playing the same game Glassdoor is? I'm really interested in your answers, because I like this direction but I don't see obvious answers to the problem of laws (besides hosting on the darknet).
Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees
#128This is not the late stage capitalist dystopia I was looking forward to.
Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees
#129Premise Data is the perfect example of this happening. Things got so bad that literally every engineer in SF (their headquarters) left. Lots of them left reviews, and lots of them were voted "helpful." Yet...
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Premise-Data-Corporation-R...
Look at the last ~10 reviews. None of them are marked helpful, yet only 5 star reviews are at the top and marked as "featured." They don't even have 10 engineers left to make these good reviews, they're all left by the sales guys.
Those bad reviews aren't even all of them. 5 or 6 were just outright deleted, and none of us can figure out why. They didn't violate any rules, didn't call out people by name, they simply shed a negative light on the company.
Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Run from any prospective employer who tells you, "we're like a family." They mean it an all the worst ways. Feuding, dysfunction, racist uncles, getting kicked out of the house.
I just sat through a company wide "Sensitivity Training" at my company (which I'm very much looking forward to leaving, and leaving a review for,) where "We're a family" was repeated ad nausium. I was a little shocked that this was coming from HR and Staff. It was almost a cultish call and response of bullshit. The reality is, we're not family. I don't have to be sensitive to my family. If I don't like them, I can sa…
> The contrarian jerk in me really wanted to yell an epithet during training and say something along the lines of "What, if we're a family, I'm the racist uncle that your dad keeps inviting to dinner despite his offensive tirades and uncomfortable leering at your sister.
LOL. But in general I very much agree. Equating a workplace with a family is gross, and a bit cult-ish. I do think the workplace (and the world) would be a better place if we all tried to love each other like we do our own family, but there's a whole lot of other things family brings that would make the workplace a nightmare, the least of which is widespread manipulation, power struggles, mooching, and non-stop drama.