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Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

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Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#451

Post by mushufasa »

jacques_chester wrote: post #436
mushufasa wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct that companies' direct incentive is to optimize their ratings. Don't you think that's correlated with improving actual employee experiences, though? I agree they're not the same thing. But if they spend HR effort to improve the ratings, that means they're looking at the feedback, and presumably they will try to address some or part of it where possible. Essentially, the fact that people optimize metri…

> But if they spend HR effort to improve the ratings, that means they're looking at the feedback, and presumably they will try to address some or part of it where possible. No. In any control loop you have two ways of reducing error. One is the arduous business of actuation. Doing things. Soul-searching. Working hard. Investigating. Listening. Making it better. The other is to lie to the sensor. This is always easier…

Don't both ways happen? Surely you don't see the world as completely black-and-white?

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#452

Post by scarface74 »

jecxjo wrote: post #384
jorblumesea wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a really backwards view to see your company as the "only game in town". Physically, it might be true, but you're competing with remote only companies, and regional competing cities. You're also indirectly competing with hubs such as California or Seattle where jobs are plentiful. This is a really interesting comment, thanks for sharing.

Remote doesn't always work for every sector of development. I had a huge cubical full of industrial hardware, had a lab with even more hardware, a plant for assembling and testing hardware, etc. We had a "no remote" policy because it just wasn't possible to get things done without actually being in the office. And after spending years doing embedded systems, industrial control, communications...I was pretty much the…

After a company I was working for writing Windows Mobile apps for ruggedized devices went out of business, I got a contract with one of their former customers located in another state.

I had close to $30K of devices and ancillary equipment in my home office.

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#453

Post by scarface74 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #156
chaostheory wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm in an area with lots of employers, but 20 years ago I did some job-hopping (four jobs in four years between 95 and 99), and that STILL comes up as a negative in job interviews. If you bail on too many bad managers, you can find yourself locked out anyway.

Why do you even have that on your resume? I’ve been working as a professional developer for 20+ years, but no one cares about my first job writing C code running on DEC VAX and Stratus mainframes or my second job doing a combination of VB6 and C++ DCOM and MFC.

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#454

Post by mushufasa »

kansface wrote: post #430
mushufasa wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is the dynamic. Is it inevitable? Are there solutions, or at least mitigations? This is also a problem (huge problem) with credit ratings and investment rating agencies.

> Is it inevitable? How would you change the incentives? The incentive for a restaurant to leave a fake review is much higher than the incentive for a customer to leave any review. For crowd sourced reviews, introducing a trust model opens the door to account selling/paid reviews. You can't really punish the bad actors or you open yourself to a different kind of abuse. You really need a PageRank equivalent for review…

I'm not affiliated with glassdoor, but I would hope that they already do some data analysis to weed out biased reviewers.

You're right that reviewers have less incentive to participate than the targets of the review, employers.

Is there a different business model where a site like Glassdoor could align their incentives with the free-user employees?

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#455

Post by willart4food »

fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #32

I'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…

The YELP business model!

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#456

Post by scarface74 »

philbarr wrote: post #184
allenu wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, any more details? That must've been cathartic.

It's great to be able to do this but you need to have back ups first. So find a new job whilst "jokingly" suggesting to your boss you need a raise. Then you actually ask for a meeting and a raise and when he/she laughs you off as you knew they would you resign on the spot and go to your new job you had lined up. With the hope that he/she will see their mistake and not treat the remaining employees that way. The probl…

I would have left on the spot too. It’s never taken me more than three weeks after I started looking to find another job. My record is walking off a contract at lunch Monday, calling a recruiter and getting an offer from what was then a Fortune 10 (non tech) company Thursday.

Admittedly, it may take me longer to find a full time salaried job making what I make now, but I’m sure I could find a W2 contract job that pays sufficiently in a month by calling a few local recruiters that I’ve worked with.

I’m no special snowflake. Jobs are plentiful for software developers who have kept their skills in line with the local market in most major metropolitan areas.

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#458

Post by FilterSweep »

siruncledrew wrote: post #101
fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #32

I'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…

Glassdoor is basically workplace Yelp. It started out useful for job hunting, now it's also a gamed system with pay-for-PR.

It’s far worse though.

You’re going to eat another meal in 6-24 hours. Glassdoor is affecting people’s lives and livelihoods.

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#459

Post by jacques_chester »

mushufasa wrote: post #451
jacques_chester wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if they spend HR effort to improve the ratings, that means they're looking at the feedback, and presumably they will try to address some or part of it where possible. No. In any control loop you have two ways of reducing error. One is the arduous business of actuation. Doing things. Soul-searching. Working hard. Investigating. Listening. Making it better. The other is to lie to the sensor. This is always easier…

Don't both ways happen? Surely you don't see the world as completely black-and-white?

I said it's easier to deceive the sensor.

The way you avoid this problem is to avoid creating the incentive to subvert the loop.

I am fairly confident that every metric, target, index, goal, KPI or score that has ever been connected to money, power or fame has been subverted. As far as that goes, yes, I see the world as black-and-white.

Glassdoor scores are tied to ability to hire. It's easier to game the scores than to not suck, especially since "horrible place to work" is going to correlate strongly with "dubious ethics".

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#460

Post by FilterSweep »

aerovistae wrote: post #16

You don't say! I used to work as an engineer at a truly awful little company, the worst I've been at, and when I left I gave them a scathing review. Not long after, several new reviews popped up. Here are some choice excerpts, get a load of this: > Pros: > For anyone reading these reviews, take it from someone who has been at this company for over 10 years, some people just like to use these review sites as a soundin…

A previous employer would do the same thing. They would astroturf reviews whenever they received a bad one.
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