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A warning about Glassdoor

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Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#41

Post by devrand »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #23
speeder wrote: post #9

Today I was thinking about this kind of thing, for example Epic not allowing reviews at all, Valve "off topic" review hiding, metacritic changes to their system, or Netflix removing their review system... I concluded that review systems often are on the losing side when their income comes from what they are reviewing, reviews you can trust are those that are unrelated. For example a famous bastion of review is the Mi…

Consumer's Reports is the canonical example of a review site where the incentives line up correctly. The only way they make money is by selling memberships, so the consumer and the customer are the same people.

It's a bit of a different model though since Consumer Reports are often producing the reviews themselves (which may or may not include some survey data from users) and have first-hand experience to editorialize.

With things like Yelp [1] and particularly with Glassdoor this is a difficult model to emulate. You generally expect users themselves to contribute quality reviews which you then publish directly (plus maybe do a bit of curation to gather sentiment). It's difficult to both ask users to pay you for the service and also contribute the very content you charge them for.

I think the only way to make a user review site work are:

  (a) Be a non-profit and have a donation based model. Would people actually donate though? I'm not sure... but at least you don't seem like a greedy middleman.

  (b) Charge a membership fee, but grant free durations of membership for quality reviews. The downside here is that you're likely severely limiting the already small pool of people willing to leave a review.
[1]: The nearest comparison to CRYelp would be Zagat (well, pre-Google Zagat) and Michelin. However, they both only cover a narrow slice.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#42

Post by polote »

AlexandrB wrote: post #20

Every organization that accepts reviews from "users" about goods/services/employment provided by organizations eventually seems to run into a conflict of interest between their stated purpose and their finances. This is true of Yelp, BBB, and now, I guess, Glassdoor. This is why organizations like this are not a replacement for government enforced labor and consumer rights. Once an organization establishes a strong b…

It is not only reviews companies it is any company in which revenue is not aligned with the company's product objective, you find the same things with dating apps for example.

One way to solve that, is to stop offering free service and make users pay to access the service. If you have Glassdoor but it is not the companies who pay but the users then the issue is solved

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#43

Post by peacefulhat »

Dig1t wrote: post #32

This sounds like a market opportunity. If Glassdoor has pivoted to shilling for other corporations, someone should turn around and make a site that allows honest negative reviews of companies. Anyone interested?

totally missing the underlying problem here. this sort of thing is endemic. you will end up pivoting too if your site displaces glassdoor.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#44

Post by praptak »

There's nothing like a network of people you actually know to find out whether something is shitty.

Be it a company, a product, or a service - ask people you know personally. As a fallback, most online communities do have an "unrelated stuff" subforums or chats. Asking there lowers a chance of getting an answer from a marketer. I do sometimes get (and provide) good advice from a local gaming community.

The key is to ask a community that is unrelated to what you are considering to buy, i.e. skip those groups which an unscrupulous company would swarm with fake advice.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#46

Post by throwaway77384 »

I had always suspected that Glassdoor would eventually succumb to this. Every metric is a gamed metric, after all. Why would Glassdoor be immune to this? Companies have very little to lose from bullying employees into leaving fake positive reviews. Yet they have much to lose from true negative reviews.

I have checked every workplace on Glassdoor prior to applying, taking things with a pinch of salt / applying some awareness of what reviews seem fake (like the famous split between loads of 1-star and loads of 5-star reviews, which tells you something is fishy, like loads of products on Amazon have).

I think I'll dial up the awareness for future purposes...shame.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#47

Post by hhs »

alisonatwork wrote: post #15

My eyes opened to this after leaving my last company. They announced layoffs shortly after I quit and Glassdoor was inundated with a flood of long, detailed reviews expressing concern and unhappiness around all the issues that had caused me to leave voluntarily. The company's star rating dropped from 3.5ish to 3 and was trending down. Then, mysteriously, within the space of a week, almost all of the negative reviews…

If interested, there was a long piece that talked about Glassdoor [0], and commenters also raised points about the validity of the information on that platform [1].

[0]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/22/improving-work...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16232898

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#48

Post by b0rsuk »

Dig1t wrote: post #32

This sounds like a market opportunity. If Glassdoor has pivoted to shilling for other corporations, someone should turn around and make a site that allows honest negative reviews of companies. Anyone interested?

I think it's a systemic problem. A problem with incentives. Once the site gets big enough, inevitable pressure builds up in the top management to squeeze more money. Top of the hierarchy naturally attracts psychopathic and narcissistic types.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#49

Post by lowdest »

Dig1t wrote: post #32

This sounds like a market opportunity. If Glassdoor has pivoted to shilling for other corporations, someone should turn around and make a site that allows honest negative reviews of companies. Anyone interested?

I'm interested. I definitely think these kind of things are cyclic.

Glassdoor is now owned by the same parent company as Indeed, so if a company is a client of Indeed's recruiting services there's definitely a conflict of interest present.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#50

Post by Quekid5 »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #8

I worked at a mid sized company that was going through a very rough patch (right before the inevitable bankruptcy.) During this time I got a call from a Glassdoor rep who /explicitly/ offered to remove bad reviews in exchange for us moving to a high paid tier and putting up X amount of job listings. Glassdoor is just corporate Yelp.

> Glassdoor is just corporate Yelp.

I think this is the inevitable fate of all for-profit review sites which become popular.

The incentives just don't align.

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