A warning about Glassdoor • Hacker News Board

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#51

Post by everdrive » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

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…

Online review systems are dead. Surely some must still be valid, but the well is poisoned, and nothing can be trusted.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#52

Post by MaxBarraclough » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

Tomte wrote: post #18

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why earn pennies on the dollar from e.g. ad clicks when you can get huge lumpy (and possibly regular) payouts for much less work in much less time When things are working well, the answer is because honesty is a better policy in the long run . Impartiality, and a reputation for impartiality, is why Which? still exists, at the age of 63. [0][1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Which%3F [1] https://www.which.co.uk/a…

Comparably, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest has extremely high trust among the German public. Yes, every tech nerd is mocking their PC tests, because they are just like a vaccuum cleaner test: unbox, set-up, do mainstream stuff, like writing mails and Word documents. No discussion of GDDR5 vs. GDDR4 or such nonsense. It's a fantastic resource when you don't know what to look for (until today you neve…

> every tech nerd is mocking their PC tests, because they are just like a vaccuum cleaner test: unbox, set-up, do mainstream stuff, like writing mails and Word documents

That still sounds like a useful test, if only to punish bundling of useless bloatware.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#53

Post by freedomben » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

I used to use Glass door extensively to vet potential employers. After starting at one company however I realized the problem with this.

Regularly in meetings the head of HR (which they called "People") would encourage us to go leave 5 star reviews on Glass door to help with recruiting efforts. It was really spun as a way to help the company.

The problem though is that this company had some problems, things I would normally expect to see on glassdoor. Because of the way they encouraged it, glassdoor was flooded with 5 star reviews that made it impossible to find any negative ones.

I no longer even check Glass door.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#54

Post by Paul-ish » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

Do we have more evidence? I generally don't like to take the claims of a single anonymous poster at face value. I certainly appreciate the irony in this case.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#55

Post by andi999 » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

b0rsuk wrote: post #35

I've been pondering this idea. STEAL IT! Build a service that only hosts comments that were deleted from popular sites. Then for any given youtube channel or company review you'd be able to check what kinds of comments are deleted over there. Are there any legal issues to this?

Apart from copyright issues, probably if the comments were deletrf for hate speech etc, you might be in bigger trouble as well (singe technically your company posted it)

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#56

Post by curtis3389 » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #34

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…

Government regulation has its own obvious failure modes (various kinds of corruption, industry capture, or underfunding), so you can't say one is always better than the other. It all depends. There is no guaranteed solution. Hopefully some better Glassdoor competitor will come along.

There's middle-ground between for-profit corporations and government. There are social purpose corporations, benefit corporations, non-profits, cooperatives, etc.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#57

Post by nerdponx » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

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…

How does Angie's List perform in this regard? The user (i.e. review writer/reader) pays, not the business being reviewed. In theory, that forces the incentives to align correctly.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#58

Post by nerdponx » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

devrand wrote: post #41

bryanlarsen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What about Angie's List?

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#59

Post by ab_testing » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

The customers for online review sites (like Glassdoor, Yelp, BBB) are not the people that leave reviews. Their customers are the business that pay them to host the reviews and show featured reviews. Every business needs to tak care of their customers. That is what they are doing in this case.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#60

Post by john_moscow » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

The universal trick to understanding who's side somebody is on is to see who pays them.

Companies are made to make money and if you are not a paying customer, you're the merchandise. And since these days most consumers don't expect to pay for online services, it's no wonder these services are not serving the interests of consumers.

That said, based on the recent posts on HN and many other resources, more and more people are awaking to the fact that letting a bunch of monopolies decide who's voice should be heard is not a great idea. We might see a rise of some great decentralized alternatives in the near future.