Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A warning about Glassdoor

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 342 posts

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#71

Post by Zigurd »

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…

This is one reason why nearly all social media (if you take reviews to be a form of that) sites should know their customers' identities and be able to use that information to screen for astroturfing. Even a small payment and requiring a method of payment would reduce astroturfing, and put review sites on a revenue model that would reduce the temptation to become extortion-as-a-service.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#72

Post by jdofaz »

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…

For whatever reason the disc rental side of Netflix still has user reviews and the 5 star system

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#73

Post by Retric »

everdrive wrote: post #51
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.

I think the core issue isn’t paid reviews etc. I think the problem is trying to come up with an arbitrary standard that this restaurant/GPU/shoe stands relative to all others. The simple truth is I want to know two different things, is it functional and would I like it. Star rankings and even short text reviews don’t really answer those questions.

A 1 star review because it was DOA says nothing about failure rates. People also have different preferences on things like cost, spicy food, or what looks tacky making a 3 vs 4 star review mostly meaningless.

This is why independent reviews like consumer reports are so useful. Look at a comparison between similar devices and consider tradeoffs. Or find a movie reviewer with similar tastes and you can generally just follow their suggestions.

Net result reviewers and rating systems just don’t have great incentives which devolves into companies just gaming the algorithm.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#74

Post by Zigurd »

jdofaz wrote: post #69
nerdponx wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's freemium now

Freemium is OK as long as you have to pay to review and perform any other action that would affect the rating of a review, etc.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#75

Post by ViViDboarder »

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…

Except that if you accept money for better ratings the quality of your suggestions goes down and people stop using your service.

This is why many such review sites explicitly do not allow you to pay to alter reviews. Their entire revenue engine would crumble.

Some will allow you to solicit reviews (Glassdoor), while others even prohibit that (Yelp, Apple App Store) due to it generally being some way of influencing scores.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#76

Post by woah »

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…

I can easily see a scenario where a lot of people are happy at a company and there are also people who are unhappy.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#77

Post by reaperducer »

Goronmon wrote: post #28
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.

Manufacturers either on purpose, or by accident, have made Consumer Reports reviews not super useful, at least from my experience. The ability to match a product reviewed by Consumer Reports to something I can actual purchase has become pretty difficult over the years. This would be less a problem if brands followed some kind of trend in overall reliability, but it seems like individual models vary widely in quality…

Different retailers get different model numbers, especially for white goods and other large purchases. The big retailers ask for this so that you can't use their fake "price match guarantees" because the model number is different between stores.

For example, the TV I bought at Fry's was the same as a model at Wal-Mart, but with one fewer HDMI input. Another TV I bought (again at Fry's) was the same as a model from another store, but with the built-in DVR disabled.

That leaves the burden on you to figure out which model was in Consumer Reports by matching up the features. It's annoying, but possible.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#78

Post by bryanlarsen »

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…

Excellent point. A glassdoor competitor cannot use the Consumer Reports model since you can't review the working conditions of a company without being inside it.

It shouldn't take much money to set up and run a review site so monetization should be a soluble problem. On a 6 figure budget you won't be as slick as competitors but if you're competing on trustworthiness...

The biggest problem is going to be combating gamification, that'll be very hard on a 6 figure budget.

And even your non-profit suggestion is a problem because what if a company donates $1M with strings attached?

I really think the only solution is that all money has to come from consumers. Job hunting is important enough that people would be willing to shell out for it, but only once you have a sufficient pool of reviews. So a real chicken and egg problem here.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#79

Post by jackcosgrove »

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.

The best defense against corruption is good pay for rank and file employees. Government can afford to pay employees decently despite opposition from the public and business because taxation is not voluntary. It's not an ideal situation obviously, but government is in the best position to buck financial incentives for corruption because it already has tax revenue to cover costs. Private companies don't have that luxury and are more liable to be corrupted.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#80

Post by nickbauman »

everdrive wrote: post #51
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.

We've come full circle. Word of mouth is all you can trust. The Internet as a great "disintermediation" medium is over.
Post reply on HN