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A warning about Glassdoor

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Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#171

Post by kurthr »

lhorie wrote: post #140
wslh wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not clear how you will apply a scientific method to a site that can hide, convince, bribe, censor, etc users so the information you gather is incomplete to have a good analysis. More when people have a short focus span and a scientific method is complex.

This is just my personal interpretation, but the way I approach is I create a trustworthiness score for the set of reviews. For example, too many 5 stars without comments and without low stars might earn a low trustworthiness score because the distribution looks unnatural compared to the distribution in similar competitors. Or a set of 6 reviews, no matter their distribution will also receive a low trustworthiness sc…

The problem I see with that approach is that modern transformer based NLP like GPT3 make generating this sort of "review" text almost free. The value you place in those reviews is the perceived effort put into them. When that effort goes to zero... it's just more automated spam reviews with a "believable" statistical spectrum.

Honestly, I don't see how to trust reviews if the reviewers have no skin in the game (either their reputation or money). If identities and reputations can be faked/generated at low cost, then we're back to just money. Honestly, one theory of advertising (like McD and bigC) is that they throw money at pretty ads to convince you that lots of people have given them money so they must be good... it's pay to play, but it's not completely wrong. Limiting reviews to those who have actually bought the item also helps, if you time limit/delay it and weight by the cost of shipping/stocking.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#172

Post by acruns »

This methodology also applies to the 'magic quadrant' about 10 years ago I was working for a small company that was making some great software addons for a MSFT product. They were contacted by the company I am implying and were told they would like to include them in the upper right quadrant but since they were not a "member" they couldn't, if they became a member then the company would be included in the next release.

I heard this second hand from my CEO at the time.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#173

Post by tjungblut »

sorokod wrote: post #145
fugazithehaxoar wrote: post #11

Luckily, it's pretty easy to spot fake reviews on Glassdoor. Unfortunately though, it kind of ruins the experience for most people. The two big mobile app stores have been flooded with spam reviews for over 5 years now unchecked. For those that know how to spot fake reviews, it's easy to tell which apps are not legit. For most consumers though, they just believe what they see.

>Luckily, it's pretty easy to spot fake reviews on Glassdoor Care to automate your insight and create a meta Glassdoor?

Then you would just stare at an almost empty list of reviews. I don't think you'll get around storing actual negative reviews on top of that.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#174

Post by vmception »

For more realistic compensation info use

h1bdata.info

and

levels.fyi

I practically never use Glassdoor, but if you are looking for reviews that was one way to do it.

Its just when you are bouncing between startups and 12 big tech companies, you already know what to expect.

So, this is very tech industry specific post, but we all know that Amazon is most likely going to be a problem, and you won't be able to get a review on your manager/team. Its very easy to narrow down.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#176

Post by jaxrtech »

Honestly, this reminds me of the case of the rating agencies during the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis[1] (with rating agencies rating CDOs of "junk" loans as now magically AAA)[2]. Practically speaking, these rating agencies were incentivized by the firms paying them for the ratings to rate -- and now a la Yelp and Glassdoor can be added to that list...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agencies_and_the...

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#177

Post by mlrtime »

kaffee wrote: post #65
DoctorOW wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yelp is adamant that they don't affect reviews based on payment. That said the order and selection of reviews on preview pages in terms of positive vs. negative are based on how much a business pays.

Thanks. This makes some sense. Honestly, I'm sympathetic to Yelp. The money has to come from somewhere. And there's at least superficial evidence that you cannot operate a honest review platform at a reasonable profit rate (e.g., glassdoor, consumer reports).

There are so many ways to make a profit without tampering with reviews.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#178

Post by BurningFrog »

fogetti wrote: post #127
seibelj wrote: post #10

Glassdoor is extortion-as-a-service. They routinely called up two previous places I worked and offered to remove bad reviews if we paid them, which we declined. One of the bad reviews eventually became prominently featured. To be honest it wouldn't surprise me if they wrote the review themselves, that's how scummy I feel this company is. Totally garbage business model, and if anyone reading this works there I hope yo…

It seems to me that the bad reviews were published on the site regardless of their offer. So I can't see how is this extortion. Extortion would be along the lines of "we publish some made up bad reviews unless you pay".

Extortion is a weird crime if you think about it.

You ask people for money to not do something that's in itself legal.

It's a topic ripe for tortured moral philosophy :)

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#179

Post by croh »

Can company owner see who gave bad review under 'anonymous employee' tag ? I mean if someone can steal instagram handle with the help of employee, how difficult it is to find 'anonymous employee' ?

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#180

Post by darth_avocado »

It's a well known fact that Glassdoor is a PR machine for companies. The wages reflected on Glassdoor are almost always lower than what the company usually offers, so as to artificially deflate the wages. Anyone without enough research gets sucked into the company with lower than average wages. There's a reason why levels.fyi and blind took off.
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