And then there are the fake reviews left by shady reputation management services. $previous_company (which was very small) had many negative reviews pop up in a short time frame, which at first was thought to be a disgruntled employee making multiple accounts, but then a reputation management service "came to the rescue" just at the right time and offered to get them removed. IIRC, Glassdoor did actually remove these eventually after being contacted, but whoever offered to get them removed was told to fuck off.
The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews
11–20 of 160 posts
Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews
#12I used to work at Desktop Metal which was (at the time) a pretty small startup here in Boston. When I left, I wrote a pretty negative review on Glassdoor about what I felt was a toxic work environment. At the time I submitted my review, there were probably about 10 reviews for the company. The very next day after my review was posted, about 7 positive reviews popped up. Obviously pretty suspicious behavior, but when…
I know a non-engineer who left DesktopMetal with a similar sentiment.
Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews
#13Seems like Blind should get in on this game, since the premise of the app is that it requires a company email address. Use an LLM to extract insights from the comments and give them to prospective job hunters for a small fee, or even just run ads.
Blind already has company reviews, they also have a recruiting service (hard to tell if it's a service or another job board) for companies too.
Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews
#14I used to work at Desktop Metal which was (at the time) a pretty small startup here in Boston. When I left, I wrote a pretty negative review on Glassdoor about what I felt was a toxic work environment. At the time I submitted my review, there were probably about 10 reviews for the company. The very next day after my review was posted, about 7 positive reviews popped up. Obviously pretty suspicious behavior, but when…
Yep, I noticed the exact same thing. Glassdoor is a complete scam, and it has been for as long as I've had a career. I do not even check anymore.
So is it basically true that there is no objective information out there anymore, because anyone running a successful site gets corrupted with money?
Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews
#15I'm old enough to remember when "the wisdom of the crowd" on collaborative web sites was going to solve all our problems, but every platform that could have delivered on such a promise has sold their soul to make an extra buck from people gaming their systems, and killed the golden goose in the process. The only reviews I trust are on Steam, and even then, I take them with a grain of salt.
Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews
#16Seems like Blind should get in on this game, since the premise of the app is that it requires a company email address. Use an LLM to extract insights from the comments and give them to prospective job hunters for a small fee, or even just run ads.
Blind already has company reviews, they also have a recruiting service (hard to tell if it's a service or another job board) for companies too.
Blind company reviews are way more trustworthy because they have a way to verify that you're a current employee with your email.
Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews
#17I used to work at Desktop Metal which was (at the time) a pretty small startup here in Boston. When I left, I wrote a pretty negative review on Glassdoor about what I felt was a toxic work environment. At the time I submitted my review, there were probably about 10 reviews for the company. The very next day after my review was posted, about 7 positive reviews popped up. Obviously pretty suspicious behavior, but when…
No one trusts these review companies actually. They simply exist to extort entities that get reviewed either to remove negative reviews or promote or even auto-post fake positive reviews.
Yelp is a classic example that did this for years.
Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, I noticed the exact same thing. Glassdoor is a complete scam, and it has been for as long as I've had a career. I do not even check anymore.
So is it basically true that there is no objective information out there anymore, because anyone running a successful site gets corrupted with money?
That's a big broad brush you just swiped with, but yeah, I kind of agree with it.
Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews
#19I used to work at Desktop Metal which was (at the time) a pretty small startup here in Boston. When I left, I wrote a pretty negative review on Glassdoor about what I felt was a toxic work environment. At the time I submitted my review, there were probably about 10 reviews for the company. The very next day after my review was posted, about 7 positive reviews popped up. Obviously pretty suspicious behavior, but when…
No one trusts these review companies actually. They simply exist to extort entities that get reviewed either to remove negative reviews or promote or even auto-post fake positive reviews. Yelp is a classic example that did this for years.
> No one trusts these review companies actually.
Most people do trust them, but shouldn't.
Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews
#20He mentions ChatGPT in passing but you could write a whole separate article about that. These bogus review companies are going to be able to pump out so many more reviews, of higher quality, with access to LLM-generated content. This problem is only going to get even worse.