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The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

careerfair.io

51–60 of 160 posts

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#51

Glassdoor is a hellscape for employees and employers. Current and former employees can write literally anything they want, true or false, and it gets published. Employers have no cause for recourse except apparently paying people to write fake reviews. So a brand can be damaged by fake reviews or lies in reviews, and have to go through backchannels to fix it. It's basically a place for legal libel and puts everyone i…

This is surprisingly pro-corporate take. This same argument could be made for literally anywhere that people provide feedback on anything. In such cases I tend to favor the interests of the least powerful rather than the interests of the most powerful.

That certainly is one way to try and pick a side, but in practice it's no better than flipping a coin.

Anytime you hear one side of the story, we'll you're hearing one side of the story. Most situations are not black and white, most have context and nuance.

I've seen employees leave because the company behaved badly. I've seen employess leave when they behaved badly. I've seen situations where both sides had legitimate complaints.

Obviously no person posts something like "they fired me cause I'm a dick". But plenty of people do get fired for perfectly valid reasons. Companies will very seldom talk about firings publically, it's too dangerous to do so. So basically just be aware that people who have been fired are, well, unreliable witnesses to how that came about.

Of course there are plenty of bad companies. It eould be good yo know who they are. Im not sure employee reviews from ex-workers is meaningful. I -know- reviews from current employees is not meaningful. Which makes the value of review sites questionable.

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#52
post #36
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A blockchain based solution can be developed for customer reviews. If your cryptographically signed and verifiable review went and sat on the disk of every computer on the planet, there will be no options to manipulate it.

But those "seven positive" reviews will still show up! When I was calculating the NPS scores at a former job, IIRC you need seven or eight 100% scores to offset one low score. Interesting that's what happened to the Desktop Metal poster.

But (presumably) those seven posters would be motivated by big tech money and thus be identified by some algorithm or the other in that blockchain? And/or you being a genuine reviewer would have a more organic activity across the blockchain with other products too compared to theirs and that will add to the weight?

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#53
post #30

I 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…

A blockchain based solution can be developed for customer reviews. If your cryptographically signed and verifiable review went and sat on the disk of every computer on the planet, there will be no options to manipulate it.

Yeah except there would still be a mechanism for revoking or moderating bad reviews because people would use the platform to review bomb any company they took issue with. The review might still be on the chain's history, but the moderation tool would still be created with good intentions, with a new transaction on a later block that basically revokes the "validity" of the bad review. Similar mechanisms can be seen in NFTs, where you can update the NFTs metadata.

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#54
post #38

I once worked at a company that started getting a slew of bad Glassdoor reviews. The reviews were real; the company leadership had been making some bad choices and the reviews reflected it. So they sent out messages in the company chatroom, asking people to leave positive reviews.

I think we need something like a canary signal to mark reviews, posts, etc that you are forced to make, not expressing your opinion. Something innocent-looking, like a double question mark, or a double exclamation.

One of my coworkers left a nasty review, and signed off with "They asked us to write reviews about the company, so here's mine"

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#55
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you foresee a scenario where a review site could legitimately exist without turning to synthetic reviews, dark UI patterns, or outright brand extortion?

Only if it was driven by a non-profit org I guess

Perhaps a site that included both reviews of companies and (paid) job postings from reviewed companies could survive.

Of course misbehaving companies would probably stop spending there, but that might not be a bad thing.

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#56
post #52
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But those "seven positive" reviews will still show up! When I was calculating the NPS scores at a former job, IIRC you need seven or eight 100% scores to offset one low score. Interesting that's what happened to the Desktop Metal poster.

But (presumably) those seven posters would be motivated by big tech money and thus be identified by some algorithm or the other in that blockchain? And/or you being a genuine reviewer would have a more organic activity across the blockchain with other products too compared to theirs and that will add to the weight?

There's just very little organic activity on a site like Glassdoor. You changing jobs, and thus naturally having any kind of inclination to post something may be few and far between, and you might not even think of uploading a review unless you're disgruntled (read: motivated).

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#57
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fairly solvable with an actual identity/employment verification system, and that's not exactly an exotic idea.

For something like Glassdoor, the problem is you risk being fired if you identify yourself and the info leaks or is sold. Can you trust them not to sell it?

> info leaks

Exactly. Do you really want to trust your ability to keep paying your bills to Glassdoor's infosec? In return for nothing but the satisfaction of speaking your mind to an audience of non-responsive strangers?

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#58
post #33
post #5

Earlier 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.

Only way to get something useful is to read between the lines. If there are full text reviews. But that takes time. Glassdoor, tripadvisor, anything.

It’s only a matter of time before generative AI makes even that type of analysis impossible

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#59

I 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.

Clearly the solution is a review company for review companies.

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#60

I once worked at a company that started getting a slew of bad Glassdoor reviews. The reviews were real; the company leadership had been making some bad choices and the reviews reflected it. So they sent out messages in the company chatroom, asking people to leave positive reviews.

Same situation except mine offered a day of pay upon spinning positivity. After this personal whoring, I was sure to leave a complementary negative review from a shill account.

You know, the account you wrote the positive review with was the shill account.
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