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Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

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Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#61
Honestly, the only place where you can currently get genuine company reviews today is Blind, if you can stomach the trolling. The so-called 'kool-aid drinkers' or 'hr puppets' are called out (often humorously) all the time.

For Glassdoor, I am not surprised, this is not news. I interviewed at an awful company once which had stellar - I mean actually straight-A's 'nothing wrong here, we're the best, if God came down from heaven and founded a company, this would be it' reviews. Found out from an ex-employee after they've been acquired by the company I worked at that they were pestered daily to write positive reviews.

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#62

I've had negative reviews flat out removed by a company that was paying glass door for some sort of premium service. I extensively reviewed the rules and reworded my comments and they were removed yet again. My points were fully factually true and were not anything too untoward (pay raises were promised to members of a new team, they never materialized, most team members left). For what it's worth, Path Forward IT is…

> Flexibility works one way there

A former boss put it like this, "Sure we have flex time! You can arrive any time before 8 and leave any time after 6."

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#63

This article kind of misses the entire point; Glassdoor and the rest of these "professional review" sites sell reputation management services to the company. They use the negative reviews to push other high margin services to the companies. The only one who should care about Glassdoor being gamed is Glassdoor executives; anyone looking for a honest and balanced review of a company workplace on Glassdoor is already ge…

Their policy on negative reviews seems pretty decent. https://help.glassdoor.com/article/I-m-an-employer-What-can-...

Their Legal Action section sounds vaguely threatening.

> Also, if we feel strongly that your lawsuit is primarily intended to chill free speech, we may take extra steps to let the world know what you are up to.

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#64

Glassdoor was acquired by Indeed which was acquired by Japan's Recruit Co. Ltd. So keep that in mind.

I just searched "Glassdoor acquired" and the results say that Glassdoor was acquired by Recruit, not by Indeed. As a former Indeed employee, I hope they don't mix the Glassdoor review slime with Indeed.

https://www.geekwire.com/2018/glassdoor-acquired-1-2-billion...

I stated Indeed was acquired that holding company.

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#65

Yeah this happened at my old employer. They got one bad (warranted) review and told everyone to get on their phones (off the company network) to give good reviews. They'd push this initiative occasionally. I reported it to Glassdoor and they never did anything about it.

For Glassdoor, it's your word against that of whoever wrote the positive/fake review you're complaining about. It's a tie unless there are some signals they could use to infer that your complaint is more legit than that positive review.

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#66

Is there any service that actually is fair? When Ubisoft makes Forbe's "Best Places to Work" I don't feel like I can trust anything to make an objective measure other than organic word of mouth and simply experiencing it for myself.

It's the natural cycle of the internet. 1. Be a nobody company 2. Utilize generous user content to build up an important knowledge-base/economy 3. People begin to trust the information in the system and come to rely on it 4. Sell-out entirely and make a lot of money letting people buy influence 5. People abandon the site realizing it has no signal anymore (Digg, Reddit, Amazon, Glassdoor, experts-exchange, facebook,…

Disagree with Youtube, that place is crooked.

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#67
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the natural cycle of the internet. 1. Be a nobody company 2. Utilize generous user content to build up an important knowledge-base/economy 3. People begin to trust the information in the system and come to rely on it 4. Sell-out entirely and make a lot of money letting people buy influence 5. People abandon the site realizing it has no signal anymore (Digg, Reddit, Amazon, Glassdoor, experts-exchange, facebook,…

I feel that youtube is on the edge here; still lots of good information, but under heavy pressure.

And the noise is quickly overwhelming the signal with the recommendations. It's hard to see at a glance what's new with the channels I'm subscribed to and actually want to see.

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#68

Honestly, the only place where you can currently get genuine company reviews today is Blind, if you can stomach the trolling. The so-called 'kool-aid drinkers' or 'hr puppets' are called out (often humorously) all the time. For Glassdoor, I am not surprised, this is not news. I interviewed at an awful company once which had stellar - I mean actually straight-A's 'nothing wrong here, we're the best, if God came down f…

What is Blind? Went to blind.com and didn't seem to be what you were referring to.

Re: Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees

#69
I've been fortunate to not have to use GD for anything other than a quick salary lookup and some reviews about the interview process.

Even then, it's been mostly useless as it forces you to sign in after viewing a couple of pages, and the reviews are written mostly by people who didn't get the job.

As you can imagine, most don't put a lot of thought into writing their reviews, or even recalling what the interview was like.

If knowing about company culture is important to you, you're better off messaging someone on LinkedIn and ask for a quick coffee chat or something.

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