A warning about Glassdoor

#1

Post by nosmokewhereiam » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 3:49 PM UTC

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#2

Post by lithos » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

So they’re sacrificing why they exist and the reason they have anyone visit their website. To become a PR company that is based on the memory of a community/purpose.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#3

Post by celdon25 » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

In 2016, I wrote a scathing, negative Glassdoor review about a company that truly was a developer sweatshop. It had only 1 review at the time. The review got close to 50 upvotes and was one of the top Google search results for the company name. A second negative review came up not too long after that. Within weeks, the company had at least 20 5 star reviews added to this. The entirety of the company was no more than 30 employees, leading me to conclude that someone was directing employees to write positive reviews.

This seemed to violate Glassdoor's rules on "incentivized reviews", but when contacting Glassdoor, the response I got was that they investigated the situation and determined that there was no violation of the rules. I stopped taking the site seriously after that.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#4

Post by sippingjippers » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

lithos wrote: post #2

So they’re sacrificing why they exist and the reason they have anyone visit their website. To become a PR company that is based on the memory of a community/purpose.

Classic bait-and-switch. This essentially happens with every review site after they build up enough brand awareness to pull it off. I guess it happens because from the perspective of the company it makes total sense to try. Why earn pennies on the dollar from e.g. ad clicks when you can get huge lumpy (and possibly regular) payouts for much less work in much less time

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#5

Post by j4nt4b » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

lithos wrote: post #2

So they’re sacrificing why they exist and the reason they have anyone visit their website. To become a PR company that is based on the memory of a community/purpose.

> To become a PR company that is based on the memory of a community/purpose.

This sounds like the angst-beat poetry of our current future.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#6

Post by astuyvenberg » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

It's the exact same play as Yelp - once they grew out of the community review forum stage, they turn to extortion to make it profitable.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#7

Post by stefanmichael » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

lithos wrote: post #2

So they’re sacrificing why they exist and the reason they have anyone visit their website. To become a PR company that is based on the memory of a community/purpose.

It seems like a desperation move, potentially a last resort?

The premise of "let's get rid of the only reason anyone would ever visit our site for short term revenue" is just not where you would expect a company to do in normal circumstances.

I know that Glassdoor recently laid off 300 employees[0]. So my read is that this is a dying breath of sorts.

[0]: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/glassdoor-lays-off-300...

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#8

Post by shiftpgdn » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

I worked at a mid sized company that was going through a very rough patch (right before the inevitable bankruptcy.) During this time I got a call from a Glassdoor rep who /explicitly/ offered to remove bad reviews in exchange for us moving to a high paid tier and putting up X amount of job listings.

Glassdoor is just corporate Yelp.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#9

Post by speeder » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:39 PM UTC

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 Michelin Guide, although controversies happened to it, and often restaurant owners get mad at it for not "supporting the restaurant industry" when the guide doesn't do what they want, I realized the probable reason the guide works, is because it wants to sell car tyres, not food.

Michelin Guide purpose is make people drive to places and use their tyres (there was even a controversy caused by confused restauranteurs that thought it was "unfair" restaurant you can't drive to, aren't in the guide), thus the only bad incentive they might have is to choose restaurants that might cause bigger tyre usage than normal.

But Netflix for example can't piss off the movie companies or they risk losing their catalog. Metacritic depends on ads, can't let users piss off the advertisers, and so on.

Re: A warning about Glassdoor

#10

Post by seibelj » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

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 you re-evaluate your life's purpose - you only get so many years and using them to help Glassdoor seems really terrible. What an ethically bankrupt piece of worthless trash that place is.