You better believe that data brokers are both interested in buying and selling any sort of information around your employment/job/interview behaviors.
You don't give your time to an employer, you trade it, and in our modern society we have a gap in the market power of labor. Only way to get it is to reclaim it.
The risk here isn't that your snooping boss feels a bit uncomfortable.
The risk is that your snooping boss now thinks they'd better not send you on that expensive training course or assign you that big, important project where success could get you promoted. And that you'll never get a chance to address their fears, as they want to keep the snooping secret.
If you're working for a company that actively monitors this sort of thing, I don't think that management's response will be "let's make our employees; lives better."
I don't want people creeping any kind of "profile" of me. Ever.
Let them creep all over my profile: so far the only downside is that I have a pile of messages to sort through and say "no, thanks" to.
I learn so little from a persons bullet pointed resume that when I don't have those the interviews feel like I'm pretty much walking in completely ignorant to this persons interests and skills over and over again.
When I can go "oh neat, jbob99 worked on a foss project I used a few years ago!" it's nice.
But I also couldn't care less about being "creeped" on. Half of my career was built because I'm not an anonymous random software guy and companies know my work.
You're using a completely random throwaway nick to stay anonymous on here, while I've literally gotten jobs from hn and grown my career from it. Just like I did on IRC when I was 13. It's an interesting difference of use.
I don't mean one is better or worse at all and I totally get wanting to be anonymous.
About an hour later she called me again with an invitation for a job interview.
I don't really know what LinkedIn would change here...
Companies already tried to get rights to software created in your free time. Why even allow any attack surface here?
I've worked in management at companies with risk-based retention tools, and I've always seen them used as just that... retention tools. If anything, getting a high risk score as a high performer would usually be greatly in an employee's best interest, as it would be another justification to the higher-ups for a raise or better job assignment.
To be clear, I'm personally generally against these kind of panopticon data-slurp initiatives overall, I'm just surprised that the initial reaction is so strongly "my manager will use this to fire me" when I've only ever seen the opposite.
For me it is more like: "my manager sees that I'm looking for a job", and I really rather tell him that I will be leaving, as soon as I'm certain of a new job. It's none of his business before that point.
I remember reading a blog post by an employee that had gotten on the wrong side of google. When he came in their crosshairs, he said all his google machines forcibly updated themselves, and it became clear he was closely monitored.
I think the idea is that decent relationships have good boundaries, and proactively maintaining them is a worthwhile endeavor. This is especially important when there is a power relationship.
You better believe that if databrokers will buy information on whether you updated linked in that they'd also buy information on whether you gave the company a 1 star review.
Heck, you can even post your salary to glassdoor, so maybe your next employer would buy that information so they know the least they could offer you.
I've seen similar insights, derived from a person's social-graph through email exchanges, and it was decided to not be used by managers as it could be a liability.
The certificate is only valid for the following names: *.allegisgroup.com, allegisgroup.com
hiring solved
If you're good at your job and highly rated there should be obvious signs when they're trying to preemptively backfill you and at that point you can just communicate about how excited you are about your growth at the company or something to make them take a step back.
What I've learned is if you plan to change jobs assume everyone at your current job will find out the minute you have an interview booked. Only applies to big companies that pay 3rd parties to monitor their employees like that though.
Sometimes I wish we had germany's privacy laws for employees in the US.
I'm not convinced this is always an ultimately bad outcome if someone finds that.
I stand behind the decision that your name has to be placed on your profile and it cannot be reverted or nullified/anonymized from the platform. I am sorry that we disagree on this issue. [...] This is my final determination. I, as well as multiple members of my team, have reviewed your request several times, and I am considering this matter closed.investigating htis, it is clear - from employers.
They help companies keep a clean image, and also sell them job listings and advertising.
Scrubbing a company's image seems like it would be really lucrative.
It doesn't seem like reflecting reality makes money. I actually don't know if there are any review sites where having accurate reviews makes it profitable.
And it doesn't seem like employees are really a revenue stream, since they are not looking for a job.
fuck these companies
I found Reddit literally through organic word-of-mouth when Digg went under. Never saw an ad for it in my life.
Why does a Glassdoor alternative inherently need marketing?
Edit: figured it out, is confusing
1. Remove social connection if this is how you logged in 2. Log Out 3. Upon login, request a password reset 4. Reset and login 5. Request Deletion 6. Enter newly created password
It's not a lot, but it's weird it happened twice.
I’ll never make a post about a company even if I end up loving my time there, it’s just not going to happen. It looks fake and everyone knows that.
I very briefly worked at a toxic company that was aggressive about Glassdoor reviews. From what I heard, they couldn’t get them removed just by asking. They had to carefully examine the Glassdoor rules and find a reason that a review violated the rules.
They used the argument that reviews revealed confidential company information most of the time. It didn’t always work.
When I left, I used a throwaway email and coffee shop WiFi to leave a completely accurate, honest review. I carefully made sure to comply with every letter of Glassdoor’s rules.
My review is still up.
Review site starts out as community driven, connected people tend to get involved. This provides a filter for competent users.
Companies become aware of the site, start looking for ways to manipulate their score. Companies gain access to competent employee. It is bearable for a while.
The scores are manipulated to the point where the site no longer provides a good signal. Only out of the loop dummies still use it, and it becomes a negative filter.
From this point of view, community sites are more like a crop that gets harvested. It would be better for people if it didn’t happen, but the incentive for the company seems to be: be the first one to start consuming the site.
https://help.glassdoor.com/s/article/I-m-an-employer-What-ca...
> You can't pay us to take down reviews and we apply the same content moderation rules to our clients that we use for everyone else.
I certainly would take CEO approval rating and employee's reviews of overall job satisfaction into account when investing in a company. If you see very low reviews, you know the company is under-investing in employees and will likely need to increase spend on employee retention in the coming years, which is not reported in their current financial reports. Likewise, if you want to be cynical, a consistent 5 star company has some fat it could trim, which would increase it's investment value.
Perhaps we'll see a shareholder lawsuit following a mass employee resignation event which was arguably concealed by manipulating employee reviews.
* Review not tagged as English, or neither Full-Time or Part-Time, and those are the default filters
* Default sort is "Most Recent" and the Featured Review at the top of reviews is always a positive hand chosen review
* "Found 515 out of over 530 reviews" - I suspect they maybe take those 15 other reviews into account for the rating average, but you just can't read them right now so technically not taken down
* Negative review stays in Pending state while being screened by Glassdoor for over a month, but the time it's approved, it's buried by newer reviews
*
Interesting that of the 4 options to address bad employee reviews, none of those options is:
* Address the review by improving your company culture or policies
you're paying to "flag and report reviews for additional scrutiny"
their process then co-incidentally always seems to agree that those reported by paying customers are bogus
(same as paying for trustpilot)
I can verify this was true at least a few years ago. My friend's company had some bad (but totally honest) reviews. They requested them to be removed. Denied. A few days later they received an email from Glassdoor, talking about some sort of premium plan. They signed up. The bad reviews disappeared a few days later.
Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but all online aggregate reviews are a scam. There are countless ways to game them and with AI it's only going to get worse. At best, they're a weak signal of whether something is bad or good. And the bigger and more popular a review site, the worse the quality/reliability since the impact of manipulating reviews on a site with a huge audience is that much higher.
Still somewhat shady.
I can't remember the last time I looked at yelp, pre-covid maybe?
Should I eat here? Should I buy this product? Etc.
With restaurants it's tricky - sometimes you just need to take a chance. There is some old-school magic in that.
Be sure to select “show more sites” in the sites selection.
And for Glassdoor, bottom of this page:
There was no option to delete the account, but after clicking "Deactivate", it still said that my account was now deleted, so who knows.
Edit: And now I received 2 emails from them that my recent submissions (filling in that form?) violated community rules.
We need to throw away current cybercrime laws and start over with people who actually know what access means.
Forcing you to give them your real name before allowing you to use the site when logged in is incredibly scummy behavior I hope they are punished richly for.
You have the option "Delete my personal data"
Based on this story, I already knew to expect resistance, but jesus fuck that was far worse than I imagined.
There was no way to enter my old password, I was forced to now link my account with google which force shared my email & name. I was really nervous about even enabling this linking... I bit the bullet, happily it looks like it is somewhat easy to delete reviews and finally the account. Getting there though, was forced to divulge new information.
I don't think I could have a lower opinion of glassdoor now..
"If you are not willing to allow your name on your profile, you will again need to complete Data erasure once you are able to. However, we cannot remove this for you or make the changes you wish to see for your name."
I guess we know the appropriate action to take here. This is an absolutely BONE HEADED decision with regards to the operation of Glassdoor but I wonder what was the impetus for this? It looks like they're trying to convert their anonymous, Reddit-like, users to First Class Named Users for the purpose trying to compete with Linkedin to me.
I find the rationale here questionable and the execution plain nutty personally.
I get a prompt that I cannot dismiss about "Communities at Glassdoor" that I can't get past without putting in my employment information and name...
I can't even get too my account to delete it or emails support.
Love dark patterns...
They already know more about you than you’d ever want them to know. The fact that they hadn’t automatically matched your name before was either incompetence or simply being blocked by some frayed little law somewhere.
A little off topic, but his is a classic example of the problem where the laws just haven’t kept up with the technology.
Data collection and public government databases weren’t a problem when you had to go into some big office building somewhere to make a request, or maybe wait a couple weeks to sort it out through the mail.
Today, however, it’s easier than ever to gather this data at scales people can’t even imagine and this level of aggregation has eroded privacy to a degree that I don’t think is reversible anymore.
Anyway, here is a link to axcioms portal, although the cynic in me thinks that by requesting your data be deleted, all you’re doing is confirming your identity.
https://privacyportal.onetrust.com/webform/342ca6ac-4177-482...
I don't think it would be missed if it were to disappear tomorrow.
The real name policy had the opposite of the intended effect.
The #1 posture is that if we don't actually need the information for the application to run, we don't take it.
I won't go into detail about how we do what we do, but we don't keep any data, other than the email the user chooses to send us (which can be a DEA or proxied one). We also never export that email outside the server. No marketing aggregations, no trend analysis, etc. The email stays inside the deployed server.
This stance has not made me popular with my coworkers, but it has made our app quite popular with end-users.
So, what's left besides word of mouth?
[0] https://www.golem.de/news/urteil-kununu-muss-im-streitfall-k... (sorry, article in german)
weird. I just logged in, and I can't confirm that this is happening. all of my reviews are still properly anonymous. my account knows my name and my email address, of course, but it does not appear anywhere on the site where I don't expect it to.
> So all users will now receive a Fishbowl account once they login to Glassdoor
I'm not real sure what this means - as far as I can tell, 'bowls' are just the equivalent of fb groups, and while there are a few automatically added to your account initially, you can just leave them, and proceed with an empty list of 'bowls' you follow (or whatever the terminology is)
what am I missing here?
you just said it yourself -- consider that the data that is collected and sold is not necessarily on the pages you see
If you pay for the Extra Premium Data Insights Package (TM), Glassdoor will happily give your real name to your employer so they can either see the reviews you've written about past employers or the review you wrote about your current employer.
While this isn't a real product (yet), you can't tell me there is a non zero risk on this one.
You can enter any phone number and the full name of the user will be shown. Previously a user-selectable name, now it's coming from the government database of citizens.
More than likely, their CRM software automatically tied their user-facing account with their support ticket email. Especially if the only unique identifier is based on email address. It's not hard to remove the name and location from the CRM, but because it would become a manual process they just don't want to have to deal with it.
FWIW, this theory could be put to test by signing up an account with username.extrachars@gmail.com and then sending a support email from username.extrachars+1@gmail.com, not sure if they would reject the support ticket as "emails not matched".
I didn’t see a way to delete my data but I don’t think they had much in the first place.
I did use the “deactivate account” option.
1) Evernote
2) Triplebyte
3) Glassdoor
4) Let's not forget Quora
Now, with traditional companies, customers paid for products and services. This revenue allowed companies to pay employees. With the companies you listened, they gave away their product “for free”. That meant they had to get revenue some other way. Usually, this either involved ads, spying (so ads could be better targeted), pay for advanced features (Evernote), or sell services to some third party (Yelp and Glassdoor are two examples of this).
The problem with all of these new business models is companies often struggle to get enough revenue to survive. What is no called ‘enshitification” is basically companies searchimng for a way to survive when their users will not directly pay for the service they are offering. Is this good for users? No, but then again the users refuse to pay for the service.
My main point here is greed is not the only thing driving this process. In many cases, it is incentives and organizations trying to survive. If we want products which delight us, we are probably going to have to pay for them. If we want the cheapest thing possible, we are going to have to accept that it will get progressively worse as companies try to survive or keep their earning growing.
Note that the above earnings growth is probably a short term phenomenon. My guess is that companies who push earnings over quality eventually destroy their product and get a bad product and lower earnings. This process can take years or decades.
I'd expect from society in 2024, platforms like Facebook, Quora, GlassDoor to not only exist but to work well in an established way. It's just greed, pure and simple.
Nothing works, and everything is "shittified".
For example, I was really excited about Triplebyte. I thought finally we may have a tool to separate the wheat from the chaff and hoped it would make it's way even to Europe but then it got shittified with dark patterns.
The moment something becomes cool for a few months, it's already a cow to be milked endlessly and sold off to the highest bidder who will do the same and once it's gone they'll find someone to throw under the bus and move on to the next thing.
And that's not even counting personal information which they consistently misuse or sell. I am terrified to use majority of services online with personal name/surname and recently my very unique(identifies just me) name:surname combo got hijacked and was used in a fake review site. I just don't trust any company when they say "your private notes" are private. Yes, they are, if they earn trillions and become like apple. But the moment money is tighter they change the tune.
For example take a site like bumble. The frontend is junior level programming even HS. The backend is a simple DB. It can't cost billions of euros to run that.
I guess we all know now not to work for Glassdoor...
(Including the unpaid work that built their product in the first place.)
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How did they get that if you never sent them an email? And if you sent them an email, you gave them your name (whatever name is in the from line)
So he put in a support request, likely via his account; they sent him an e-mail about it, likely to his Glassdoor account's e-mail. He replied from that e-mail address with his full name in the From: field, as most people do, and now they could link his full name with his e-mail address, and update his profile.
Just deleted all my glassdoor contributions, then deactivated my glassdoor account.
null pointer exception
I’ve never understood what compels people to go to those sites, I suspect it’s because people feel that it at least gives them a voice.
The only site with a modicum of value is LinkedIn, and even then you can probably come up with a million reasons to not use it.
Damn this terribly company and their terrible, terrible dark patterns.
accounts.google.com/gsi/iframe
the google popups go away, but if you click on a "login with google" button it will still work.
(I use that filter with Firefox. It wouldn't surprise me if Chrome's bundled spyware somehow breaks this.)
I stopped using the site years ago once it became clear how corrupt they were about handling blatantly fake reviews, but this new name policy is a new low. Glassdoor can't be run out of business fast enough.
Glassdoor has been mostly useless for quite some time now anyway. HR departments offer little trinkets to employees who leave a good review to boost their score, negative reviews can be taken down. Minimal value all around basically.
Meanwhile, all the commenters in here are overreacting as usual, clearly not having read any of the terms of the website, like the part where it says your name is not disclosed until you explicitly elect to share it. But hey let's not let facts stop us from freaking out.
Life expectancy is up, people are richer, people are healthier, we have an amazing number of choices, we have amazing devices, etc.
I think your view is very distorted and you really should check your facts. Here are some questions you should ask yourself:
1) What do you mean when you say “enshitification”? How is the world getting worse? By what measure?
2) Are there any counter examples which could disprove your thesis?
3) How does the world today compare to the world at other times? Why is the world better today? What was better before?
Finally, you should consider individual things instead of the world. For example, you can look at your town, housing, food, culture, etc. Try going beyond good and bad and look at the benefits and drawbacks of various things. Consider whether you need a more nuanced view of the world.
1) What do you mean when you say “enshitification”? How is the world getting worse? By what measure?
More violence, more bigotry, paying more and getting less not because things cost more but because stock price, minimum wage not tracking inflation while political donations do, Donald-Fucking-Trump as POTUS, cyber attacks at a truly breathtaking pace, healthcare and the entire fucking tragedy that is in the US, women's rights, body autonomy, a stock market where market makers can legally and literally steal money from everyone else, CU literally legalizing outright bribes to congress, the rise of US Nazis, the entire fucking state of Texas, judges who ignore any and all legal standing and common sense that enact the stupidest most regressive horse shit, corporations dumping chemicals into the environment by the metric ton and "suffering" profits for it, and much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much more.
How about you step outside sometime and look at the world you're in?
2) Are there any counter examples which could disprove your thesis?
There are counters, but they are generally outliers in practically every instance. The simple fact they are outliers is the entire point I'm making.
3) How does the world today compare to the world at other times?
Tech could have been a great thing, but it's being used to abuse people at a greater scale, now, so win?
3a) Why is the world better today?
I would say something like better medical care and that care does exist, but only for the rich since most people cannot afford it. Why? Human greed.
3b) What was better before? Very little.
At no point did I say I pined for the 1860s. You're confusing me with Republicans.
I'm just tired of the human model of "shit on everyone I can, because fuck you, I'm getting mine". I'm fucking tired of people committing crimes for decades, and when caught saying, "I'm sorry". I'm tired of watching a country kill another countries CIVILIANS because they can.
Look at the world's choices.
A 15th carrier group or feeding kids in school?
Tax breaks for those that need them the least, while those with less money pay more or the reverse?
Food Stamps and the ever forward marching of less and less being spent on this very real need.
Social Security. A system you're forced to pay into, while congress plays fucking Lucy from the Peanuts with the benefits. Even going so far as to label them as "entitlements" in the shittiest possible definition of the word instead of entitlements, because its fucking owed.
How about the constant lies and horse shit propagated by media? Not truth, not facts, just bias with the sole goal of selling ad space and consequences be damned.
Maybe I just wanted more of humans than the current "fuck those in need" or "shit on minorities to make ourselves feel better", etc.
I'm truly glad you find the world a better place than I do.
YMMV and I sincerely hope it does, but let's put down the PollyAnna-tinted glasses. That's not the world humans built and pretending it is, is simply disingenuous or wholly ignorant.
Levels.fyi has been really nice.
I've always disliked sales. especially when working on projects where a sales is so smarmy, because they get a huge pay - and I, implementing it all - get nothing.
This happened all over. but here is a story of why I cant stand sales:
I was tech designer for LDAC (lucas presidio campus)
So I built out the RFP for network and we were doing selections up at Big Rock Ranch (the only reason this is important is just how beautiful the space is, so it feels really open nice energy, relaxing)
We are doing vendor selection presentations (the vendors come show us why their solution is best match to RFP reqs)
The vendors were Cisco, Foundry, Force-10 (extreme backed out)
Cisco comes in and they're going through their presentation and we are getting through it - I am reviewing and seeing that it was rather weak, more "marketing"-ish reply to the RFP instead of a detailed response on the specs...
I am sitting across from the main cisco sales guy. (this is at the time the largest 10G network in the world as this is just as the 10G switches were made) - so at the time, its a big deal - like ~$80 million in core gear)
The sales guy is leaning back as if... don't worry Toots. Jimmy's got this sniffs coke" https://i.imgur.com/gPdQiW5.jpg
--
So I am going over the RFP with his team, and he interjects:
"I just want to assure you that Cisco has a world class media team - and I will personally be sure they go through this in depth and really create the right solution"
PIN DROPs
(I am the youngest in the room - but its my RFP/design)
"Excuse me. This is the RFP review. Youre presenting your solution here today. So are you to tell me, that you have a "world class media team" and they have not informed your response to this RFP? That the entire point of this meeting" i said a few more things that made this guy die inside.
This guys balls shot into his throat.
Those are the types of people I think of when I think of levels.
(this was also the meeting where the CIO of Lucas Arts demanding a date for "when can you provide me power over fiber" ((his logic was the design was for both power and fiber to desktop - and he was trying to flex on showing 'how can we reduce infra wiring costs' -- it was a truly different world back then, mostly))
The best sales people I've seen are relationship builders. They understand their clients needs (Even if outside the core market) and try to find a solution for their needs. This looks like wining/dining on the outside but it's important.
I would suggestion anyone that wants to build something to try and sell first. Then you'll realize why they get paid and can be very valuable.
Second, you find some sketchy thing to do that will boost revenue and burn people's desire to use your product willingly into the ground.
Third, you leave on your golden parachute and the company acts surprised that this proved toxic and changes nothing.
Account is untouched since then.
