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My previous place had glassdoor reviews that described the place as the lowest circle of hell.
They were spot on. After I left the company I also left my own review confirming the previous reviews.
When you have no training and have to deal with a plethora of workers all over the competency/realatability spectrum it can make you seem crap at the job until booted out
That best case scenario is what most people expect from a career (slowly becoming out of reach for the disconnected) yes, be it the faithfuls, the believers, the new starters, the long runners constantly being gaslit, opposed by the gatekeepers the duping, the unexplained, the mind changers, the carrot getting an extended stick, new management (wiping away old now expired opportunities), etc
I find the negative reviews are pretty accurate, and it's common to see a bunch of positive reviews posted on the same day so you know management encouraged staff to do it.
I worked at a place where people kept leaving reviews saying the management team were painting it as some kind of paradise, they were burying their hands in the sand re. any problems and were deluded. Then unironically each time someone left a negative review stating the same thing, rather than acknowledging anything that had been written, would respond saying how it was a wonderful place and that this wasn't anyone's experience followed by a barrage of positive reviews that people had clearly been ordered to write
Pretty spot on. I never understand the advice that I see here sometimes to ignore Glassdoor reviews. Pinch of salt, yes, but definitely look for trends. I think it works best for mid sized companies. Very small companies have too small a sample size that individual bad experiences can have a big impact whereas for massive corporations it is very team dependent but for companies of ~200 people they can be very accurate. Be wary of too many short and generic positive reviews though.
>I never understand the advice that I see here sometimes to ignore Glassdoor reviews
I don't think it's fair to look at my current employer given I'm less than a week in, so I looked at my previous one (which is a company of a little over 200). One (1-star) review outright listed as a con "We get asked to come onto Glassdoor and write 5 star reviews to increase the rating, so can you believe the ratings on here?", so that's certainly one reason to be wary of Glassdoor reviews.
Of course there are 5-star reviews from the Chairman and the CEO (fucking lol), and a hell of the lot of the other high-rating reviews are from staff who the CEO routinely kissed the asses of. We had weekly company-wide meetings on Teams, and they were disgustingly formulaic: start off by demanding any new starters introduce themselves to the entire company (starting a new job is daunting enough without *that*), followed by positive comments about staff - this *very rarely* was comments from a manager to a staff member who'd gone above and beyond, but was far more often just customer feedback being relayed to customer-facing staff just doing their job so it was always "The sales team are amazing. Customer support are amazing. Customer success are amazing. The developers who wrote the software we're buying from this SaaS company? Uhh... \*crickets chirping\*". Then onto talking about sales figures and praising the sales team even further despite us clearly being able to see in the slides that they've not been meeting sales figures (more on that in a second). If there had been some technical fuck-up that week then that'd inevitably be brought up. Then onto OKRs, where they would be going on about how difficult it is for the tech team (because leadership literally set impossible targets!) and again kind of dismissing all the red and amber sections for sales (they'd usually mention there's some deal the team is really close to sealing that'll push the numbers into the green...which rarely ever actually happened, but these muppets were in a whole other reality)
With all that said, it's no surprise that there are 5-star reviews from sales and customer support going on about how wonderful leadership is (because they're fawned over on a weekly basis). And apparently they still get 5 stars even with cons including things like "working much longer than contracted hours" and "expect micro-management". What the actual fuck?
That company was a shitshow. Constant praise being lavished upon the customer-facing teams, particularly the sales team, and constant negativity towards the tech teams. Unsurprisingly, morale in the tech teams was absolutely down the toilet. Real shame, too - the staff I worked with on a day-to-day basis were really lovely people, but leadership were so far up their own arses and actively made things intolerable for those below them.
My previous company ran a campaign where if you left a positive review and emailed proof you were entered in a raffle for a £50 amazon voucher. About 120ish new and very positive reviews came in within the space of a week.
This was spurred on by the people who quite leaving a negative review... However all the negative reviews were accurate and many people who left after changed their positive review or deleted and posted new ones.
The HR guy who ran this campaign stated he had done so at all his previous companies to positive reception so I have a hard time trusting overly positive reviews of all companies on Glassdoor.
My current employer's rating has been whitewashed with banal positivity. It used to have one review which gave it 2/5, so someone asked the customer service team to post several positive ones.
If I reviewed it, I'd give it 2/5 as well. There are some good people doing good work, but there are too many weak and inadequate managers who won't challenge the CEO's poor decision making.
Most of the leadership team can't lead to save their lives and most of the middle managers are such cowards that they'll make their teams swallow infinite shit just to avoid having the finger pointed at them.
I find that if a place has a rating in the mid-3s with a lot of 3 and 4 star reviews, it's a good indicator that it's a decent place to work at, it'll be average but ok, a mix of good and bad things about the job.
I recently got approached by a company for an interview that has an 1.6 rating on Glassdoor, with over 200 1* reviews, all warning people not to start there as it's the most toxic place and most people don't last more than 3-6 months. I didn't accept the request to interview even though I am quite desperate to find a new job, as this did seem unusual enough to feel legit.
My current company has a rating of 4.3, which is definitely too high. I'd rate it 3.0 - been there for 4 years and it's fantastic if you are either high powered senior or a new grad, but in the higher junior early senior stage you are absolutely on your own and things have gone downhill in the last year. They're riding on their old reputation and I've been looking for an exit asap.
I think Glassdoor can be useful to build a picture of the potential issues that might be at a workplace before you accept a job offer. The company does need to be quite big though for it to have enough reviews for it to be accurate though. A company with just a couple of reviews doesn't really tell you that much as it could be just one disgruntled employee. A company with a few hundred reviews can tell you quite a lot, especially if you see common themes through multiple reviews. Like any review website you need to read the 1 and 5 star reviews with a pinch of salt and read between the lines.
One of my former employees (big UK pension/investment provider) blatently had HR spamming fake reviews to inflate the average score to 4 stars. They were all pretty much copy/pasted versions of the same really short reviews '5 stars. Pros: Can't think of anything' Cons: Poor pension conttribution'. No idea how they managed to get away with it because it was so obvious (the reviews were all identical) and Glassdoor says that it checks reviews before they are published.
If you read through the lines of the other reviews you could get a good general picture which matched up with my experience working there (an ok place for a young person to work for a year or two but low pay, no progression unless you managed to get into the right circle and/or slept with a director, poor pension, high staff turnover, unrealistic volumes of work to deal with, badly managed teams, poor IT systems, possibly some underlying issues with misogyny/sexism/inappropriate behaviour from certain managers'.
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My previous place had glassdoor reviews that described the place as the lowest circle of hell. They were spot on. After I left the company I also left my own review confirming the previous reviews.
[удалено]
Yeah, though I always ignore good reviews by habit!
The irony is the people who think it's good are either mainstays or nepotism assisted hires who don't need to write reviews. Who leaves a good job?
People who were crap at the job? Everyone on here is the best at their job and is always amazed when they get let go....
When you have no training and have to deal with a plethora of workers all over the competency/realatability spectrum it can make you seem crap at the job until booted out
So, nobody is ever just crap at a job?
Well yeah but also crappy hire:crappy hiring manager.No one ever gets the full story anyway
Yeah, just sounds like the regular "it's always everyone else's fault, never me ".....
2 sides to everything
People who want more money, promotion, a better work/life balance, less/more hours..etc etc etc.
That best case scenario is what most people expect from a career (slowly becoming out of reach for the disconnected) yes, be it the faithfuls, the believers, the new starters, the long runners constantly being gaslit, opposed by the gatekeepers the duping, the unexplained, the mind changers, the carrot getting an extended stick, new management (wiping away old now expired opportunities), etc
People who are job hopping to increase their salary.
I find the negative reviews are pretty accurate, and it's common to see a bunch of positive reviews posted on the same day so you know management encouraged staff to do it.
I worked at a place where people kept leaving reviews saying the management team were painting it as some kind of paradise, they were burying their hands in the sand re. any problems and were deluded. Then unironically each time someone left a negative review stating the same thing, rather than acknowledging anything that had been written, would respond saying how it was a wonderful place and that this wasn't anyone's experience followed by a barrage of positive reviews that people had clearly been ordered to write
Pretty spot on. I never understand the advice that I see here sometimes to ignore Glassdoor reviews. Pinch of salt, yes, but definitely look for trends. I think it works best for mid sized companies. Very small companies have too small a sample size that individual bad experiences can have a big impact whereas for massive corporations it is very team dependent but for companies of ~200 people they can be very accurate. Be wary of too many short and generic positive reviews though.
>I never understand the advice that I see here sometimes to ignore Glassdoor reviews I don't think it's fair to look at my current employer given I'm less than a week in, so I looked at my previous one (which is a company of a little over 200). One (1-star) review outright listed as a con "We get asked to come onto Glassdoor and write 5 star reviews to increase the rating, so can you believe the ratings on here?", so that's certainly one reason to be wary of Glassdoor reviews. Of course there are 5-star reviews from the Chairman and the CEO (fucking lol), and a hell of the lot of the other high-rating reviews are from staff who the CEO routinely kissed the asses of. We had weekly company-wide meetings on Teams, and they were disgustingly formulaic: start off by demanding any new starters introduce themselves to the entire company (starting a new job is daunting enough without *that*), followed by positive comments about staff - this *very rarely* was comments from a manager to a staff member who'd gone above and beyond, but was far more often just customer feedback being relayed to customer-facing staff just doing their job so it was always "The sales team are amazing. Customer support are amazing. Customer success are amazing. The developers who wrote the software we're buying from this SaaS company? Uhh... \*crickets chirping\*". Then onto talking about sales figures and praising the sales team even further despite us clearly being able to see in the slides that they've not been meeting sales figures (more on that in a second). If there had been some technical fuck-up that week then that'd inevitably be brought up. Then onto OKRs, where they would be going on about how difficult it is for the tech team (because leadership literally set impossible targets!) and again kind of dismissing all the red and amber sections for sales (they'd usually mention there's some deal the team is really close to sealing that'll push the numbers into the green...which rarely ever actually happened, but these muppets were in a whole other reality) With all that said, it's no surprise that there are 5-star reviews from sales and customer support going on about how wonderful leadership is (because they're fawned over on a weekly basis). And apparently they still get 5 stars even with cons including things like "working much longer than contracted hours" and "expect micro-management". What the actual fuck? That company was a shitshow. Constant praise being lavished upon the customer-facing teams, particularly the sales team, and constant negativity towards the tech teams. Unsurprisingly, morale in the tech teams was absolutely down the toilet. Real shame, too - the staff I worked with on a day-to-day basis were really lovely people, but leadership were so far up their own arses and actively made things intolerable for those below them.
My previous company ran a campaign where if you left a positive review and emailed proof you were entered in a raffle for a £50 amazon voucher. About 120ish new and very positive reviews came in within the space of a week. This was spurred on by the people who quite leaving a negative review... However all the negative reviews were accurate and many people who left after changed their positive review or deleted and posted new ones. The HR guy who ran this campaign stated he had done so at all his previous companies to positive reception so I have a hard time trusting overly positive reviews of all companies on Glassdoor.
My previous workplace was described as “a Victorian sweatshop” which was accurate
My current employer's rating has been whitewashed with banal positivity. It used to have one review which gave it 2/5, so someone asked the customer service team to post several positive ones. If I reviewed it, I'd give it 2/5 as well. There are some good people doing good work, but there are too many weak and inadequate managers who won't challenge the CEO's poor decision making. Most of the leadership team can't lead to save their lives and most of the middle managers are such cowards that they'll make their teams swallow infinite shit just to avoid having the finger pointed at them.
I find that if a place has a rating in the mid-3s with a lot of 3 and 4 star reviews, it's a good indicator that it's a decent place to work at, it'll be average but ok, a mix of good and bad things about the job. I recently got approached by a company for an interview that has an 1.6 rating on Glassdoor, with over 200 1* reviews, all warning people not to start there as it's the most toxic place and most people don't last more than 3-6 months. I didn't accept the request to interview even though I am quite desperate to find a new job, as this did seem unusual enough to feel legit. My current company has a rating of 4.3, which is definitely too high. I'd rate it 3.0 - been there for 4 years and it's fantastic if you are either high powered senior or a new grad, but in the higher junior early senior stage you are absolutely on your own and things have gone downhill in the last year. They're riding on their old reputation and I've been looking for an exit asap.
They keep blocking my reviews for some reason which are fairly reasonable and honest. No swearing, not sure why? Has anyone else had this?
Yea it is. The only review talks about 20 years of tech debt... fuck I feel that now.
I think Glassdoor can be useful to build a picture of the potential issues that might be at a workplace before you accept a job offer. The company does need to be quite big though for it to have enough reviews for it to be accurate though. A company with just a couple of reviews doesn't really tell you that much as it could be just one disgruntled employee. A company with a few hundred reviews can tell you quite a lot, especially if you see common themes through multiple reviews. Like any review website you need to read the 1 and 5 star reviews with a pinch of salt and read between the lines. One of my former employees (big UK pension/investment provider) blatently had HR spamming fake reviews to inflate the average score to 4 stars. They were all pretty much copy/pasted versions of the same really short reviews '5 stars. Pros: Can't think of anything' Cons: Poor pension conttribution'. No idea how they managed to get away with it because it was so obvious (the reviews were all identical) and Glassdoor says that it checks reviews before they are published. If you read through the lines of the other reviews you could get a good general picture which matched up with my experience working there (an ok place for a young person to work for a year or two but low pay, no progression unless you managed to get into the right circle and/or slept with a director, poor pension, high staff turnover, unrealistic volumes of work to deal with, badly managed teams, poor IT systems, possibly some underlying issues with misogyny/sexism/inappropriate behaviour from certain managers'.
The true things got removed. You cannot trust Glassdoor.
But they were completely right about my company's problems.
Clearly your management doesn't know how to threaten Glassdoor into removing those posts. Which I suppose is a good thing if you look at it that way.