I worked for a company where we were told to post good reviews on Glassdoor. The engineering team was small, there was about six people in the room. The CTO called for our attention. He told us to go on Glassdoor and leave a good review. He explained that they are trying to hire more people and that good Glassdoor reviews really help. He also ended by telling us that management will be checking in to make sure that we all actually did leave reviews.
I felt really upset at the fact that we were _told_ to do this, and basically threatened that if we didn't, management would know, and presumably there would be some sort of consequences. When the CTO left the room we all kinda mumbled something along the lines of "um, that was kinda screwed up", but no one really voiced that opinion loudly or strongly. Probably due to the fear of getting punished for it.
This whole situation is really sad. It's probably in the companies best interest financially to do this. It forces employees to respond, because employees don't want to be punished. And there isn't a way to punish employers for this. I doubt that it is illegal. I doubt that Glassdoor would care if you went to them. If you publish a public review, you'll almost certainly lose your job, and even so, the company can just claim that you are lying, and probably pay to get the review removed.
On the other side of the coin, there is Glassdoor. They exist to make money, so if a company wants to pay them to remove bad reviews or something, why wouldn't they say yes. There is no third party monitoring them, making sure that they are being honest.
Maybe one day society will figure out a way around these issues, but for now, I think a good first step is to spread an understanding that what you read on sites like Glassdoor should be taken with a big grain of salt. And so I am glad to see this getting attention on Hacker News.
I felt really upset at the fact that we were _told_ to do this, and basically threatened that if we didn't, management would know, and presumably there would be some sort of consequences. When the CTO left the room we all kinda mumbled something along the lines of "um, that was kinda screwed up", but no one really voiced that opinion loudly or strongly. Probably due to the fear of getting punished for it.
This whole situation is really sad. It's probably in the companies best interest financially to do this. It forces employees to respond, because employees don't want to be punished. And there isn't a way to punish employers for this. I doubt that it is illegal. I doubt that Glassdoor would care if you went to them. If you publish a public review, you'll almost certainly lose your job, and even so, the company can just claim that you are lying, and probably pay to get the review removed.
On the other side of the coin, there is Glassdoor. They exist to make money, so if a company wants to pay them to remove bad reviews or something, why wouldn't they say yes. There is no third party monitoring them, making sure that they are being honest.
Maybe one day society will figure out a way around these issues, but for now, I think a good first step is to spread an understanding that what you read on sites like Glassdoor should be taken with a big grain of salt. And so I am glad to see this getting attention on Hacker News.