Hello antiworkers, I have recently experienced some very messed up stuff with Glassdoor that I think people need to know about.
I am now more convinced than ever that Glassdoor has a fundamentally messed up business model heavily focused on boosting employers’ brand/reputation (and getting money from them to make them look better when they do not), while merely trying to convince the general public (and their own employees) that they are fair and objective in regards to reviews despite not sincerely being such.
A little while ago, I left a job from a crappy and toxic company, and a number of my co-workers have left too (the place is a dumpster fire with high turnover). I recently thought to check Glassdoor, and it so happened that a co-worker of mine recently wrote a really detailed and insightful negative review (I know it was them from the writing style). It was better than anything I could possibly write.
So recently I was contemplating writing my own review, and I went through the reviews again and I noticed their review was gone, and suddenly a cluster of new positive reviews were written! The new reviews used really cringey marketing language, and one of them used weird marketing language in the first paragraph and trashed the removed review saying it's lies in the second paragraph (and some more somewhat inappropriate language I will not repeat) and doesn't belong on Glassdoor and stuff like that (my co-worker's review was a very factual review and really politely worded too). Not only that, but the company's HR replied to all the positive reviews, thanking them and so on, even the aggressive review that trashed the negative review. And of course, these positive reviews all go to the top. And Glassdoor shows positive reviews at the top even if they are a bit older too. Glassdoor also seems to give new reviews substantially more weight too, so employers have an incentive to write new reviews every time a negative one pops up.
I DM'd my former co-worker, and I asked, no pressure, but if by chance they also noticed some Glassdoor reviews recently disappearing. They admitted that a review they wrote is gone, and they checked their inbox, and it turns out that Glassdoor has a thing where if reviews are flagged by users, the user needs to log in and click a button to “re-verify” that it is truthful or else it goes away for good after 14 days! It doesn't matter if you followed all Community Guidelines, Terms of Use, and so on. Companies can basically make at least some negative reviews go away this way if they can find a way to get reviews flagged enough.
I read some more into this, and I noticed Glassdoor also makes no serious effort to make it obvious to users how to follow the guidelines and they know very well that nobody reads Terms of Use, etc on any website. Not everything in their guidelines will necessarily be intuitive to most people who are just trying to write an honest, anonymous review. For example, certain profanity can apparently get reviews removed, anything even perceived as internal company information, or potentially identifying yourself or an employee that is not C-suite can be used to justify removal if Glassdoor decides to construe something that way. The guidelines themselves are imbalanced towards making it hard on negative reviews, especially detailed ones, and do not have a whole lot that is enforceable in them to prevent fake positive reviews.
The review removal motivated me to write my own review. So I did. This was the first time I ever used Glassdoor other than reading reviews, and I never had an account or anything like that (I literally just use a private browser window to clear cookies so I do not have to sign up for an account after reading a few reviews). So I carefully go through the Community Guidelines. I read it over several times knowing how strict they are, and I write my honest and negative review. A few minutes after submission, I get an email saying that my review has been removed for not following Community Guidelines! Being totally stumped, I contact customer support, and they say that it was removed because I violated the rule that I may “only submit one review, per employer, per year, per review type” (I obviously did not violate that because this is the first review I have ever written in my life) and that “We do not reinstate content for users who have violated these terms nor do we allow users to post new content.” They also said that they “use proprietary technology filters & algorithms to detect attempted abuse and gaming.” Nobody uses my computer or local network other than me, so I really doubt I was banned by suspicious IP address, cookies, browser agent data, email address, or something like that. So it seems I am banned perhaps because some algorithm thinks something I wrote is too similar to other complaints people had (I was careful to word it in my own way though, so I don't know, but I definitely shared similar grievances to other people as the issues in the company and I am guessing the company has gotten a lot of similar negative reviews in recent times, so that is my theory). I went in circles with customer support and they stand by it and just reply with the same weird canned responses.
As a test, I also did two things. One is I flagged the aggressive positive review for being obviously written by management and using inappropriate language. Of course, it was left up. For the second test, and I readily admit this is a violation of Glassdoor's policies, I opened up a different web browser, signed up for a new Glassdoor account, and I wrote a positive review for the same company. Not too detailed, but an adequate few sentences to describe some pros and no cons. Minutes later, I am notified that the review has been approved! No flagging of a violation for having multiple accounts, and no “proprietary technology filters & algorithms to detect attempted abuse and gaming” to stop me from posting this fake review.
There are comments on Reddit from people who claim to currently or previously work for Glassdoor saying, we have to be neutral and reviews are removed that do not follow all the Community Guidelines. I believe these comments are sincere and that the Glassdoor employees really believe they were doing good objective work, and do not see the big picture of how the company's system works or what its financial incentives are. Don't believe the Kool-Aid that they drank though (not that different from how a lot of Facebook employees and so on drink the Kool-Aid there). Yeah, there is a serious and methodical process to go through all reviews, and no, companies cannot simply directly pay to have reviews removed. These processes might be the only reason that they are credible enough not to go out of business entirely. But it does not mean that their processes are not slanted heavily towards favoring employers that might give Glassdoor money. They do what they need to keep enough credibility to hold on to what is pretty close to a monopoly over the employer review space, which in a capitalist world is basically the bare minimum. I notice a ton of complaints about Glassdoor written in recent years, and their reputation is at least not improving for a good reason, so I am hoping their short-term greed gets the best of them and they eventually get the reputation and competition they deserve, but I am not counting on it.
Some people point out that abuse from people making negative reviews exists, and angry employees might make multiple fake reviews to get back at an employer, and sure, maybe people who are angry about a company are more likely to leave a review than people who are content. And maybe there are people who have never worked for some big company that they do not like and just want to write a negative review. But to compare the resources of frustrated individuals to the financial resources that companies have to pay for good PR is a pretty unreasonable comparison, and the support and protection that Glassdoor provides companies to leverage the Glassdoor rules in their favor is just pure greed in my opinion.
I have also read people say that Glassdoor is more reliable for bigger companies, and maybe to some extent it's true, but it does not mean they are at all reliable for bigger companies either. The company I worked for is not some little startup. It's not the size of Amazon, but it's a big enough mid-sized corporation. The average rating of the company is 3-ish which while it's not outrageous like some 4-ish averages, it doesn't fit because this company is a toxic mess. Being a big company does not stop companies from having resources to boost Glassdoor reputations.
I recommend being cautious of trusting Glassdoor.