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Comment by sumeno | Hacker News Reader

You must have worked at some really terrible companies. While I don't doubt this is the case at some places the places I've worked haven't been like this at all.

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I worked for the companies considered "the best" in our industry with Glassdoor rating >4.5 at various stages of their lifecycle. This was happening everywhere, with singular pockets of progressive parts of company that were immune to that. At worse companies you can directly observe sexual or financial relations between managers and subordinates and resulting quick path to success as well, demoralizing the rest. Tech workers are quite often blind and don't perceive it but it's like aliasing in photographs - once you see it, it cannot be unseen.

Glassdoor is fascinating for all the wrong reasons. I've now worked in charity/community, private sector, and government, for big, small and medium.

During my last switch (from private back to government), i noticed what I'll call the "reverse glass door" effect while browsing their profiles. It was weak but it was there. That is to say, if i had to take all the employers, consultancies and corporations I've had to deal with, and rank them from places I've enjoyed myself at the most to places where I would have to genuinely ask whether there was a wage they could pay me to make me work with them again, it seemed that the workplaces I considered the worst held the highest glassdoor star ratings, and my favourites have consistently been around the middle of the pack.

As a statistician I've even considered naming and investigating this effect: explicit rating systems that end up being the inverse of what they purport to be measuring, and I've got some theories as to what could be behind it (me being abnormal, such firms having the resources/need/desire to manage their image the most, high turnover and getting new people to leave such rankings during their honeymoon period), but I've not got round to doing it with any rigor...

OK, ignoring signal from Glassdoor, there still might be some correlation between how well the workplace is perceived (unless is some Russian/Chinese/Indian company where everybody must love the company or else) and how much you might enjoy it. Usually bosses are the main reason people quit so there is a lot of variance between different teams.

There could also be selection bias in who you talk to based on GlassDoor ratings: if a company has a good reputation in the industry but you just weren't feeling the connection at the interview, you might be tempted to override your feelings because "everybody else likes them, so maybe there's something wrong with me".

This is a commonly-observed effect in hiring (where oftentimes candidates who get one bad interview score or who have unconventional backgrounds do better in eventual job performance, because for them to get hired despite that obvious failing, there had to be a strong subconscious fit) and in romantic relationships (where people end up marrying people who hold commonly-desired traits - wealthy, sociable, beautiful, talented, high social status, a particular race, etc. - but then end up unfulfilled because their desire to end up with "an X partner" made them overlook people who lack that characteristic but would've been a better overall fit).

I think it'd be an example of Campbell's Law (or the closely related Goodhart's Law).

I think what people want and what they need are often very far apart.

Since self awareness matters to me, I’m miserable at places where the koolaid is strong. Maybe you’re picking up on something similar.

One of the companies my sister worked at had a full time position dedicated to countering Glassdoor reviews. For every negative review posted, this employee had to post three positive ones. Suffice it to say the company had a 4.5+ rating on Glassdoor because of this.

Yeah, reading stuff like this is depressing.

It's completely reasonable to understand and be cautious of the these things happening, but coming to the belief that this encompasses the whole of reality is unfortunate. (maybe that's not what gp meant…)

It's important for engineers to understand that they have options. If you're being mistreated, move on — if people are claiming credit for your work* there are places that you can go where this doesn't happen. You have a skill that is in-demand and under supplied, take advantage of that fact while you can.

* This happens on a spectrum, some engineers have a skewed view about how much credit builders should receive. It takes a wide array of skills to market, build, and sell successful products. The best leaders that I've worked publicly credit "the team" for successes and themselves for failures but this can only happen when the leader in question has high trust in their board and investors.

I wanted to point out that this happens very often; Game of Thrones nor House of Cards aren't completely fiction and people change rapidly when a potential wealth gain is at stake. The dominance game is very real and people probe for your weaknesses all the time, trying to exploit them and hack you for their benefit. Cover your back at all times and never put all your eggs in one basket. Push to become independent as much as you can and your talents allow.

I believe what we've both said accurately reflects our own experiences. I'm sorry you've experienced this. I encourage all, should they ever feel this way, to seek greener pasture as my own experience leads me to believe that this can be completely avoided.

All the best.

Sturgeon’s law.

If it haven’t worked at a terrible place, and you’ve worked more than four places, then congratulations, you won the lottery.

(If you haven’t worked more than, say, six places, you probably have no business telling anybody how the industry is).

My first job was a terrible place. My second job was a boring place, my third job was a great place, then BOOM dot bomb. My forth job was a great place until we got acquired, then it turned into a terrible place. My sixth job was the same as the fifth. My 7th job is both great and terrible at the same time.

For me, small companies are great places, but once they get acquired by large companies, they turn into horrible places.

I guess for some people, they feel the opposite about small vs. large companies.

Why six and not eight? Or four? My father has been a chemical engineer for the same company from ages 22-now (59) and is an expert in his (very) niche field, does that make him unqualified to speak about the state of the chemical engineering industry?

People's experiences are worth listening to even if they've just been in the workforce for a couple years.

Not when they’re invalidating other people’s experiences.

That's not true. It happens in all types of companies. Its just not discussed as much as it would be considered disruptive and more likely to get let go as a result.

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