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Comment by NotHereNotThere | Hacker News Reader

Since you opted to reveal the company's name (Snowbound software), I went ahead and read the reviews on GlassDoor.

Your review is very emotionally charged and with very few facts or examples, which makes it difficult to take seriously.

Since you were fired I can understand why you would write like this, but it is a bit ironic considering the article is about manipulating reviews.

Yours is scathing indeed, but not in an insightful way and just seems like an attempt to bash the company (1 star, all reds, only pros are low pressure environment and parking?). I can understand why the company would want to defend itself against this with actual facts (they state increased revenue, staff seniority, customer names).

Anyways take whatever you want from this comment, I'm just a neutral observer with limited information, but I don't think Snowbound's positive reviews show manipulation

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I did not mean to reveal that, it was an oversight by me.

> Your review is very emotionally charged and with very few facts or examples, which makes it difficult to take seriously.

I wrote the review more than a year after leaving the company. I wasn't feeling very emotional, I was just trying to be descriptively honest. I'm not sure what you're looking for. Transcripts of specific dialogues between employees? I explained the way things are there pretty truthfully, and five years later I still feel it's objectively accurate. The problem is the personalities and there isn't much more to it than that.

> just seems like an attempt to bash the company (1 star, all reds, only pros are low pressure environment and parking?)

If you had worked there this might stop seeming like an exaggeration.

> I don't think Snowbound's positive reviews show manipulation

If you can't see the manipulation going on there, it's hard for me to imagine a set of reviews that you would consider manipulation.

The negative review was informative enough. Political, negative work environment and old, dead tech. Blah blah.

It's the context that is particularly damning. Whenever you see a heartfelt negative review surrounded by obviously fake or reactionary (do you really not see that?) positive reviews, that is a red flag. It is not uncommon.

I totally disagree. When I read reviews (on Glassdoor or anywhere, really) I try to discount any emotionally charged content and focus on the factual elements of the reviews.

I mean, "Political, negative work environment"? Every single group of humans since the beginning of time has a level of political interaction, so when I see comments about things being political I pretty much discount them unless there are some level of specifics. I've also seen folks make the "political" charge when what was really at issue is the person didn't communicate or work well with others, and it takes a level of emotional maturity to realize why this is important.

People are naturally political, that's precisely why professionalism was invented, and a key function of a manager is to shield their people from the politics higher up.

> factual elements of the reviews

What facts can you really share though? This isn't a court situation, where evidence is scrutinized and held up to rigorous standards. So what are you really expecting? Transcripts of conversations? Financial documents? I don't really understand what kind of "facts" you would be looking for.

Reviews are all about "how was your subjective experience there." If the answer is "awful, the company treated me poorly," then that's a legitimate review. Why would you discount it?

Because there is a big difference between "awful, the company treated me poorly" and something like "I got 4 consecutive quarters of positive reviews, including a bonus and a raise, but then when there was a change in management I was let go with the reason being 'poor performance'." Something like that would let me know the company is immature with respect to how it managed employee growth.

Just because there's some numbers doesn't mean it's factual.

Annecdotal, not factual. And both should be treated with same level of scrutiny.

> Annecdotal, not factual.

Anecdotes are not the opposite to facts. They are only opposites to whole facts.

oh shit that actually happened to me! man thanks for validating my terrible experience with my last company :P

That's a great example of a specific factual incident!

But, A.) you don't know if these "facts" are true, so they shouldn't really add much weight, and B.) not all situations come down to something so specific and citable. Sometimes, people are just really obnoxious to be around, and they're rude and impatient and temperamental and it's a daily thing and that's all there is to it, and you can't really boil that down to such a nice clean sentence as in your example.

> Every single group of humans since the beginning of time has a level of political interaction

You don't say.

"Political" was my word to sum up part of a lengthy Glassdoor post made by someone else which does not use the word at all. Feel free to substitute whatever word is least prone to cause you a mental hemorrhoid flare-up.

Would you say it's fair to oppose "political work environment" with "meritocracy?"

So you support politics and lots of people don't. And that may make them politically immature but politics is a very common skill compared to technical and raw work skills.

Individual reviews are ultimately worthless on a site like Glassdoor. You'll never hear both sides.

I've found that it's relatively accurate for bigger companies, though, give the larger number of reviews. Individual reviews are simply 1 data point and worthless on their own. Good employers are often typically awarded in other ways, like local best places to work lists.

Much like on Amazon - more people look at the star rating vs the reviews as the indicator. Sadly these can be gamed, but for the most part I've found major companies to be represented correctly, in my experience.

It really depends. I try to view Glassdoor like the way I read amazon reviews.

I'll see a bunch of "good" reviews. They do me nothing.

Yet those bad reviews have a trend that the battery hatch clip keeps breaking off and they had to do hacks to make it work. ... Or the multiple Samsung refrigerator water filter were fakes and leaked all across the floor (0).

In a office setting, it's the similar thing. There will be a lot of good, but the details and consistency of the bad ones are the thing to watch.

(0) https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Da29-00020b-1P-DA29-00020b-Re...

While his isn't great, the other reviews absolutely look planted or suspiciously good.

All the bad reviews are from former employees and all the good ones are from current employees, yeah I'm gonna call bullshit plus even doubt a bit your neutrality about the matter.

Yeah, an employee fired from my previous employer basically wrote the same negative review on any site that he could. Including the goddamn Yellow Pages. In that review, he alleged several things that were just simply lies.

Yes, I eventually left as well, but I left because there was a better offer from another company that my previous employer couldn't match. They were sad to see me go and it was hard to leave because they were a good group.

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