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Comment by MattGaiser | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that society doesn’t really stand behind whistleblowers.

We claim to, but at the end of the day want someone else to do the standing behind them while we go back to our lives. And we don’t want whistleblowers around as we fear that we will be their next target. Whistleblowers, in their effort to restore trust, become automatically untrusted by large swaths of society.

Naming makes you persona non grata to a lot of people.

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There should be a way to name these people anonymously. Maybe drop the ass holes name on blind or make a "shitbosses.com" where we name these jackasses and vote.

Heck I'll stand behind my words. If you ever apply to a company called Anduril. Watch out for a childish manager named Calvin Hareng. This MF: https://www.zoominfo.com/p/Calvin-Hareng/-1964480350

Anduril is hiring and if you're coming on board watch out if he's going to be your manager. He indeed PIPs you if you try to switch teams, just like this amazonian ass hole.

We could create a developer filibuster. Create lists of terrible teams and tell people that they are good for interview practice, but little else.

All we want is change in the industry. This is enough for that I believe. Your name on the internet, your employees calling you out (anonymously). It's social proof. That effects your awareness and also your future job opportunities.

Such a system is also likely to be abused, is it not?

It would be bought and killed by the capital system just like Glassdoor was.

How was Glassdoor killed?

Presumably Glassdoor started as a place to leave honest feedback about companies. But they had to make money somehow, and individuals aren't going to pay to access those reviews. So their customers are now the companies themselves, who can buy "employer accounts". While it still exists, their business model did a 180 degree shift.

Depends on who's running it. Like any other company, corruption can occur; but it can also not occur.

I think if we do something similar to blind. One review per company email address it guarantees that each review is from one anonymous person in the company. This prevents smear campaigns and ensures that you get a clear and accurate picture of someone.

Regularly used ratemyprofessor back in college, years ago.

We need something like that. Rate my manager/head of engineering @ some large org. Also get a legal team ready for all the lawsuits that will come your way for whoever wants to pursue this idea. I'm all for supporting it though.

Wasn't there a website for rating college professors? Seems like a similar idea.

That website didn't seem to do much for bad college professors - if anything, the ones who are called out seem to consider their negative ratings a badge of honor.

I used it. It was accurate though. The website attempted to serve two purposes. To warn potential students and to allow the professors to be more self aware.

It failed on the second purpose, but at least it helped me avoid or anticipate a hard or incompetent professor.

That's a really interesting idea, it would also be interesting to set up an experiment to see if you can tell the difference between good teams and bad teams by interviewing there.

Yes definitely. Though I see mutual ass hole manager buddies leaving good reviews for each other to help bump themselves up. As long as several bad reviews are in there you'll have an idea.

1) Aren't there websites that do this?

2) I remember during the #metoo era there was a Google doc spreadsheet of bad men going around where people could add names anonymously. It got to be thousands of names long, and at least a few of the men didn't deserve to be on it.

I think blind does this. But it's mostly like a forum. I don't think there's a review website that specializes in reviewing managers at companies.

Reviewers would have to register by company email of course to make sure they're legit.

>It got to be thousands of names long, and at least a few of the men didn't deserve to be on it.

I think there needs to be a voting process to make sure it's not a smear campaign generated by a small minority. If the votes cross a certain threshold all the negative reviews are revealed.

And this voting process is assumed to be legitimate? Internet polls are incredibly unreliable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiTqIyx6tBU

One vote per company email. Similar to how Blind has one account per company email. It is legitimate.

This isn't random people from the internet voting against the manager. It's people in the company who know him, and dislike him.

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