Layoffs push down scores on Glassdoor: this is how companies respond

A few years ago, I briefly worked at a train-wreck of a company whose glassdoor score was poor. The HR director told me that part of his job was to get good reviews posted so that bad reviews would be pushed to page 2 where people were less likely to discover them.

I thought about posting a negative (but accurate) review of the place after I left, but the owner is real petty and they've got a full-time lawyer on staff so I didn't dare to.

I had a recruiter contact me the other month. I was initially hopeful as it’s been too long, but not knowing anything about the company (seemed to be a small local company in a domain that I’m mildly interested in) I decided to check Glassdoor, mostly to see if I could gauge what they pay.

Boy it was easy to spot the fake reviews.

There were several reviews along the lines of “low pay, high turnover, abusive management, ridiculous expectations”.

However in the sea of those I noticed one positive review, in which the only “con” listed by the person was how everyone was so jealous of him because his job was so great. Needless to say I didn’t engage with the recruiter.

A company I used to work for did this. Layoffs happened, lots of bad reviews. All of the sudden a lot of glowing reviews from management and HR. Somebody even called them out for it.

From the article: "“My company is removing Glassdoor reviews because their rating has gotten so low."

How is that even possible? Does a company have to pay Glassdoor to remove reviews?

Honestly too little nuanced reviews, too much 5 star reviews or 1 star reviews all signal the same thing to me: toxic workplace.

With smaller companies/startups >60 people, a better signifier is very little glassdoor activity. Someone who works in a healthy workplace with fair, well paying salaries has no reason to ever even open that dumpster fire of a website.

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35983906