Glassdoor? Do you trust the employee reviews?

Hello TE:

When reading company reviews, do you trust what people really say about the company? Are the reviews reliable or should I not judge a company on what glass door reports?

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Comments

networker050184

I know I've looked at some of the info on companies I have worked for and it is wrong so I figure most are probably not very accurate.

JoJoCal19

I do read the reviews of companies that are posted to Glassdoor and Indeed, however you have to focus on the reviews from people that work in IT. A lot of the negative reviews are from people who work in call center positions or other positions where turnover is high and people work in strict environments and things like that. Also a lot of the negative reviews I read usually have to do with office politics, but that stuff can happen anywhere.

krjay

I like to glance at the reviews on there but I don't put too much value in them. I've found that the majority of people on that site only feel obligated to write reviews if they had a bad experience with an employer

TechGuy215

I agree with krjay. Most disgruntled employees will find time to go on glassdoor or indeed and bash their former employers, while the happily employed tend not to post.

vanquish23

Thanks everyone. I was reading over a company and they are really bashing management and out sourcing issues so I wanted to ask.

lsud00d

krjay wrote: »

I like to glance at the reviews on there but I don't put too much value in them. I've found that the majority of people on that site only feel obligated to write reviews if they had a bad experience with an employer

I think that's the nature of feedback in general...most people only bring things up when inconvenienced.

tpatt100

It's all opinion based reviews so the bigger the company can really dilute the value of one employee's opinion. Though I have found some of the positive and the negative reviews over specific policies or the workplace in general for some companies I worked for accurate enough to let me know the person actually worked there.

ptilsen

I look at them, but it's tough to put too much stock in them. I've found only larger companies have a large enough sample of reviews to really be worth looking at, and even there, the reviews tend to be from people outside IT. I mean, if I want to know how good it is to work at Wells Fargo or US Bank, I'm not going to get a good perception from Glassdoor without some serious digging, because the majority of the reviews are from disgruntled tellers and bankers.

Overall, Glassdoor is worth looking at, but I wouldn't disqualify a company based on reviews unless it has a lot of bad ones, including people from IT or at least corporate offices.

RoyalRaven

krjay wrote: »

I like to glance at the reviews on there but I don't put too much value in them. I've found that the majority of people on that site only feel obligated to write reviews if they had a bad experience with an employer

This. The only true way to know is to talk to people still there. I'm betting most of the happy employees are doing other things than writing on this site...but sometimes it's good to glance at to see what some people are actually saying.

cyberguypr

Everything that is online should be taken with a grain of salt. Example: my previous employer down right sucks. I'm talking across departments, not just IT. Turnover is astronomical and there are many other issues I've presented here before. Long story short, all of a sudden there's an influx of 5 star reviews. It is blatantly obvious those are doctored, as all other present anything from 1-4 stars with actual examples of what is right/wrong. The 5 star ones are very generic and lack specificity.

And, as others have said, people usually review things when there's something to complain about. I use Glassdoor et. al reviews only as a small part of my framework when evaluating prospective employers.

PurpleIT

To me, the biggest issue is that the all of the positions are all intermingled so you get a lot of complaints (and low ratings) because sales commissions are low or other some other non-IT relevant complaint.