I just went in and manually edited my display name to my previous asshole of a boss. Two can play this game. If they want to get rid of anonymous content, then let them deal with poisoned content.
Users ditch Glassdoor, stunned by site adding real names without consent
Submitted 8 months ago by purrtastic@lemmy.nz to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
Socsa@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
_sideffect@lemmy.world 8 months ago
😂 Awesome
QuarterSwede@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Oh shit, that’s good.
circuitfarmer@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This is the way
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
I put a review up for my previous employer a while back. My whole profile uses fake data. Even in my review, since it would be very obvious who I was, I was light on details and generalized as much as I could and used false dates for when I was hired/left.
Wooki@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This screams liability protection, your name change is both logged so they can transfer liability to you
cophater69@lemm.ee 8 months ago
No one can afford a lawsuit that hacky.
purrtastic@lemmy.nz 8 months ago
Glassdoor “may update your Profile with information we obtain from third parties”
GreatDong3000@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Imagine Reddit does this next lmao one day you open up and all your real life social media are linked to your u/Lick_My_Fuckhole profile, your coworkers see you as “people you may know” on their profiles. Neat
ptz@dubvee.org 8 months ago
Didn’t Google+ do that?
It’s been so long since that debacle I honestly don’t remember.
Igloojoe@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I mainly use reddit now for porn. Maybe a good way to get into a freak fetish ring…
ivanafterall@kbin.social 8 months ago
At least my coworkers will know how I really feel.
tsonfeir@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Oh wow, that’s dangerous.
AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 8 months ago
Yikes
Th4tGuyII@kbin.social 8 months ago
Exactly how do Glassdoor expect people to give earnest reviews of their employers (which is literally the core of their business) if those people can't trust Glassdoor to not to throw them under the bus when they give honest reviews of malicious employers?
Talk about sabotaging your own business model - idiots.
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The anonymity was the whole point to that site.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 8 months ago
earnest reviews of their employers (which is literally the core of their business
I don’t understand the need for a site like this. I just assume that my employer is going to suck in standard corporate suck fashion.
helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 8 months ago
There’s the normal suck, then there’s “I (been there 12 years) got passed up for promotion to replace my boss who retired because the owner’s nephew who worked with us for a few years (sucked and “volentarely” left 6 years ago) decided their cyptoscheme wasn’t working out and needed a job, and that was the highest one paying one avalible.”
Or the "Sally got verably harassed dailiy and they did nothing because the harrasser has been there 30 years. ‘He’s just an old man in his early 50s, older gentlemen call ladies nicknames like sweetcakes, honey, or cutie all the time.’ "
jaemo@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Ok, but if your expectations are permanent nerfed you’re gonna be a much easier mark… Plus tacit acceptance of a shitty status quo is pretty self-defeating.
RaoulDook@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’ve had a couple of good jobs where I was treated well and compensated well all around. Companies like that would be glad to have reviews from happy employees visible to the public on a trustworthy review site.
normalexit@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Some are much more capable of disguising it during the interview process.
In the tech industry around the pandemic there was the great resignation and companies were tripping over themselves to employ as many people as possible. It was great then because you had so many options and they were all seemingly similar job descriptions.
Now the site is shitty and getting a job is terrible. Woo capitalism!
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It has its uses. And one bad employer can really mess you up for a while. It takes a lot of effort to have a low score on that site.
refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
This is one of the most obvious potential cases of purposeful sabatoge. They were probably bribed by other big businesses to destroy their reputation so people would stop using the site.
There’s nothing businesses hate more than their workers having negotiating power, and wage transparency gives them more power than they had before. There’s a reason why it’s considered “rude” in the US to discuss wages with co-workers; I always make a point to discuss my wage with all of my co-workers, since it’s illegal for businesses to prevent that discussion.
In most other countries, it’s the norm to openly discuss your wages; unions are also more common in other countries. It’s just standard toxic workplace cultures trying to prevent people from getting paid what they’re worth, or god forbid, forming a union.
hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
In which countries is it custom to openly discuss salary? In Germany and most if not all countries I’ve been to professionally it is not the norm. This is of course bad for transparency/employees and good for employers.
GoodEye8@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Where I live we don’t really discuss salaries and I think that mostly comes down to society being tricked into believing it’s a bad thing. However our national statistics agency has made salary statistics public, which means anyone easily check their salary range and see if they’re being underpaid. I actually prefer that to discussing with co-workers because you end up getting a much better picture of your industry.
teotwaki@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Germany has a principle of equal treatment. The only way to ensure this is respected is to discuss wages. There is a legal precedent that makes it completely unambiguous that discussing wages is protected. It may be uncomfortable, but that’s just social pressure, encouraged by companies.
DrM@feddit.de 8 months ago
All of scandinavia. There are public registers where you can look up the salary of everyone for norway, sweden and finland. When these registers were introduced, the salaries were normalized across the whole population
anguo@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
In China, “How much do you make?” Is right up there with “What’s your name?”.
Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Do you know when it became illegal to ban salary discussions in the US? All the companies I have worked for recently have mentioned it not being allowed at some point.
teotwaki@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You cannot prevent your employees from discussing wages. It is literally illegal to do so, and you cannot reprimand people for doing so.
Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or the Act), employees have the right to communicate with their coworkers about their wages, as well as with labor organizations, worker centers, the media, and the public. Wages are a vital term and condition of employment, and discussions of wages are often preliminary to organizing or other actions for mutual aid or protection.
If you are an employee covered by the Act, you may discuss wages in face-to-face conversations, over the phone, and in written messages. Policies that specifically prohibit the discussion of wages are unlawful as are policies that chill employees from discussing their wages.
You may have discussions about wages when not at work, when you are on break, and even during work if employees are permitted to have other non-work conversations. You have these rights whether or not you are represented by a union.
Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s not illegal. It’s frown upon both socially and at the work culture. It makes people uncomfortable.
Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Ripping farts is frowned upon/makes people uncomfortable too.
arc@lemm.ee 8 months ago
From the article that they acquired a professional social networking app so their intention is clearly to be like LinkedIn - real names, links, career history, “social”. They want to monetize that information to sell to recruiters and salesmen.
So basically they’re nakedly greedy and they continue to suck. I thought LinkedIn was awful but Glassdoor is a whole new level of awful.
ripcord@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Man, people love to make up conspiracy theories.
The article explains the motivation, which is also bad and plausible. There’s no need to pull stuff out of your ass to explain it too.
diffusive@lemmy.world 8 months ago
While I see what you are seeing, I think people will just move to the next startup.
Also by Occam’s razor, don’t explain with malice what you can explain with stupidity
Stretch2m@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Hanlon’s razor.
Welt@lazysoci.al 8 months ago
Fair point, but I’m wondering which part you were applying Occam’s razor to - what Glassdoor did is clearly malicious!
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 8 months ago
There is also the growing difficulty of disseminating real information from false information, but that should have been more the reviewed company’s problem than Glassdoor.
Wooki@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Or
Think about it for more than 1 second.
They’ve been sued for liable.
Or
They’re being shit and creating a new revenue stream because constant growth and bonuses
ripcord@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Or
Read the article
ieatpillowtags@lemm.ee 8 months ago
It seems as though nobody in this thread actually read the article. They are not revealing user names on the site. The objection here is having the real name as part of your private profile data, in case of a future data breach. It’s a real concern, but orders of magnitude less serious than what everybody is assuming.
Shame on Ars for the misleading clickbait headline.
myliltoehurts@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Agree that it’s misleading, but to add there is another significant concern given how glassdoor is already “pay to win” from the companies perspective: they could just offer identifying the users as a paid service.
It would be digging their own grave if that starts happening, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping many companies…
laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
You mean digging it even deeper than they already did with this?
nyan@lemmy.cafe 8 months ago
They are not revealing user names on the site.
You mean, “They are not currently revealing user names on the site.” This may easily be the first temperature increment in a frog-boiling process.
(Cynical? Yes, but the world keeps reinforcing that attitude.)
ieatpillowtags@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Agreed, but the article title implies that they are in fact currently revealing names, which is just not the case.
flumph@programming.dev 8 months ago
I’m more concerned that the company decided it was OK to meld the “From:” line of her email (asking for support) into her profile. If they think that’s an appropriate way to handle PII, I don’t trust them.
ieatpillowtags@lemm.ee 8 months ago
What they’re actually doing is super shady, and reason enough to cause concern without exaggerating.
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
It’s not that, its the risk they could get subpoenaed and then they have to turn over the CSVs that could identify users inadvertently.
Kbobabob@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This doesn’t really make it any better though, IMO
asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You really don’t think “we store your username and haven’t revealed it” is any better than “we store your real name and did reveal it”?
Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Financial institutions who are currently having data breaches. This is the worst time to couple PII data So tightly.
The moment Glassdoor gets hacked, it’ll be absolute shit show for whistleblowers.
BaroqBard@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Highly recommend at least trying to poison your data before deactivating/deleting; they have some legalese that gives them a workaround to keep things to an extent
Note: When you close your account, you will no longer have full access to salaries, reviews, or interviews. Any content you have shared will be removed from the display on the site, but we reserve the right to keep any information in a closed account in our archives that we deem necessary to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. For more information, review our Privacy & Cookie Policy.
TheIllustrativeMan@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You also need to be careful when deleting your account - when you do, they’ll send you a “there was an issue with your request” email that tries to get you to register again by prompting you to “log in” to fix it. The log in is creating a password for a new account.
brbposting@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Really? Wild
RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
True, but keep in mind they likely have backups of everything. If you do this all at once it will probably be noticed and they might just roll it all back when you are gone. Case in point, reddit. If you do this slowly maybe it will stay, not sure.
OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Even if they know, burnt out software engineers with other priorities are probably not recovering old data
arc@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I’ve never seen much reason to use a real name on Glassdoor. They demand visitors sign up to see information, and every logon it demands more details. So I am glad I used a throwaway account and I expect many others did too, or filled it in with junk. I hope their database is poisoned with garbage. I’m sure they will continue to turn the screws - using a mobile device? You MUST use our app etc. I hope people realise that LinkedIn already sucks and here is something even worse moving into the same space.
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
This is just a plain fuckup that should have gotten entire VPs fired.
0421008445828ceb46f496700a5fa6@kbin.social 8 months ago
I wanted to leave a review a while back but when they asked for my name I figured with so many data breaches it was going to get revealed at some point, it's ridiculous they did it on purpose tho
electric_nan@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Everyone thinking this was a business blunder… People got paid a lot of money to kill this site. It served in its own small way, to give workers a bit of power in relation to employers and that was unacceptable.
BrightHalo@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Thanks, deleted my account
Kraven_the_Hunter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
What possible reason could Glassdoor have invented to convince themselves this is a good idea?
Zacryon@feddit.de 8 months ago
Aaand there goes another service again, which I’ve never used and now will probably never even think about using.
arc@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Glassdoor is little more than a shakedown service like Yelp or Tripadvisor. It looks superficially useful but the real purpose is to suck information out of users to monetize, and extort businesses for $$$ for review “curation”.
Monument@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
Interesting.
I signed up for GD with a semi-throwaway email account - not an actual throwaway, but it’s not tied to my real identity, not used for anything but spammy sites where I didn’t want to give them my info. Every site got a made up name.
Wonder what name they’ll slap on the account when they try to farm “my” data from a broker.Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Glass door used to be interesting, but this site is total trash now. You can’t do anything without creating an account and filling out a bunch of shit. That site is basically a dark pattern hall of fame.
They probably really crippled the long term growth of that company by making stupid short term greedy decisions that killed the user experience and scared people away.
MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 8 months ago
If i understand this right, glassdoor was for anonymous tips/rating of emploers/working conditions?
Would that work as a Lemmy community?
Pregnenolone@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Are there any good alternatives to Glassdoor? The website and app were already hot UX garbage as it is so difficult to find salaries in other countries and figure out the currency without it bugging out frequently.
Computerchairgeneral@fedia.io 8 months ago
What a breathtakingly stupid decision. Can't wait to see how it pans out for them.
BottleOfAlkahest@lemmy.world 8 months ago
By Lemmy standards I’m perversely unconcerned with my privacy. But I just updated all my glassdoor info to wildly incorrect stuff (name, location, industry, job title, etc) then deleted it. Even for me this is a bridge too far.
Albatross2724@lemmy.world 8 months ago
PSA to use fake info for just about every site you ever sign up for. Never offer PII unless you absolutely have to like with the bank or IRS.
UsernamesAreDifficult@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
I mean that site has always been pretty shady and likely has had paid reviews for years, but wow, that is honestly a next-level fuckup.
jayandp@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
phoneymouse@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I didn’t input my employer, so they just pull my email domain and it says like “Project Manager at MyEmailDomain” in my profile now. What a load of horse shit.
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 8 months ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
(Ars will only refer to Monica by her first name so that she can speak freely about her experience using Glassdoor to review employers.)
Although it’s common for many online users to link services at sign-up to Facebook or Gmail accounts to verify identity and streamline logins, for years, Glassdoor has notably allowed users to sign up for its service anonymously.
The EFF regularly defends Glassdoor users from being unmasked by retaliating employers.
She decided to go through with a data erasure request, which Glassdoor estimated could take up to 30 days.
In the meantime, her name remained on her profile, where it wasn’t publicly available to employers but it could be used to link her to job reviews if Glassdoor introduced a bug in an update or data was ever breached, she feared.
“No one has the ability to see your user profile and the contents within it, meaning no one, including your employer, will be able to see your details,” Glassdoor’s employee wrote.
The original article contains 586 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Hadriscus@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I give it a full 4 days before an opensource alternative is announced
narrowide96lochkreis@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Remember when YouTube had a use full real name policy? Thinking it would improve content quality and would stop harassment etc. Yeah, didn’t quite work out at all and thankfully they let the policy fizzle.
Stoney_Logica1@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Account deleted. I’d love to see the exodus data trends from this decision.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
i genuinely cannot believe that people use their real info on these sites. Actually fucking stupid.
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This kind of thing is what has always kept me from using Blind as well.
A site used to talk shit about your current employor that has a registration process that requires you to hand out your work email, and they pinky promise not to ever provide that to anyone?
No thanks, even if they would never do it on purpose, they are one good breach away from it getting out anyway.
JoBo@feddit.uk 8 months ago
That’s a fantastically efficient way to destroy their business. There’s no way to get honest reviews of employers from employees who know their identities will be exposed whether they consent or not. Doesn’t even matter if the review is after leaving that job, future employers can go nosing too.
Absolute techbro-brane gold.
Sylver@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This is what happens right before the major money holders abandon ship. There’s no way they don’t know this is business-suicide. I bet they got a big payday from some companies that paid Glassdoor to shoot itself in the face!
_sideffect@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yep, we’ve seen this happen over and over before
SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Imagine if a fediverse version of Glassdoor would appear after this
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’m normally not a conspiracy dude, but this just fucking SCREAMS sabotage to me.
Wooki@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This screams liability and damages avoidance to me.
Igloojoe@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Good way to get yourself blackballed from the industry if you give a bad complaint from previous employer.
Kushan@lemmy.world 8 months ago
A former employer actually did send lawyers after me for a bad Glassdoor review. The dumb thing is that it wasn’t even my review.
This is beyond stupid.
Wooki@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Welcome to the point of the change. Kill off the liabilty & associated damages.
arc@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I expect their logic is their review “curation” racket is a sideshow and the real money is selling information to agencies and sales companies.