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.
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!
Yep, we’ve seen this happen over and over before
Imagine if a fediverse version of Glassdoor would appear after this
i don’t really see a point in federating employment reviews, but there certainly needs to be a non profit providing such a service
Maybe a start would be a forum for employer reviews
I’m normally not a conspiracy dude, but this just fucking SCREAMS sabotage to me.
This screams liability and damages avoidance to me.
Good way to get yourself blackballed from the industry if you give a bad complaint from previous employer.
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.
Welcome to the point of the change. Kill off the liabilty & associated damages.
Doesnt matter if the facts are true. In fact it matters more if they are!
I expect their logic is their review “curation” racket is a sideshow and the real money is selling information to agencies and sales companies.
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.
😂 Awesome
Oh shit, that’s good.
This is the way
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.
This screams liability protection, your name change is both logged so they can transfer liability to you.
Reputation slander and damages can get astronomical
No one can afford a lawsuit that hacky.
Uh, reminder that these giant corporations don’t shop for lawyers like you or I would have to, they’re already on retainer. It would literally cost them nothing they’re not already paying to sue someone (except their reputation, which they’ve already thrown away).
Right, but you’re not talking about Glass Door. You’re talking about another cooperation reacting to information on Glass Door. Most companies in the US are small businesses without the resources to go after people on websites in general, and if you’re obfuscated your identity before posting on glassdoor, then you just double to tripled the price of the lawsuit in lawyer time filing motions to uncover your identity.
You’re talking about another cooperation reacting to information on Glass Door.
by wanting to take legal action. They want to transfer liability from Glass Door to the individual. So yes, my point stands…
Glassdoor “may update your Profile with information we obtain from third parties”
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
Didn’t Google+ do that?
It’s been so long since that debacle I honestly don’t remember.
YouTube did it when Google bought them and changed everyone’s unique username to their Google account (real) name
wtf that’s a terrible decision lol
Looks like they prodded but didn’t unilaterally force.
Worse, StarCraft tried it lol. Major blizzard fuckup
Facebook did it as well, maybe a couple years after opening up to the non university crowd. Neither FB at the time or G+ years later gave any thought that their no pseudonym policies put someone’s safety at risk.
Google+ was a Facebook-like social media. It was only ever supposed to be real names, so no issue.
I mainly use reddit now for porn. Maybe a good way to get into a freak fetish ring…
The only fetish subreddit I followed was banned. There was not even any nudity.
Fuck Reddit.
At least my coworkers will know how I really feel.
Oh wow, that’s dangerous.
Yikes
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.
In what 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.
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.
Not denying that it’s legal and beneficial to discuss that. It’s unfortunately not common (yet?).
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
In Denmark, I’m part of a union which publishes salary stats for every possible job title, management responsibility, education, in a fairly convoluted matrix. Still, this allows me to easily negotiate with companies and see how well they pay. There might be something organised by the government, but I’ve never had a need for it.
I like the idea of a register a lot.
Do you also talk about it though? I was in Denmark on business for a couple of weeks and I don’t recall there being a discussion about it.
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.
In my country I’m only aware of statistics published by a newspaper (source may be statista, some agency or a job portal). I find the values weird however as I earn way above the stated value for my general description. I’m in a bit of a niche however so that might work to my benefit. The statistics still feel like ‘expectation management’ to me though.
In China, “How much do you make?” Is right up there with “What’s your name?”.
Pretty disarming for unsuspecting foreigners.
Pretty disarming for unsuspecting foreigners.
That would indeed be a WTF moment for me.
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.
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.
https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/your-rights-to-discuss-wages
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If you get suddenly laid off after doing a legally protected activity, you do have very direct recourse.
Judges aren’t generally stupid, nor is the national labor board. If you do a legal thing companies hate and are suddenly fired out of the blue, it’s very obvious what happened, no matter what the comapny claims. It may take time and effort, but you very may get back paid the fof the entire time you were fired.
redacted
You didn’t get laid off because you discussed your wages.
You were laid off because you couldn’t keep your cards close to your chest and told the company y’all had been discussing wages.
Having the right to discuss it doesn’t mean you should do it in front of the boss.
concerted organizing activity is protected under the law. talking about it with your boss yourself is not organizing activity. talking about it with a coworker in front of your boss is.
this is what a job journal is for. it would prove what happened.
redacted
the law that protected concerted organizing activity is the same that took the teeth out of the unions. i want to see that law abolished, but i’m an anarchist, so i want them all gone.
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.
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.
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.
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
Hanlon’s razor.
Fair point, but I’m wondering which part you were applying Occam’s razor to - what Glassdoor did is clearly malicious!
That would be Hanlons razor. I have no idea whether it applies here.
To the part that they were bribed.
I think they are simply in the pipe dream that they will become the new LinkedIn
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.
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
Or
Read the article
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.
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…
You mean digging it even deeper than they already did with this?
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.)
Agreed, but the article title implies that they are in fact currently revealing names, which is just not the case.
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.
What they’re actually doing is super shady, and reason enough to cause concern without exaggerating.
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.
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.
This doesn’t really make it any better though, IMO
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”?
I swear some people are just contrary.
No they’re not
For a supposedly anonymous site that’s going to be a target from both hackers and companies looking to reveal that data, I’d say it’s not really any better, just delayed. All it takes is someone finding a SQL injection vulnerability on the site to scrape the user database, or a court to rule that they have to turn that data over to a company looking to go after an employee, or even just someone with the right access at the company clicking the wrong link
If you want to be anonymous, the first step is to not give people your name or other PII
This is just a plain fuckup that should have gotten entire VPs fired.
Best we can do is more executive bonuses
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But most likely they are just failing up.
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.
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.
Really? Wild
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.
Even if they know, burnt out software engineers with other priorities are probably not recovering old data
Unless some exec has a meltdown and demands them to revert the site
That’s usually a monumental undertaking for sites that are majority database-driven like Glassdoor. Think multiple regional databases.
I doubt they delete anything. Just add a flag to the datastore so users don’t see it, but they can still sell it or train AI on it or whatever.
The data is never getting deleted in the first place, “delete” just needs to set a flag for non-visibility. The language used in their disclaimer leads me to believe exactly that is what is happening.
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.
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
I did the same thing twice.
Two different employers that really deserve to be absolutely thrashed but as soon as I got to the point where it was asking me my true identity I realized there was no hope it wouldn’t come back to bite me in the long run.
I understand why in their business model they want to be able to verify employment. I’d even say it’s reasonable. But the Privacy implications of it are just too tremendous and they I’ve never been practically or systemically trustworthy.
And knowing this about them means they aren’t a reliable place to be warned off of a bad employer either. The primary purpose of their site is completely undermined by this bad policy.
Thanks, deleted my account
Deleted my account and then made up a fictional worker with AI who works at Glassdoor in their Albuquerque location making $5mil/year as an intern and bitching about how the pay isn’t great.
Same. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
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.
Yeah, this reeks of generic neoliberal sabotage to me. They do the same thing with unions and political parties. If anything is a potential threat to profits, it’s infiltrated and undermined.
There’s simply no way that a team focused on employee rights does something like this. Everybody working there would definitely be aware that companies routinely try to identify and punish people for their posts. That alone would end any non-malicious plans for using real names.
What possible reason could Glassdoor have invented to convince themselves this is a good idea?
Would you believe a social network?
Yes, companies will use that to justify anything
Bribery
Shit for brains manglement.
It’s called an “MBA” and they are the tip of the enshitification spear
Aaand there goes another service again, which I’ve never used and now will probably never even think about using.
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.
Iirc the way that blind works is by verifying you work at a specific company but then that email address cannot be used again.
It’s not associated with your specific account.
Someone who worked at blind explained that but there’s no way to know this for sure.
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.
I have about 5 or 6 aliases, full blown characters that live in my head, each with different names, addresses and backstories that I use. Even they lie about their personal circumstances sometimes. For example, on LinkedIn, John Longson works at Longson and Longson consulting, but he’s the only employee, and he actually just works at a thrift store with a side hustle of selling second hand clothes on etsy under an alias.
What happened to the other Longson?
That’s the alias he sells under on Etsy
If I need to fudge info, I tend to put it into a password database’s “notes” field for easier note-keeping, FWIW.
Not a full-on identity, but bits of info like stated name, address, etc.
Lol wtf is the point of linkedin specifically if you don’t join with your real info?
You just browsing people’s profiles? Friend requesting your other aliases?
It’s kinda like Facebook now, which is pretty strange.
Art Vandelay, Vandelay Industries, we import/export.
We also would have accepted Rusty Shackleford.
I heard he was thinking about quitting exporting to focus on the importing.
Where’s rusty shackleford work?
Mine are usually just remixes of my ancestors, for example ill just combine two random ancestors names and where one of them was from. Why yes random website I am Shadrak McNulty born in Littlerock Arkansas.
Nice to meet you, Shadrak!
LinkedIn is one of the few sites where I use my real name. It is for connecting with past and future coworkers, so they get my real identity.
Oh I have a real linkedin, but I have several fake ones for lurking as well.
Why not present ones? And how do you know who you’ll work with in the future?
Right, I forgot that LinkedIn calls contacts “connection”, doesn’t it? I meant it in the sense of messaging them.
I have it for talking to past coworkers (in case I need a reference or want to discuss equity or something) and for talking to recruiters when I am looking for a job. My past two jobs I heard about via LinkedIn messages.
I was being dumbly pendantic. Thank you for indulging me though!
This is good.
I like to use password managers to make up names.
If I am feeling spicy. It is me. Imene Shayma. (A joke. Follow the link.)
I guess that’s one strategy but that’s too much work for me. I just pay for unique email forwarding addresses to my main email and use fakenamegenerator.com for filling out fake PII. Also a password manager is key
Sound advice, but if this article is any indication, corporate web2 now anticipates garbage. The junk presumably gets backfilled with their best attempt at quality data where it can be found. It true, it invites potential contributors to think carefully about their opsec.
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”.
