Companies Manipulate Glassdoor by Inflating Rankings and Pressuring Employees - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-manipulate-glassdoor-by-inflating-rankings-and-pressuring-employees-11548171977 <comment><USER3> I've had negative reviews flat out removed by a company that was paying glass door for some sort of premium service. I extensively reviewed the rules and reworded my comments and they were removed yet again. My points were fully factually true and were not anything too untoward (pay raises were promised to members of a new team, they never materialized, most team members left). For what it's worth, Path Forward IT is not a great place to work. advancement rarely comes with rewards and abuse of salary agreements abound(work all night to get a system up and running, they still require 8 hours behind a desk even if it would be unproductive. Flexibility works one way there).

<comment><USER4> > Flexibility works one way there

A former boss put it like this, "Sure we have flex time! You can arrive any time before 8 and leave any time after 6."

<comment><USER5> Let me guess, he laughed when he said it like he was super funny, too, right? Like when I used to ask one former boss which of the ten tasks he'd just assigned to me was highest priority he'd say, "yes!" and laugh like he'd just told the greatest joke and then run out of the room (seriously) before I could pin him down on an actual decision.

<comment><USER6> imo this is endemic in areas with poor job markets where there's really about 1 or 2 large employers. It's not just time to leave the company; you need to leave the whole area as well.

<comment><USER5> I'm in an area with lots of employers, but 20 years ago I did some job-hopping (four jobs in four years between 95 and 99), and that STILL comes up as a negative in job interviews. If you bail on too many bad managers, you can find yourself locked out anyway.

<comment><USER7> At this point you should just have a >20 years ago section on there (I would label it "prior history" myself), and include projects you worked on. That's over 20 years ago. Unless you worked on something you really want to highlight, just fudge them altogether.

I am guessing you don't work in tech in the US though? I was a bit worried about doing a third "three and out" while looking, and 10 years prior in finance, it may have been an issue, when I was looking at tech companies, no one even batted an eyelash. One HR recruiter even quipped that these would be relatively long tenures in the startup world.

<comment><USER8> Oh man, I know what you mean - it's kind of crazy. When I'm at a company for more then 2 years, recruiters start joking that I'm an old timer and must be dying for a change! I'm all for moving when the time is right, but I like my job and looking for a new one is stressful!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> By and large, GlassDoor ratings are no longer a good measure of how well a company treats employees; they now measure, mainly, whether a company has the ability to engineer and maintain artificially good GlassDoor ratings.

GlassDoor, in short, has become a textbook example of Goodhart's Law:

      "When a measure becomes a target,
       it ceases to be a good measure."[a]

The same phenomenon is known in some contexts as Campbell's Law:

      "The more any quantitative social indicator is
       used for social decision-making, the more subject
       it will be to corruption pressures and the more
       apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social
       processes it is intended to monitor."[b]

[a] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

[b] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law)

<comment><USER10> > _a textbook example of Goodhart 's Law_

I had never heard of Goodhart's Law by name until about 45 minutes ago, while listening to an episode of Planet Money that originally aired last November. And here it is again. This is one of the more striking examples of the Baader- Meinhof phenomenon I've experienced in recent years.

<comment><USER11> Once I learned about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon it seemed to pop up everywhere.

<comment><USER12> It's spreading on HN this past week, you could say it's viral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You don't say! I used to work as an engineer at a _truly_ awful little company, the worst I've been at, and when I left I gave them a _scathing_ review. Not long after, several new reviews popped up. Here are some choice excerpts, get a load of this:

> Pros: > For anyone reading these reviews, take it from someone who has been > at this company for over 10 years, some people just like to use these review > sites as a sounding board for their own distorted views of a company where > they obviously were let go for good and obvious reasons.

> [skipping forward a bit]

>The truth is that every company will inevitably come across a "sour grape" that was not meant to be part of that companies future. Its just a shame that instead of trying to improve themselves they waste time trying to justify their irrational beliefs and convince themselves that writing negative reviews will somehow fortify their distorted view of what actually happened during their time there.

>Cons

>Former employees that sit in dark rooms and write negative reviews in between shifts at the local convenience store.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>---

Then they separately put up some absurd propaganda reviews. This one was titled "Sunshine, Unicorns and GumDrops," if you can believe that:

> I have been with Snowbound for quite a long time(about 10 years) and I have > been meaning to write a review. I am inclined to agree with the "like a > family and home away from home" reviews. At least on my side of the office > it's the land of Sunshine, Unicorns and Gumdrops. We like to work hard but > also have a good time doing it.

Then they had another one titled "Like a family", here's an excerpt~

> You aren't just a number or a body behind a computer screen. If you're going > through a personal issue, …

Yeah, like when I was fired and the CTO coldly told me "We can do better than you." This is the same guy who I watched stroke a waitress's hand as he passed her a tip during a company lunch outing and tell her "You have a smoking ass."

\</comment><comment>--

There's another review titled "home away from home," and another called "long time here and worth it," but you get the point.

<comment><USER14> Since you opted to reveal the company's name (Snowbound software), I went ahead and read the reviews on GlassDoor.

Your review is very emotionally charged and with very few facts or examples, which makes it difficult to take seriously.

Since you were fired I can understand why you would write like this, but it is a bit ironic considering the article is about manipulating reviews.

Yours is scathing indeed, but not in an insightful way and just seems like an attempt to bash the company (1 star, all reds, only pros are low pressure environment and parking?). I can understand why the company would want to defend itself against this with actual facts (they state increased revenue, staff seniority, customer names).

Anyways take whatever you want from this comment, I'm just a neutral observer with limited information, but I don't think Snowbound's positive reviews show manipulation

<comment><USER15> The negative review was informative enough. Political, negative work environment and old, dead tech. Blah blah.

It's the context that is particularly damning. Whenever you see a heartfelt negative review surrounded by obviously fake or reactionary (do you _really_ not see that?) positive reviews, that is a red flag. It is not uncommon.

<comment><USER16> I totally disagree. When I read reviews (on Glassdoor or anywhere, really) I try to discount any emotionally charged content and focus on the factual elements of the reviews.

I mean, "Political, negative work environment"? _Every_ single group of humans since the beginning of time has a level of political interaction, so when I see comments about things being political I pretty much discount them unless there are some level of specifics. I've also seen folks make the "political" charge when what was really at issue is the person didn't communicate or work well with others, and it takes a level of emotional maturity to realize why this is important.

<comment><USER13> > factual elements of the reviews

What facts can you really share though? This isn't a court situation, where evidence is scrutinized and held up to rigorous standards. So what are you really expecting? Transcripts of conversations? Financial documents? I don't really understand what kind of "facts" you would be looking for.

Reviews are all about "how was your subjective experience there." If the answer is "awful, the company treated me poorly," then that's a legitimate review. Why would you discount it?

<comment><USER16> Because there is a big difference between "awful, the company treated me poorly" and something like "I got 4 consecutive quarters of positive reviews, including a bonus and a raise, but then when there was a change in management I was let go with the reason being 'poor performance'." Something like that would let me know the company is immature with respect to how it managed employee growth.

<comment><USER17> Just because there's some numbers doesn't mean it's factual.

Annecdotal, not factual. And both should be treated with same level of scrutiny.

<comment><USER18> > Annecdotal, not factual.

Anecdotes are not the opposite to facts. They are only opposites to whole facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This article kind of misses the entire point; Glassdoor and the rest of these "professional review" sites sell reputation management services to the company. They use the negative reviews to push other high margin services to the companies. The only one who should care about Glassdoor being gamed is Glassdoor executives; anyone looking for a honest and balanced review of a company workplace on Glassdoor is already getting a manufactured picture.

<comment><USER20> It's the same business model as the Better Business Bureau and Yelp. It's a manufactured perspective.

As a devil's advocate, how can a company expect to be viewed impartially if the only folks who review them have tempers raged enough to motivate them to leave a poor review in the first place? How can I, a potential employee, trust said-reviewer wasn't let go due to Silo'd mismanagement, personal issues or a company pivoting?

I'd rather a platform that lays out exactly what the working conditions would be for most folks. Time in/out of office, salary merit increases or profit- sharing, draconian work-attire policy, etc.

<comment><USER21> You need to leave a review if you want to access the data in the site. This motivates people to leave a (neutral) review.

So it is not all ranting, and I'd say most companies have good (realistic) scores and reviews

<comment><USER22> They don't check if you actually worked for the place reviewed. You can leave a review for any company to gain access. Sorry GameStop, for my neutral review even though I never worked there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Jennifer Peatman, who headed Roostify's human-resources team at the time many of the negative reviews were written, surmised they came from disgruntled former engineers who she said didn't have the coding skills the company believed it needed.... Ms. Peatman said she left the company a month later, in December 2017, because of what she called poor leadership"

So I worked at Roostify and _none_ of these engineers were fired. They all left for greener pastures. I think it is hilarious that Jenn can leave because of poor leadership, but when engineers leave and cite poor leadership it is because they suck.

</comment><comment><USER24> My approach to Glasdoor reviews is similar to my approach to Amazon reviews... ignore the positive reviews, and focus on the negative ones. Now, "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence", but a large number of negative reviews _is_ a strong "stay away" signal. A small number of negative reviews is, more or less regardless of the positive reviews, a "neutral" indicator to me.

<comment><USER25> Nitpick: Unless you're confusing "evidence" and "proof", absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Proof: [http://oyhus.no/absence/index.html](http://oyhus.no/absence/index.html)

<comment><USER26> That site is pretty pretentious...all you have to do is replace it with, "absence of proof is not proof of absence."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Glassdoor is a joke. I left negative reviews for FigureEight (previously Crowdflower) and they immediately went into review and were then deleted. The positive reviews there are so obviously fake. ("cons: only one shower") lol.

They have had several rounds of layoffs and yet their reviews stayed positive. Only now I see a few negatives are creeping through the cracks as I'm sure the onslaught of negative reviews is much greater than what's posted.

Anyway, stay away from FigureEight, they have extremely shady employee practices and have to be one of the worst companies in SF I've experienced or witness. The only condolence I have is I see the entire C-team has been fired or left. It's a dumpster fire.

Anyway, yeah, Glassdoor is trash.

</comment><comment><USER28> They also sell your data now:

"We have updated our Privacy and Cookie Policy with changes to how we use and share information.

Among other things, our updated Privacy and Cookie Policy: Allows Glassdoor to share data with Glassdoor affiliates. Subject to user visibility and control, permits Glassdoor to share a user's Profile or resume with prospective employers when a user creates and saves a Profile and uploads a resume, and allows Glassdoor, or a Glassdoor affiliate, to recommend a Glassdoor user (and that user's Profile, resume or resume extract) to an employer with a presence on Glassdoor or a Glassdoor affiliate's site.

You do not need to take any further action upon receiving this email. By continuing to use our services, you agree to the updated policy. You can also update your account information at [https://www.glassdoor.com/member/account/settings_input.htm](https://www.glassdoor.com/member/account/settings_input.htm). Thank you for being part of the Glassdoor community.

Who are Glassdoor affiliates? Glassdoor is now part of Recruit Holdings, a leading HR company. Glassdoor affiliates include Recruit's family of companies. Sharing data with Glassdoor affiliates will help improve your experience and visibility in finding a job you love."

<comment><USER29> Do any such services not engage in similar practices? Including LinkedIn? I'm kind of dismayed at the state of the modern application process, where you typically have to give your info to one or more third parties instead of being able to submit directly to the company/recruiters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's amazing, because I used to (naively perhaps) trust Glass Door reviews. Then I started at Canopy Tax and heard in almost every weekly company meeting, an encouragement to go on Glass Door and rate the company. They would also brag during those weekly meetings about the current Glass Door rating. The "Glass Door" rating was also reviewed in the meeting, with lamenting over any negative reviews that would pop up. After that experience, I started viewing Glass Door with a _very_ skeptical eye.

Overall Canopy Tax was a good place to work (for someone that meshes better with the culture than I did). I have many friends still there that are very happy, but I did find that Glass Door manipulation to be pretty distasteful.

If anyone from Glass Door is reading, please go back to your roots! You were such a valuable resource for me in the past, and an important force to help balance the power differential scales.

<comment><USER31> What's amazing is that it's 2019 and there are still people who trust online reviews written by people they don't know! Show me one online review system out there that is not gamed in some way by the entities that stand to gain or lose money due to the content in the reviews.

<comment><USER32> > it's 2019 and there are still people who trust online reviews written by > people they don't know!

I feel it's an extension of the old "innocent until proven guilty" thing. In the Western world, especially in the United States, we have this belief of trusting unless we are given a very high confidence level reason not to. It's this belief that is being taken advantage of via online review systems. We do not doubt them by default because it would be mean or rude to doubt the entity behind the review (entity meaning person or bot).

<comment><USER33> But what happens with your "innocent until proven guilty" when you read a negative review about a company and believe it without any proof?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> A few friends of mine work for a company that most would consider terrible. I know for a fact that when ex employees do leave bad reviews, they have a line to call Glassdoor, and get it taken down under promise of buying a new subscription or renew existing subscriptions.

I know this because it's one of my friend's responsibilities - He does this on a monthly basis (based on the whims of the owner)

The main use of Glassdoor as an employee is not the company reviews - it's for interview questions.

<comment> 52-6F-62 > _The main use of Glassdoor as an employee is not the company reviews - it 's > for interview questions._

I'll add that it's salary survey information as well. Similarly with Indeed. They've saved me a lot of time when I've had companies want to set me up with unpaid hours upon hours of interviews and testing while offering effectively half of what I was seeking, with few other benefits.

At one company, the reviews did inform me, and in numbers, that they promoted pair programming to the extent that you were assigned a fixed station and _shared_ that station with another—not as onboarding, but as a fixture of your role. I killed that one, and fast.

That said, I view all the other reviews with a high degree of skepticism. I prefer to talk to people directly to get a feel.

<comment><USER35> > I'll add that it's salary survey information as well.

Not really. Here in Germany (where Glassdoor isn't even as popular as in US/English speaking countries) I've noticed the salary skews towards the low end because A) employers are bombing their profiles with fake salary figures and/or B) entry-level to lower-mid tier employees are more likely to drop numbers. Can't imagine how much worse the propagation of false info is in other countries where Glassdoor is more popular.

Specifically in Berlin, where "bErLiN iS a PoOr N cHeAp CiTy So ThE sAlArIeS aReN't HiGh" might as well be a meme because it's the standard welcome message for foreigners, if you negotiate your pay based on Glassdoor info, you're going to be screwing yourself out of thousands of €€€.

None of the non-tech crowd is going to admit they're being paid 55-65k brutto (before taxes) with 3-5 years of experience. I know people like this and have seen their payslips so I know they aren't lying. You only hear about the non- techies making 24-35k from their small startups or Zalando.

Same for dev/tech. You'll only hear the same bit of info that "45-60k is a LOT for a dev with 5-10 years experience, because cost of living in Berlin is low (it's not) so come on over and relocate!". The devs/engineers making 65k starting with 2 years of experience, mid-level devs pulling 70-90k and management/directors pulling 120-200k in Berlin aren't opening their mouths.

If I put my tinfoil hat on, I'd say there's a concerted effort in Europe to keep salaries down by keeping information suppressed/spreading lies (I see this a lot on Reddit/HN too in the form of comments)

<comment> 52-6F-62 Honestly hadn't considered that they might be doing that as well.

Just the same, if the company is trying to bomb average salaries, then they're posting that they don't pay what I want and I'm avoiding them anyway. (and it sounds like a good thing if that's how they operate)

But good points. It's certainly something to be skeptical about, even if one doesn't want to go full tin-foil about it. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is there any service that actually is fair? When Ubisoft makes Forbe's "Best Places to Work" I don't feel like I can trust anything to make an objective measure other than organic word of mouth and simply experiencing it for myself.

<comment><USER37> It's the natural cycle of the internet.

1\. Be a nobody company

2\. Utilize generous user content to build up an important knowledge- base/economy

3\. People begin to trust the information in the system and come to rely on it

4\. Sell-out entirely and make a lot of money letting people buy influence

5\. People abandon the site realizing it has no signal anymore

(Digg, Reddit, Amazon, Glassdoor, experts-exchange, facebook, google search ~ish)

Notable exceptions: Craigslist, HN, stackoverflow, wikipedia, youtube

<comment><USER38> HN as an exception? Astroturfing seems pretty common here.

<comment><USER39> It's not exception, I've been trying to ask some questions about Coinbase (YC company) in "Who Is Hiring" post, they all got removed. I reworded these comments multiple times, after ~10 attempts I gave up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This happened at my previous company when they had bad glassdoor reviews. Every new person through the door, was sort of forced to write a glassdoor review. They would be given a nice welcome, some schwag, sell them on the company. People inevitably wrote good reviews, alas once the honeymoon period ended, they were in for a rude shock.

<comment> yoz-y But when the people left they changed their review to something awful no? I mean, in the long run such behavior should not work.

<comment><USER41> Consider that if they know when you wrote your review, they know which your review is, if you then change your review, that's a pretty blatant way of telling them exactly who you are, which might not go over well if they have any sway at all (or if they know someone who might be able to block your progress later).

<comment> yoz-y I see. I suppose this is also a problem in small companies in which the reviews could be easily identified as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I worked for a company where we were told to post good reviews on Glassdoor. The engineering team was small, there was about six people in the room. The CTO called for our attention. He told us to go on Glassdoor and leave a good review. He explained that they are trying to hire more people and that good Glassdoor reviews really help. He also ended by telling us that management will be checking in to make sure that we all actually did leave reviews.

I felt really upset at the fact that we were _told_ to do this, and basically threatened that if we didn't, management would know, and presumably there would be some sort of consequences. When the CTO left the room we all kinda mumbled something along the lines of "um, that was kinda screwed up", but no one really voiced that opinion loudly or strongly. Probably due to the fear of getting punished for it.

This whole situation is really sad. It's probably in the companies best interest financially to do this. It forces employees to respond, because employees don't want to be punished. And there isn't a way to punish employers for this. I doubt that it is illegal. I doubt that Glassdoor would care if you went to them. If you publish a public review, you'll almost certainly lose your job, and even so, the company can just claim that you are lying, and probably pay to get the review removed.

On the other side of the coin, there is Glassdoor. They exist to make money, so if a company wants to pay them to remove bad reviews or something, why wouldn't they say yes. There is no third party monitoring them, making sure that they are being honest.

Maybe one day society will figure out a way around these issues, but for now, I think a good first step is to spread an understanding that what you read on sites like Glassdoor should be taken with a big grain of salt. And so I am glad to see this getting attention on Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER43> And that's why there is Blind [https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics](https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics)

I highly recommend everyone signs up their company and gives honest feedback there. Closing the Asymmetric Information gap will only help workers (the vast majority of us) make better choices about where to work, how much to charge employers and what really goes on (not the propaganda campaigns that are online resources and interviews)

<comment><USER44> The level of discourse on this place is horrid; it's like a SV 4chan.

Why does a workplace opinion site need a "relationships" category anyway?

<comment><USER45> Yeah, I just checked it out and the topics seem like troll bait with toxic comments. People actually verify their identity with their employer before posting these things?

<comment><USER46> I mean, all you're identifying with is that you have a company email address. That's all that is known. For really big orgs, this is not an issue.

<comment><USER45> Right - the company has a link between everyone commenting and their work email address. It would be naive to assume that won't ever be sold as lead gen or part of a premium model for employers, even if the Blind claims otherwise right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Honestly, the only place where you can currently get genuine company reviews today is Blind, if you can stomach the trolling. The so-called 'kool-aid drinkers' or 'hr puppets' are called out (often humorously) all the time.

For Glassdoor, I am not surprised, this is not news. I interviewed at an awful company once which had stellar - I mean actually straight-A's 'nothing wrong here, we're the best, if God came down from heaven and founded a company, this would be it' reviews. Found out from an ex-employee after they've been acquired by the company I worked at that they were pestered daily to write positive reviews.

<comment><USER48> What is Blind? Went to blind.com and didn't seem to be what you were referring to.

<comment><USER47> Say goodbye to the rest of your day:

[https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics](https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics)

<comment><USER49> Just took a brief look, and it all looked like whining and trolling. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER50> Agree. I was "invited" to Blind and every thread or comment were useless, antagonistic personal attacks, complaining, etc. It was very immature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I've been fortunate to not have to use GD for anything other than a quick salary lookup and some reviews about the interview process.

Even then, it's been mostly useless as it forces you to sign in after viewing a couple of pages, and the reviews are written mostly by people who didn't get the job.

As you can imagine, most don't put a lot of thought into writing their reviews, or even recalling what the interview was like.

If knowing about company culture is important to you, you're better off messaging someone on LinkedIn and ask for a quick coffee chat or something.

<comment><USER52> I can tell you that the salary can be ridiculously wrong. For a high- experience specialist position in a high-cost city, Glassdoor has a salary number that is well below what we would pay for a freshman college intern in our lowest cost-of-living location.

I hope you didn't decline to apply to us based on Glassdoor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Some of the worst companies I ever encountered also had the best Glassdoor reviews and scores.

Sounds ironic, but makes perfect sense when you consider:

1\. When a system is so easy to game simply by acting dishonestly, score will correlate with unscrupulous willingness to lie to your future workforce.

2\. For these kinds of unscrupulous terrible employers, Glassdoor is seen as nothing more than an easy way to market themselves. Certainly cheaper than investing in your workforce, trying to make your employees happy, or fixing any of your real issues.

<comment><USER54> I've seen and heard plenty of horror stories from companies with good Glassdoor scores.

I wonder how many people lie to themselves when evaluating their jobs.

<comment><USER53> From what I know, it's not that "people lie to themselves" about those terrible jobs, but more like the article describes: concerted effort by the employer to flood their reviews pool with inaccurate positive reviews, and muzzle accurate negative ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I flagged some posts and reported a former employer who was posting fake positive reviews in the most obvious way possible: 2-3 short generic positive reviews per week, all posted from the office during normal business hours.

Glassdoor did nothing and the company has a great rating, despite being a terrible place to work.

</comment><comment><USER56> FWIW, I used to work at one of the companies mentioned. Tara was a good employee who resigned. She was not fired as Ms. Peatman claims. Its sad that Glassdoor is just another gaslighting outlet on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER57> Fakespot needs to get into the Glassdoor game. They already analyze Yelp.

Some companies are just not subtle about their reviews, just like on Yelp. You will see a flurry of positive reviews posted within days from each other. Or some have straight marketing talk.

I do find it interesting that some of the worst companies I have worked for have been averages than some of the good ones, but I guess that is the point of the article. These bad companies need to boost their ratings since they are bad.

<comment><USER58> _Some companies are just not subtle about their reviews_

Here, let me help seed that ML algorithm:

"Advice to management: keep doing what you're doing!"

Not hotdog. I'm shocked at how many times I see that. It's like the HR people all went to the same convention at some point.

<comment><USER59> This is on at least one review for companies I've seen actively game the system. It's truly absurd

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I've worked at good and bad companies that do this, and their number one target (in enterprise software at least) tends to be the SDR team - <USER2> Development Representatives. These are usually fresh college grads or salespeople with limited experience that are excited to take their first steps into the world of tech sales.

I've seen companies initiate SPIFF programs and other competitions as a way to incentivize new employees, sometimes with only days of experience, to post a glowing review of their new employer.

Before you work for a company, make sure to filter on Glassdoor and understand how many positive reviews are coming from "Sales Development" and "Business Development" reps. Don't get me wrong, their opinions are valid, but if you see a flood of very generic 5-star reviews, that's not a good sign.

</comment><comment><USER61> Glassdoor is paid by companies, not by employees, so nobody should trust it. Our HR department is frequently asking everyone to leave good reviews on Glassdoor. 0 credibility.

It's like that scummy business magazines who give awards are in. I worked at a place where I heard our VP of marketing say because we paid this really well- known travel magazine tons of money for ad placement that we should win a spa award. The only review site I trust is Consumer Reports, there should be a Consumer Reports alternative for Glassdoor.

</comment><comment><USER62> Considering salaries listed on Glassdoor for tech companies in my area are about half of what engineers actually make, employers would be much better served by publishing accurate salary info (including RSUs, not just base) if they want to attract candidates.

<comment><USER54> Glassdoor seems to be very biased toward low salaries globally - unsurprisingly.

That only benefits employers in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Former company found out that they had more or less solid negative ratings on Glassdoor. The next day heads of HR and Marketing went around to every employee and stood behind them and had them write up a positive review of the company.

This was couched in: "It's not a bad place, these were just disgruntled people. Don't you want to be a team player and help out the company?"

Place has since cratered under the weight of its poor management.

</comment><comment><USER64> I've got a Glassdoor story from a previous employer. The company went through a MAJOR restructuring and a series of smaller reorgs over the course of ~18 months. The work environment wasn't great, morale was really bad, and the exodus of employees was tough to handle.

The company rating really started to trend downwards on Glassdoor. Then probably 6 months into it, suddenly there were a lot of solid or glowing 4-5 star reviews from an office overseas. These basically overpowered the negative reviews in US/Europe and the company rating was basically back to where it was before.

I don't think they paid for good reviews. I suspect what they did was simply pressure new employees in that country to write reviews before they really knew what was going on in the company. It just looked very strange that all of a sudden everybody in that country wanted to write reviews, whereas before all the reviews were dominated by US/Europe. The distribution of values is also telling if you look at the differences in means between that country versus everywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's not only about Glassdoor. There is also censorship in HN's "Who Is Hiring" threads. You can't say a bad word about a company, even if you reworded and your question is within the post rules.

<comment><USER65> Well, they also allow companies to publish want ads to the front page with comments disabled, and no indication that they are paid placements. But HN also doesn't bill itself as a neutral review aggregator.

<comment><USER66> I always assumed that was a free service for YC companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> The whole online referral "industry" piggy backs on people's old instinct: if another person says it's good, I'll probably like it too. This might have worked in the village.

Before you had online reviews, people were stuck with either newspaper product reviews, in which case there would be a paper name and a writer's name attached, or celebrity endorsements, where at least you knew they were being paid.

With online reviews, even with real names, the person is as good as anonymous to you. There's no knowing their motivations, and you have to shake your old instinct to trust social proof. This is not as easy as it sounds because it's probably deeply ingrained in people.

Nowadays I rarely believe any kind of online review, and it's a bit tragic. I'm sure there's a lot of honest ones there, but a few bad apples...

</comment><comment><USER68> I was curious to see whether the Wall Street Journal itself had any anomalous reviews and was pleasantly surprised to find out that apparently they don't seem to have engaged in any of the behaviour they describe. Of course, that doesn't mean it's a great place to work [0].

Also, I guess the takeaway from the article is that there's no substitute for reaching out through one's own personal network or the networks of acquaintances and trying to speak to someone who actually works for the company in question.

[0] [https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wall-Street-Journal- Review...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wall-Street-Journal- Reviews-E22431.htm)

</comment><comment><USER69> Isn't it possible to rig Glassdoor by using multiple accounts? It may be harder to achieve in huge corporations, but for small companies, it's way too easy to make the bad reviews seem meaningless.

In any case, it's easy to spot when a review isn't honest, good or bad. They often seem scripted, pointing out some bad aspects that aren't really bad, and highlighting the same upsides over and over again.

It's just a question of filtering those and getting to what really matters. As for the companies that are forcing employers to write good reviews... how can they be sure of which review was done by who? Can't they just give a bad review instead when asked? I can see that backfiring really quick.

<comment><USER54> > Isn't it possible to rig Glassdoor by using multiple accounts?

Yes, they don't check your identity.

And HR departments have paid to improve companies public perception... It's easy to guess they'll spend time rigging Glassdoor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> This is absolutely true. Definitely trust your instincts when looking at Glassdoor reviews; do NOT accept them at face value. If there are positive reviews that sound a bit off, take that as a major red flag, as the company is not honest.

If you're just starting off, and you're an honest, hard-working person, it doesn't matter how much little experience or knowledge you have, you don't deserve to work at a dishonest company. They're always shit, you don't get too much out of it, and it mars your soul. It's okay to wait a little longer for the right company. So don't be afraid of them (or other pressures) when they try to screw you over. I wish I knew this.

</comment><comment><USER71> I was taking a look at companies and saw a fair amount of this. The influenced positive reviews do appear to have a pattern to them and are fairly easy to spot, but it skews the numbers if you were not digging that deep.

<comment><USER72> Looking at the dates of reviews really helps. They tend to cluster when people are being asked to review.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Don't forget that there are also folks writing bad reviews and often not just one. Sometimes they are toxic and got fired for a good reason. We know all these borderliners where everybody wonders how they passed the interviews.

So, there are always two sides of a story. And compared to an Amazon review it's much harder to tell if the product is wrong or its user.

People also tend to forget that they just help Glassdoor's sales. Every negative review they write is another reason for the reviewed company to subscribe for Glassdoor. It's not cheap but even early stage startups can easily afford this.

</comment><comment><USER74> The reviews tend to be extremely accurate from what I have seen. I used to complain about the salary quotes being low or outdated, but it seems like they have improved that quite a bit.

I'm sure that there are small, paranoid companies trying to manipulate it, but who cares about the actual ratings on glassdoor? I mean if 37% of the employees 'approve of the CEO' does that even matter?

I recommend just reading the negative reviews and ignoring the ones that seem like sour grapes. From what I can tell this gives a pretty good read on what you are getting into.

</comment><comment><USER75> To be fair, people tend to post on Glassdoor when they have a negative experience.

I was dinged for having the audacity of asking a potential data analyst hire simple SQL questions...and SQL was listed on their resume.

<comment><USER76> Wait, this needs context. You, a current employee of a company, are interviewing a person who listed a skill on their resume, and then you got reprimanded for asking that candidate to demonstrate that skill?

<comment><USER75> Not by the company, of course; the candidate.

<comment><USER76> That makes even less sense. How does the candidate "ding" you? That's just a rude, incompetent interviewee. "How dare you ask me about this thing I claimed to know!"

<comment><USER75> They go on Glassdoor, write up a bad review for the company, and mention me, specifically.

I mean, it's not affecting me in any real way but I have to admit, it bugs me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Glassdoor is designed to be manipulated. Employers encourage positive reviews and censor negative ones. Employees with an axe to grind leave exaggerated negative reviews. Executives leave astroturfed positive reviews. Everything about Glassdoor is designed to encourage extremes, because that's how they get "engagement" and, of course, upsell opportunities.

If you interpret Glassdoor reviews as anything more than a battleground of vocal minorities, you're making a mistake. The sample is so biased that you'll never know how representative they are.

</comment><comment><USER78> Glassdoor was acquired by Indeed which was acquired by Japan's Recruit Co. Ltd. So keep that in mind.

<comment><USER79> I just searched "Glassdoor acquired" and the results say that Glassdoor was acquired by Recruit, not by Indeed. As a former Indeed employee, I hope they don't mix the Glassdoor review slime with Indeed.

<comment><USER78> [https://www.geekwire.com/2018/glassdoor- acquired-1-2-billion...](https://www.geekwire.com/2018/glassdoor- acquired-1-2-billion-japan-based-hr-giant-recruit-holdings/)

I stated Indeed was acquired that holding company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Now I don't even post Glassdoor reviews until I have been gone for 6 months or more. And particularly with a small team, wait until there is significant turnover so my review won't be easily attributed to me.

I have worked at a few places, when responding to Glassdoor reviews, have sent out a solicitation to current employees to leave review to drown out the negative ones.

It's too bad what started as a good way to get some insight into companies has turned over once it monetizes...

</comment><comment><USER81> I made a Portuguese alternative to Glassdoor (IT only), and I confirm that is a daily challenge and time consuming find what reviews are honest or not. Fortunately many HR and marketeers use their company email to create fake IT reviews, and a cross check with linkedin handle many cases. Using blockchain is also useful to guarantee that reviews are not manipulated or deleted. I don't want to create spam here, but if anyone has curiosity check for Teamlyzer.

<comment><USER82> I just read the crypto-reporter piece on Teamlyzer. My understanding is that you're just putting hashes of reviews on chain and not the full reviews (correct me if I misunderstand). I'm really glad you're doing this, it seems like a move in the right direction, but I have questions about the details. How do you intend to handle posts that need to be taken down for legal reasons? This could be libel or links to illegal content (copyrighted torrent files, child pornography). Do you intend to remove these from your stored review log, and replace them with a message explaining why? Do you prescreen reviews? Prescreening should work in most cases, but could fail when links point to content that changes, and libel laws are tricky (I assume hiring lawyers to review reviews would be prohibitively expensive). Prescreening also raises some of the same questions that redactions do, albeit without the retroactive element. If reviews do start getting redacted, leaving obvious unaccounted for hashes in your blockchain records, how are users supposed to know whether you're responding to legitimate legal problems or just playing the same game Glassdoor is? I'm really interested in your answers, because I like this direction but I don't see obvious answers to the problem of laws (besides hosting on the darknet).

<comment><USER81> Hi. We store the complete review in IPFS using the Po.et network. Before that, each review is manually checked by the community (similar reputation and moderation system in stackoverflow) and controversial or danger content is just rejected. The trusted timestamp is locked, some implementations like BigchainDB (if i remember correctly) use versions to handle the needed of update a previous hashed content. Po.et doesn't have that feature currently. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

</comment><comment><USER84> These review sites come and go and all end up "going" for the same reason—-it becomes a polluted mess of marketing and manipulated data. Then some new site comes out claiming to be the "new" raw review site where none of this happens... until it does. Rinse and repeat.

Glassdoor is now going through it's jumped the shark moment where everyone catches on that it's the same BS as all the sites Glassdoor claimed to be replacing. History repeats itself again.

</comment><comment><USER85> At a past startup that had become overrun with back-stabbing middle-management obsessed with building their own respective empires and in permanent cover- your-ass mode, regularly throwing people from engineering or operations under the bus, the glassdoor reviews predictably became overwhelmingly negative.

Every all-hands meeting started concluding with requests that the staff make glowing company reviews. It was a scene straight out of the movie Office Space. The first couple times they did this, the Glassdoor reviews would get a bunch of 5-star contrived "Everything's perfect, best company ever." additions within the same day or two. We in engineering and operations knew they were coming out of the sales & marketing departments, since we all wanted to burn the place to the ground thanks to the awful management.

I've seen very similar patterns on other glassdoor company pages. When you see a bunch of positive reviews clustered around the same time period for a company otherwise full of negative stuff, the positive is probably more sales & marketing propaganda, it's their job.

</comment><comment><USER86> Having worked with a company that does shady stuff like this I eventually changed how I worked to match it.

I had a boss who thought it would be useful to track line of code changes per developer, number of features implemented and bugs fixed weighted by original estimates and other non-useful metrics to grade employees during their reviews. I was asked to implement the tools to scrape that info.

So what did I do? I used the same metrics and automated my todo list to make sure that I was always in the top 1% of the results. Since I was a lone wolf on a massive multi-year project it wasn't hard to find stuff to do. But when I got to the end of the month and it was trending to show I wouldn't drop a spot my scripts informed me that I was done working. I would also prioritize the level of effort to time left in the month. So if there was only two days left I'd pick up more small tasks to pad my output rather than taking on a bigger task I wouldn't complete in that month.

I started doing this after having been there 10 years. 10 years of me doing other jobs that were not mine "for the good of the company." 10 years of me traveling when travel wasn't part of the job. During this time having great number not much happened with regards to compensation. I went from being a team player to doing just as much as I needed to.

When I finally left and had my exit interview one of my managers noticed my marks were always top 1%...even in months when the company's total output was shitty. Since I was on my own projects there was no reason why I would have had a dip when other divisions dropped. So I asked, "if I had output 30% more than any other group...would you have given me a 30% raise? a 3% raise?" He said, "no we probably wouldn't have done anything beyond the standard cost of living increase."

</comment><comment><USER87> I recently quit a software company that spent _a lot_ of time doing two things: fluffing the employees with various benefits, and asking them to write reviews on Glassdoor.

Pretty much everyone understood that the actual job sucked in several ways, but the company also had fairly low requirements for acceptance (i.e. don't necessarily need CS degree). Since this type of job is usually considered out of reach for many people, they feel thankful for being accepted, take advantage of the benefits (free dinners and drinks, yearly vacations), and try to work through the daily pain. (pain such as: working in places with low quality of living/food, working for clients who have employees that pee on the bathroom floor, using very small desks in small offices)

Every once in a while I would review them on Glassdoor, describing the very real pitfalls of working for the company in various ways. It doesn't take long for the review list to be flooded with people praising the benefits, and I felt like the more honest reviews get buried.

</comment><comment><USER88> There are so many comments here complaining about Glassdoor's business model.

I'm really genuinely curious -- what do you folks thing is a better option for them?

Given the constraints that they are a job review site, and they have to make the service free to the people leaving reviews (low barrier to entry), how do you propose they make money as a sustainable business?

<comment><USER89> Why does everything need to be a business? It's a review site. You could run it for next to nothing.

<comment><USER88> Unfortunately I don't think that's the case. There's substantial work that goes on beyond server hosting costs, for which you would need human staff.

I agree that VC-style astronomical expectations may be misplaced, but they need to have a team of talented people, which means steady income of some sort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have long suspected this, I actually discussed this about a year ago in an HN comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17027287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17027287)

To restate- I think there are tells you can use to figure out when reviews are being manipulated:

Does the distribution make sense? Is it "hollow" in the middle and surrounded by 1's and 5's? Are the 5's just a bit over the top, do they sound overly generic, like there is no passion behind them and/or written in the same style?

Does the data add up? Does everyone seem to love the CEO but the overall rating is low, or vice versa?

Are the complaints a lot more consistent with the compliments? Even if they aren't being manipulative, if everyone is bitching about the hours or deadline pressure, then there is probably something to it. That can also work the other way too.

</comment><comment><USER90> This is a great opportunity for a union. The organization that should be running a site like Glassdoor is the AFL-CIO.

<comment><USER88> I agree there should be some opportunity for them to participate somehow. Any ideas of what that would look like?

ALF-CIO and other unions aren't setup to be tech companies themselves, and I don't think they have the internal talent to build and operate a popular web app well on their own. It would have to be some other way for them to interact with a tech company in a mutually beneficial manner.

<comment><USER90> There are more union tech people than you might think.[1]

[1] [https://www.unions-america.com/](https://www.unions-america.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> A past colleague of mine reached out to see if I had written a negative review on glassdoor. I left on good terms, but the company was going through some very real challenges.

Several scathing, albeit somewhat accurate, reviews had been written.

Looking now, all but one of the negative reviews have been removed.

In short, glassdoor is worthless.

</comment><comment><USER92> We know what Glassdoor is supposed to do, but it doesn't because the incentives for Glassdoor aren't aligned with its mission. Their real customers are companies that are willing to pay to have good reviews/ratings. They tell you as much if you have ever contacted them about a review problem. For a site like a Glassdoor, to be honest, its customers need to be the job seekers or the job seekers + and the companies.

Additionally, people driven to write reviews are often unhappy as most people don't bother. That provides a skewed view of a company and leads to employers trying to encourage employees to post. I'm not sure that there's anything wrong with because that's the system that Glassdoor built. Either way, it's hard to trust it.

<comment><USER88> I think you've nailed the problem.

What's the solution? (I have no affiliations with Glassdoor, I'm just curious).

I don't think you can charge jobseekers to use the site (they are looking for a job, after all). It has to be free to use by the end user.

How can you build a business that aligns revenue with the end-user incentives, when the end-users are unlikely to pay directly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> If only we had had indications that centralizing all reputation management into one or few places might have adverse effects.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law)

</comment><comment><USER94> >"Ms. Jacobson took credit for the campaigns on her LinkedIn profile, writing that she executed "company-wide employer branding campaigns" on Glassdoor, increasing the number of reviews by more than 1,000, raising the company's overall rating to 4.4 stars from 3.8 and resulting in SpaceX landing on Glassdoor's "Best" list two years in a row.

Ms. Jacobson didn't respond to requests for comment. She removed the reference to Glassdoor on her LinkedIn page in mid-December after being contacted by the Journal."

So they used a shitty website to boast about an "achievement" that they carried out using another bullshit website. Meanwhile the same HR department is probably ghosting and flaking on candidates. That sounds about right.

</comment><comment><USER95> This sounds like a system that is no longer valuable for it's original intended use case.

I am just thinking out loud, but maybe one feasible response would be for people to create their own anonymous blogs about their experience at a company. I consider that a more distributed approach that may be more difficult for companies to game. If I were to create such a blog, I might use a disposable email address and create a blog on something like neocities [1] and other free static web site providers. Perhaps some of these sites would even allow access via Tor or other proxies.

Can you think of any other mediums that may be useful for this purpose?

[1] - [https://neocities.org/](https://neocities.org/)

</comment><comment><USER96> FWIW, my company is highly ranked on Glassdoor and they applied the opposite of pressure to leave a review - in fact they said to please wait a few months post-onboarding before reviewing so that reviews were substantive rather than honeymoon period stuff.

</comment><comment><USER97> I saw that at my old company. All of the people who left our office gave scathing reviews but all of the people who remained mostly from the main office, gave great reviews.

Of course the company ignored the bad reviews but thanked everyone who gave great reviews.

</comment><comment><USER98> Absolutely. I worked in a small software firm in the midwest. I felt bullied and victimised on certain occasions. It was absolutely horrible, and I later came to know that many former employees agreed. I left it about 5 years ago. (I'm keeping the name of the company and the area vague just because I think that they are dangerous, and scour media for former employees dissing on them - reading "Bad Blood" by Carreyrou only confirmed that companies actually do this.) Just out of curiosity, I looked up the company on Glassdoor recently. It was one of the best rated companies in that area. The disingenuousness is unbelievable.

</comment><comment><USER99> I'm well aware of the last company I worked for requiring reviews of all fresh-from-college hires. HR would press them right after onboarding, and boom, you'd see 6-7 new reviews all following a similar style and template before they even touched code.

More recently (and I'm years gone from the company at this point yet can still recognize it) they've been doing the same to their offshore teams in India, and by no means are they in a position to refuse.

It isn't even close to hidden, as you can discern the pattern/template six ways from Sunday. If it weren't for those forced reviews, they'd be tanked.

</comment><comment><USER100> Here's a fun one: [https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Backtrace- Reviews-E1742217...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Backtrace- Reviews-E1742217.htm)

Excerpts from one of the reviews obviously written by the CTO:

> Also two other huge tech companies I can't name without getting fired; their > names start with letter A.

> Co-founders do talk about successes like winning Amazon's contract (huge!)

This silly thing of saying the first letter of a client (and then forgetting that they did this and revealing the client anyway) is a dead giveaway. The CTO did that all the time.

Never work there!

</comment><comment><USER101> So isn't this a business opportunity for a Glassdoor 2.0 competing company?

<comment><USER102> There's only one possible barrier (but it's a big one)

Do they hold a broadly worded patent making competition impossible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> Textbook case of Goodhart's law: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

</comment><comment><USER104> Not too surprising. On my last job hunt I looked around and a lot of the praise felt buzzword-ish and such.

Then again the negatives too seemed very specific to a user or department or just weird.

</comment><comment><USER105> Also lot of times current or even former employees wont speak out things like this for fear of being identified and retaliated against. The bay area startup world is a small and dare I say insecure place in particular and people are wary of what people will say. The number of miserable employees putting on a happy face for their managers every day is way bigger than I ever understood until I took a break from mgmt and started working alongside them as an IC.

</comment><comment><USER106> I still do think reviews are the best way to get aggregated feedback on established (companies, products, restaurants etc).

In order to normalize reviews for myself, I try go through them and sort by least and quickly skim a few reviews to see if it was something that was very personal/one-off to the affected person or more systematic and then it gives me a better picture. Obviously, no perfect way but would love to hear if/how others take review feedback into consideration.

<comment><USER107> The whole issues of reviews and ratings remains a pretty big issue across all platforms. Some of these shortfalls may be unsolvable, like predicting a high consequence, low probability future action, like being murdered by your Uber driver.

A larger issue is platforms enabling the reviewed parties to game their reviews, e.g. Yelp, Glassdoor, and employee corruption. This is preventable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> The capture of rating agencies by the entities they would rate seems to be common if not inevitable given the incentives - the companies being rated have a strong financial incentive to fix their ratings while at the same time, the consumers don't pay for the service. So, the agencies eventually go after the only money in play and turn into a protection racket, and perhaps make room in the market for a new agency subject to the same incentives.

<comment><USER88> Yes this is the dynamic.

Is it inevitable? Are there solutions, or at least mitigations?

This is also a problem (huge problem) with credit ratings and investment rating agencies.

<comment><USER108> > Is it inevitable?

How would you change the incentives? The incentive for a restaurant to leave a fake review is much higher than the incentive for a customer to leave any review. For crowd sourced reviews, introducing a trust model opens the door to account selling/paid reviews. You can't really punish the bad actors or you open yourself to a different kind of abuse. You really need a PageRank equivalent for reviewers? Is there some feedback loop (like following clicks) to the things you recommended (and seeing engagement on that page from GA)?

<comment><USER88> I'm not affiliated with glassdoor, but I would hope that they already do some data analysis to weed out biased reviewers.

You're right that reviewers have less incentive to participate than the targets of the review, employers.

Is there a different business model where a site like Glassdoor could align their incentives with the free-user employees?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> Is this actually a surprise to anyone?

In my own experience I've seen/heard of this many times, and heard of it from many friends (inside and outside of tech).

</comment><comment><USER110> What if Glassdoor added a checkbox on the review that says "This review was requested by my employer" or "This review was coerced by my employer". That information would be anonymous but shown with the company rating so the person submitting the review would be able to secretly rat them out while still appearing to comply with the employer's request.

</comment><comment><USER111> I'm enjoying this thread. Maybe HN needs a new monthly "Glassdoor HN" or "Who's Reviewing" thread.

<comment><USER112> Would the coverage include YC companies?

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> Bad companies try to manipulate perception rather than fix problems.

Good companies fix problems and let perception take care of itself.

</comment><comment><USER114> I've been a little skeptical at how overwhelmingly positive some of the reviews on glassdoor seem. There's ones that turn the cons into positives and seem like they were written by fake accounts. All jobs have at least some bad things, to say that there are none seems a little strange to me.

</comment><comment><USER115> Nobody should on Glassdoor to determine if they should work at a company. One should always rely on back channel contacts, preferably of people who no longer work at that company.

Can one of you smart people here at HN develop a Glass Door competitor that only allows FORMER employees to review a company?

<comment><USER116> Having FORMER employees do some authentic reviews for companies they've last left is also quite difficult - in the sense that this person may fear the repercussions should they write something about the company that places the organization in a bad light.

One way I can think of is a service, where companies sign up, and let potential employees be able to speak in an anonymous manner with real (albeit anonymized) employees so that real feedback on actual working conditions are provided. The key here though is that all current employees should feel safe that they are speaking about what's the real conditions of work at the workplace, as well as providing enough credibility to the applicant that they are actually speaking to someone working there.

Of course having companies sign up for this will be inherently difficult, as each company always wants to maintain their shining standards in any form, and does not want for only a group of certain individuals to tarnish their good(?) reputation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> I experienced this at a small cyber security business. They didn't pressure but they REALLY insisted that we review them on GlassDoor in order to get more people to apply for the jobs. In reality, their problem was they were paying ALL the staff compared to the market average.

</comment><comment><USER118> I won't name the company, but I watched a prominent startup CEO stand in front of the entire company and angrily scold everyone about bad reviews on Glassdoor. He didn't understand why someone would post a negative review online instead of just coming straight to him.

<comment><USER59> Was this company based out of Pittsburgh perhaps? Because I've heard of the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER119> Why would be otherwise?

[https://twitter.com/marsxrobertson/status/108837592864696729...](https://twitter.com/marsxrobertson/status/1088375928646967297)

Good rankings help them hire, why wouldn't they optimise the ranking?

</comment><comment><USER120> My company recently started a campaign of leaving "honest positive" reviews of your work experience. There was quite a bit of pressure on me since I have only been here a year. They also have been bugging the guy who was hired onto my team six months after me.

</comment><comment><USER121> I'm not surprised.

If you're interested in looking up the pros that a company has to offer, then Glassdoor is great.

If you're interested in the cons, then you have to go into Glassdoor knowing that information can be manipulated and/or inflated.

<comment><USER122> I go into it thinking the opposite. Reviews clearly written by management or someone trying to paint a better picture of the company than there really is. Cons can still be misleading but I'd be more weary of a fake positive review than a negative one. Maybe I'm being gamed too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER123> I was approached by a manager at a previous employer & asked if a scathing review on GD was mine. (It was.) He then asked me to remove it (I did) because he feared the topic would be broached on a quarterly investor call.

</comment><comment><USER124> Was recently looking at ratings for Revolut again and they massively increased their overall ranking in comparison to a year ago, seemed really fishy to me, I presume they did this as their reputation is atrocious.

</comment><comment><USER125> This is the yelp problem too and the Better Business Bureau as well. It turns out, the business is the party with the money. So in the end, the only viable business is to let them pay to take down reviews.

</comment><comment><USER126> I'm from Levels.fyi and we're in early stages of launching Company reviews. Would love suggestions on how we can build the best review experience. Feel free to comment or DM at: email@example.com

<comment><USER127> Read the thread and it should be relatively obvious: Don't sell out and let companies alter, remove, bury, hide or disguise negative reviews (or do so on the companies behalf).

If you really want to beat the incumbents scrape their sites and rehost the deleted content. (If they DMCA you then publish the DMCA notice and note which company the content was related to and when it was published/removed/DMCA'd so as to preserve a record of removed reviews related to that company)

</comment></comment><comment><USER128> This is not even news... I know of one tech outsourcing company, and another utility provider who requires all new hires to complete a (predictably positive) Glassdoor review as part of on boarding.

</comment><comment><USER129> Look, Glassdoor is complete bullshit. It's unbelievably biased against companies and the CEOs. Basically, the simplest way for an unhappy employee is to write a stupid review to Glassdoor. I used to work in a company which didn't suite everyone and the Glassdoor reviews were brutal. The HR tried to adress these issue and encouraged people to talk with their managers and with HR if they had issues. None of my coworkers ever did that, they just wrote a Glassdoor review and never bothered to talk it out with the managers.

The company was receiving calls on daily basis from Glassdoor and their affiliates offering to remove the negative reviews for thousands of dollars. If somthing, this is at least unethical business practice.

</comment><comment><USER130> It is very known thing. Whatever reasons were to create Glassdoor, but now in practice, it became an instrument of misdirection and is used to _deliberately_ and _intentionally_ mislead people.

</comment><comment><USER131> Fake news, fake reviews, fake users, fake user groups.. How does one have a relationship with the Internet that is not as abusive as it is today? Can this network work without any trust?

</comment><comment><USER132> If people game Yelp and Google reviews, why not Glassdoor? I've seen companies go from 3 to 4.5 after a concerted push.

The truth comes out though. The pie in the sky reviews just aren't believable.

</comment><comment><USER133> Welcome to reality. Human nature and behavior doesn't magically change just because there's a webapp. Trust is incredibly hard to create, perhaps harder than ever before.

</comment><comment><USER134> I worked with a woman whose father owned the company and she openly bragged to us she was dating a guy a Glassdoor and had him remove all our company's negative reviews.

</comment><comment><USER135> As a reader, I skip the fake positive reviews and pay attention to the negative reviews. As a reviewer, I make sure my review stays posted, otherwise I will choose to repost.

</comment><comment><USER136> Anyone have a good alternative to Glass Door. Googling the company is probably the easiest but then you run the risk of data biased the other way.

<comment><USER136> [https://www.levels.fyi/SE/Google/Facebook/Microsoft](https://www.levels.fyi/SE/Google/Facebook/Microsoft) seems like the best one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER137> To get some juicy details try reading thelayoff.com of your employer or future employer. But remember take things with a grain of salt lol

</comment><comment><USER138> Are any online reviews even vaguely reliable? What's the percentage that are either from insiders or marketers or spammers?

</comment><comment><USER139> nooo ... you don't say ... unthinkable!

this has been well known for so long. but yeah, it deserves to be exposed. unfortunately, it's behind a paywall and outline.com isn't working (did wsj C&D them?), but my guess is they are not comparing the business to yelp.

glassdoor == yelp.

so this is completely expected and actually the desired behavior.

</comment><comment><USER140> Glassdoor never published my review that had a negative outlook on a company. Never gave me an explanation why

</comment><comment><USER141> You need look no farther than Theranos.

</comment><comment><USER142> What? Next thing you'll tell me Yelp takes protection money to remove bad reviews.

</comment><comment><USER143> Could LinkedIn be mined for a more reliable stat, say turnover by job title?

<comment><USER144> Likely but they API access is throttled. They sell recruiting services after all.

The % of actively searching in a company (by job title) could also be a proxy or part of the mix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER145> Don't believe anything you read on the internet (except this).

</comment><comment><USER146> Well I guess this is the nail that seals the coffin of Glassdoor.

</comment><comment><USER147> Oh yes, we were asked to write positive reviews on Glassdoor.

Guess heat I did? :)

</comment><comment><USER148> All review sites eventually learn who their real customers are.

</comment><comment><USER149> Crow-sourced data being manipulated? I'm shocked! /s

</comment><comment><USER150> Yikes. Guess I won't be using it any more.

</comment><comment><USER151> YCombinator is a great VC.. I sware!

</comment><comment><USER152> I haven't bothered to leave reviews. The Dunning-Kruger effect would cause many to see it as the ramblings of a loser, anyway. Sucks that the average two year tenure looks like:

Year one: "You aren't doing everything you need to be doing for a promotion." Year two: "You did everything we asked. Unfortunately, things are little tight right now."

A little reason annual reviews are still a thing...stringing people along.

</comment><comment><USER153> In other news, the sky is blue.

</comment><comment><USER154> url to get around the paywall [https://outline.com/y4krPm](https://outline.com/y4krPm)

</comment><comment><USER155> Is that a surprise to anyone?

</comment><comment><USER156> Nothing is real anymore.

</comment><comment><USER157> Sign up required :(

</comment><comment><USER158> HubSpot does this.

<comment><USER159> HubSpot is the king of BS and turned BS into a business model. Just read Dan Lyons' book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER160> Just like yelp.

</comment><comment><USER161> ... news at 10.

</comment><comment><USER162> This is not the late stage capitalist dystopia I was looking forward to.

</comment><comment><USER163> paywalled, but I've seen this in action.

<comment><USER164> Meaning you were pressured by an employer? Would be interesting if Glassdoor periodically reached out to users to revise reviews and capture sentiment "before and after" working at a given company.

<comment><USER165> Glassdoor does provide the ability to review the interview process itself which somewhat fits the bill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER166> Yeah this happened at my old employer. They got one bad (warranted) review and told everyone to get on their phones (off the company network) to give good reviews.

They'd push this initiative occasionally.

I reported it to Glassdoor and they never did anything about it.

<comment><USER167> _They 'd push this initiative occasionally._

I wonder if anyone has any experience in flat out refusing to participate in this sort of thing. I did it once, but was already on my way out the door/in my two week notice period and HR would ask me once a day, every day for almost two weeks to write a review before I left.

I say "almost two weeks" because I finally told the HR person that I would be talking to the local workforce commission if they came to my desk one more time and asked me to write a review.

<comment><USER166> I never participated. They had no way to enforce it without being really creepy. Younger employees always did it, a lot of people generally felt like they weren't doing their job if they said no.

<comment><USER168> Just do it and write, "Cons: we're pressured to leave positive reviews here."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Cult of Reason - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason <comment><USER2> I though it will be about Less Wrong.

(Discussion with a friend, who identifies with the crowd: "Is it a cult? Yes, but a good one!")

<comment><AUTHOR> There was also an "atheist church" in London [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21319945](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21319945)

I wonder if they were aware the concept has quite a history.

<comment><USER3> From the article:

> It's a nice excuse to get together and have a bit of a community spirit but > without the religion aspect

> It's not a church, it's a congregation of unreligious people.

Seems more a gathering of same-minded persons than a real cult.

<comment><USER4> What's the jumping off point at which a gathering of like-minded people becomes a cult? Can "cult" be used to describe religious groups (or very zealous factional groups) without the pejorative connotations of the colloquial term? Or is "cult" basically a universally negative appellation?

<comment><USER5> No, a cult is like a mental disorder... by definition if it's not causing harm in the person's life it's not a disorder. Many cults disguise themselves as religious groups.

Here's some more differentiators, but you can search "warning signs for a cult"... there's no standard list that I'm aware of.

\- Separating people from their outsider friends&family

\- Over time absorbing all of member's financial assets

\- Punishment for leaving

\- Members discouraged from questioning orthodoxy

\- Non-volunteer or otherwise coerced unpaid labor

\- A culture of hiding information from outsiders

\- The leader has exclusive claim to ultimate truth

\- Regardless of harm, the leader's behavior is justified

<comment><USER6> For me, the biggest warning signs are separating us & them, especially when the _them_ are family outsiders, and punishment for leaving (or other normal behaviors, like associating with outsiders, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is interesting in the footnotes that it indicates the name originally doens't have the negative connotations it seems to have in english

``` The word "cult" in French means "a form of worship", without any of its negative or exclusivist implications in English; its proponents intended it to be a universal congregation. ```

<comment><USER8> "Culte" is neutral and "Secte" is the negative word.

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't "the Sect of Reason" be a much better English translation then?

"Culte" in French and "sect" in English are neutral.

"Secte" in French and "cult" in English have negative connotations.

<comment><USER8> I briefly considered it, however "Sect" does suggest (from its root) that it's an offshoot of some larger religion, which isn't the case here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems profoundly weird to me, though this might just be due to not understanding the sociology of the time and place, to actively attempt to force a belief in reason through coercion. It seems self-defeating. I can understand a longing for reason to spread and gain acceptance... but to conclude that this desire justifies overriding the individual thinkers freedom to decide for themselves would be an unsupportable argument. The furthest I could see going would be to forbid indoctrination of the youth in unreasoned ideologies since children have limited ability to challenge what they are being taught (at least they did at the time). But if you are 'persuading' people to believe in ideas which claim objective, reasoned basis through abandoning reasoning with them and resorting to force, it would be right for all to reject you as a hypocrite.

</comment><comment><USER11> "A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason." \- GK Chesterton

<comment><USER4> What's the context of this quote? When I search it on Google one of the front page results is actually this HN comment. It's hard to find more information about GK Chesterton's broader point.

<comment><USER12> Here you go [https://apologetics315.com/2013/04/g-k-chesterton-on- arguing...](https://apologetics315.com/2013/04/g-k-chesterton-on-arguing-with- the-madman/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Many contemporary accounts reported the Festival of Reason as a "lurid", "licentious" affair of scandalous "depravities"...

Sounds a bit like Burning Man

</comment><comment><USER3> I studied the Revolution as part of the national curriculum of 1st year of HS, and this "religion" was as crazy as the description of it sounds, and part of the ambient madness of the following years. It seems to me to be more the expression of collective madness than Lumières's ideals.

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't covered in any detail by my school curriculum, so I've been catching up. I had no idea they "reformed" so many aspects of civci life, including the calendar [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar)

<comment><USER13> "They" being the revolutionaries, not the members of this cult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thomas Paine also started a deistic religion during the French Revolution-

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophilanthropy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophilanthropy)</comment>


Jeff Bezos: Regret Minimization Framework - <AUTHOR> http://bijansabet.com/post/147533511/jeff-bezos-regret-minimization-framework <comment><USER2> The only true failure is inaction.

Plunging toward something terrifying lets you know that you're making progress, pushing your limits, forcing growth. The best, most enjoyable points in my life have been preceded by fear (leaving home for college, starting really tough roles, dropping a safe job so I could get into the software business, moving across country).

Conversely, the points of the most significant stagnation have been entirely devoid of fear. If I'm not scared, clearly things are too safe, too mild, too absent of challenge.

I measure how well I'm using my days by recency of fear. I know if I'm getting too comfortable, things are getting slack and it's time to start evaluating what new risks and challenges could lead to interesting rewards.

Have I screwed up? Sure. Plenty of gambles didn't pan out, but each and every one of them taught me a lot. Most also gave me a great pivot to work with, leading to new opportunities I never would have found.

It's a more proactive regret minimization framework, but I like it. Most importantly, it got me to the Bay Area, the best place I've ever lived.

<comment><USER3> It depends on what you mean by inaction. If by inaction you mean letting fear hold you on your current course then you may be right but we should distinguish between that and intelligently weighing and discarding an option.

The stories we hear about are the ones that worked out. That figures, the people who jacked in a $100,000 a year job to found a business that died on it's arse (and remember most do) aren't so willing to talk about it. It's important not to have your vision skewed by the availability of overwhelmingly positive examples.

Life throws a lot of chances at us and, if we've made good decisions up until now, there's a very real possibility that you're already in a situation that is better than those being offered to you.

I'm not saying don't try new stuff, just that the idea that staying where you are is automatically some sort of failure is bunk.

<comment><USER2> Sure. I ditched a safe $60,000 a year (plus bonus and other meaty goodies) job because I wanted to work in software. This is good money in Orlando, FL and I did this in mid 2009, when the economy was terrifying. Eventually I ran out of money as an indie. So my effort did die on its arse. But now I work in the software business. It was awesome.

I'm sure there are plenty of ways I could have ended up less lucky than I have. I try to think of luck as a function of work, though. I want to believe I'm a survivor, but I've definitely been fortunate.

All I'm saying is that if you've got some sort of direction you feel is important but you never take action, that's the failure. If you take action and don't succeed, there's a lot you might do to make the most of your new position, thanks entirely to your having taken the risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting factoid - boss in the story was not just some random Wall Street dude, it was D. E. Shaw:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._Shaw>

<comment><USER5> well, welcome to the American Dream, where you too can become a billionaire, as long as you start from a position with massive capital and a large hedge fund happy to take you back if you fail..

This is the stuff that motivational speakers thrive on. Of course the whole 'when I am 80, I don't want regrets' framework works, as long as you assume that you are going to be filthy rich no matter what choices you make.

<comment><USER6> It works just as well when you're 23 years old, fresh out of college, and wondering whether you should put off finding a job for six months while you go backpacking around Southeast Asia.

What are the odds that I'll I find myself living on the street in 10 years, begging for spare change and cursing myself for having taken that vacation instead of immediately finding a job? And what are the odds that in 10 years I'll find myself with a house and kids, wishing I'd taken that dream trip while I had the chance?

Incidentally, it works just as well if you substitute "startup" for "dream trip".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've found a good technique to use - if you don't feel you are able to make the 'one' big decision (e.g. quit your job and work full-time on your startup) - is to make sure that every day you do something that moves you closer to your primary goal.

I find its similar to Bezos' regret minimization framework in that if you feel you are moving towards the goal, on a daily basis, no matter how slow it may be, then you are less likely to have regrets about the other 'distractions' to that goal that you encounter during the day.

<comment><USER8> That's sort of what DHH suggests where anyone can start their own business by working on it just 10 hours a week or so. That advice is definitely working for me at the moment.

Just do a little bit every day, an hour or two towards your goal, and you'll get there soon enough.

Don't know where this quote is from, but I've seen it in Civ4 - "you move a mountain by first removing small rocks".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One thing you will surely regret at the age of 80 is if you will still have to work part time, not having saved enough for retirement. Starting a startup that fails costs you several hundred grand (which I know from a friend who started a startup that failed). For many people, although certainly not for Jeff Bezos, several hundred grand is a significant chunk of their total retirement savings.

<comment><USER10> You have failed at properly saving for retirement if several (3-5) hundred grand is a significant > 49% of their total retirement savings.

<comment><USER11> Wow, what you're saying here is that you have failed at saving for your retirement if you don't have $1m in semi-liquid funds. Really? I guess that fewer than 10% of the population will ever be in that position. Your definition of failure seems to be "didn't succeed massively".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ah, the lingering, slightly sweet odor of survivorship bias wafting in the breeze....

I'm sure there's at least a couple of octogenarians out there regretting their jetpack startup.

<comment><USER13> If one's regret is tied to the success or failure of the activity, then they might want to adjust their regret minimization algorithm accordingly.

I think a lot of entrepreneurs would regret not trying, or at least that's the impression I get from hearing stories of those who've tried and failed. It's just in their blood to give it a shot - win, lose or draw.

That goes for all kinds of activities, including ones where "failure" means death and success just means having a story to tell. People still give it a shot, knowing they would have regretted not doing it. I guess "jetpack tester" would be one such category.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I also have a similar technique. When I'm 70 or whatever, how would my biography look like?

Hopefully something like...'At 18 he moved out of the house, at 25 he started on a new startup, etc.' I want it to be full of events, doesn't matter if they were failures or successes, what matters that they're experiences and experiments.

Hopefully it won't be something like 'He joined company A at 22, and worked there till 65, and then retired.'

<comment><USER15> So, what does it look like so far?

<comment><USER14> Work in progress, not boring by any means... But that mentality has really helped me to steer many of my decisions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> His bonus must have been about $100K+ ... I wonder why he decided to give that up? That would have helped him starting a company.

Or maybe, my reasoning is the very reason I wont create an Amazon.com :( ...

I'm still confused as to why he decided to forego the bonus. The only thing I can think of is that he had some feeling about his idea and his capabilities w.r.t that idea that he couldnt wait?

<comment><USER17> As I understand it, he was a VP at DE Shaw - which probably put his annual bonus at least several times higher than that (and low 7-figures wouldn't even be too unusual).

<comment><USER16> In a bank or hedge fund ... everyone is a VP ... Of course if he had the boss's ear - he was probably a special employee ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it comes down to rationalizations: I know that I can rationalize doing something new and different. I can convince myself that a failed venture taught me something, whereas I have no way of telling myself that I shouldn't regret a missed opportunity.

It's much more common to be stuck wondering "what if" as opposed to "what if I hadn't".

</comment><comment><USER19> Good for Jeff. Regret minimization works for people who are low discounters - who are able to delay reward for long periods of time. Think people who have no problem putting their money in 3-year CD's earning two percent a year.

This framework isn't so useful for high discounters, or people who believe that they are living in a simulation. For them the short term benefit outweighs the regret they'll feel later on.

</comment><comment><USER20> Isn't "Regret Minimization Framework" less awkwardly phrased as "go for it, you only live once".

Or is there some further implication we should be striving to meet octogenarian values and criteria of success?

I remember reading in one of Malcolm Gladwell's books that people tend to regret inaction much more than bad choices.

I guess what I'm saying is this "Framework" seems totally superfluous.

<comment><USER21> or "better to repent than regret" (I believe that is also an english saying, though I may be wrong)

<comment><USER22> It's close, "Better to ask forgiveness than permission."

<comment><USER21> I thought of this too but considered it as different. forgiveness/permission is what I'd think of before kissing a girl, while repent/regret would be what I'd think before going out with her ;)

Thanks for the reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hah, that's exactly how I make my big decisions except I asked it from the perspective of 'what will I regret not having done the most when on my deathbed?'.

</comment><comment><USER24> wasn't that Mark Twain who said/wrote "20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do"?

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm sure it's true that Bezos at 80 wouldn't end up looking back and cursing himself for failure at starting a company. But it's a little naive to overlook that a lot of people would. Decent careers aren't exactly growing on trees.

<comment><USER2> Careers don't grow anywhere and they're not handed out like mittens or cupcakes.

Careers are _made_ by each of us. Forged in the flame of your passion to do something interesting and meaningful with your days.

That's why it annoys me when big brand companies call their job section "Careers."

You get a decent career by taking risks and pursuing challenges. Going with the flow gives you a mediocre career – and who wants that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I also use the "what will I think about this when I'm 80 and looking back on it" approach. As a rule of thumb, it helps resolve a lot of choices easily, for the better.

</comment><comment><USER27> But I hate it when old people try to tell me how to live!</comment>


The ACCESS_ONCE() macro (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/508991/

<comment><USER2> It has a confusing name, suggesting that it is intended to prevent multiple accesses. (Contrast with `pthread_once` for instance: a mechanism for once- only initialization.)

In fact, the very example given in the article shows that _without_ the ACCESS_ONCE, the compiler moved the access outside of the loop---thereby ensuring that it's accessed _just_ once, ironically!!! Whereas by using ACCESS_ONCE, we ensure that it's accessed as many times as the loop is iterated, not only once.

Basically this just does some kind of volatile access, and so the name should reflect that:

      foo = VOLATILE_READ(bar);

Then the number of times it is accessed is implied from the agreement between abstract and actual semantics. In the abstract semantics, and expression is evaluated once for each invocation of whatever encloses it. If an expression is unconditionally evaluated in a loop that iterates 100 times, then it is evaluated 100 times. Hoisting it out of the loop would be an optimization which is forbidden by agreement with the abstract semantics.

<comment><USER3> "In fact, the very example given in the article shows that without the ACCESS_ONCE, the compiler moved the access outside of the loop---thereby ensuring that it's accessed just once, ironically!!! Whereas by using ACCESS_ONCE, we ensure that it's accessed as many times as the loop is iterated, not only once."

But that is just a consequence of putting a call to ACCESS_ONCE inside a loop. But it is retaining the property that it is only read from memory once per iteration.

It would be way more confusing if the programmer only wanted read once for the whole loop and still put the statement inside the loop.

I do think that knowing that it is being called in a loop context, implies that it should only be accessed once per iteration

<comment><USER2> But, say:

       for (;;) {
          /* ... */
          if (pthread_once(&once_var, once_routine))
            /* error */;
          /* ... */
       }

Here, we are ensuring that once_routine is called exactly once.

ACCESS_ONCE to me strongly suggests that the value is accessed once and cached forever. E.g. ACCESS_ONCE(x) could expand to something like:

        ({
          static __flag;
          static typeof(x) __cached;
          if (!__flag) {
            __cached = (x);
            __flag = 1;
          }
          __cached;
        })

ANSI Common Lisp has load-time-value. You can use this anywhere:

       (defun myfunc ()
         (let ((foo (bar))
            ... ;; deeply nested
            (let ((x (load-time-value (whatever))))
              ...))))

The load-time-value form is evaluated when the module is loaded and the value is stashed. Then whenever myfunc is called and that code is evaluated, the previously stashed value is retrieved; the (whatever) is not evaluated any more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The silly thing here is that this macro is not guaranteed to accomplish anything. The C standard limits how compilers can optimize accesses to _volatile objects_ , but says nothing about accesses to non-volatile objects which are accessed via volatile-qualified pointers.

<comment><USER5> That's certainly true if you mix accesses to the same object via volatile and non-volatile pointers. It's even explicitly undefined in the standard. (C99 §6.7.3/5). [while in practice it will work most of the time]

But if you always access a certain object through casts to _((volatile_ )&x), I don't see how this should be different than accesses to a globally declared "volatile x" variable, as pointers are guaranteed to not change if casted hence-and-forth (§126.96.36.199/7).

<comment><USER4> The key text is in C99 §6.7.4: "An object that has volatile-qualified type...". Note that this does not say "An object accessed via a pointer to a volatile-qualified type": What matters is the type of the underlying object, i.e., how it is originally defined.

<comment><USER5> Ok, that's quite some language-lawyering going on here ;-), and while I enjoy it, I'm completely aware of the fact that in practice the behavior of actual implementation (in software, compilers, operating systems) always trumps theoretic considerations.

That being said...

§126.96.36.199/4 The unary * operator denotes indirection. (...) the result is an lvalue designating the object.

So, I believe that there will be no difference in access to something declared as

        volatile X v;
        v = ...;

and

        X v;
        *((volatile X*)&v) = ...;

if the access to v will _always_ be performed through such a cast, as _((volatile_..)) will always denote the same "volatile" X object stored in v, independent of the fact that storage to the volatile X object is allocated in a "nonvolatile" X object.

<comment><USER4> In practice _most_ compilers respect the volatile keyword on a pointer target type. But if you want to conform to the standard you need to look at what the standard says, not merely how it's commonly implemented.

        §126.96.36.199/4 The unary * operator denotes indirection.
        (...) the result is an lvalue designating the object.

Yes, but calling the sky green doesn't make it so. Dereferencing a pointer to an object yields that object, and the object is volatile or not depending on whether it was declared as volatile; whether you say that it's volatile before you dereference the pointer is irrelevant. (That is, irrelevant to the requirements of the standard; it's very relevant to most compilers, because it's usually impossible to prove whether the object ultimately being accessed is volatile or not.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Colors : A Game About Mixing - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/colors-a-game-about-mixing/id825984083?mt=8 Heres a pretty cool new puzzle game with a very interesting concept! Check it out and see what you think. <comment><AUTHOR> cool new puzzle game with a very interesting concept.</comment>


Scientists make forensic technique to identify paedophiles based on their hands - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/paedophiles-hands-identification-dame-professor-sue-black-forensic-university-lancaster-a8491931.html <comment><USER2> It's definitely a worthy endeavour, but I am hoping that this does not become the sole proof to try to indict someone. Recent exposés around the efficacy of various forensic techniques and their applications for convictions ([https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/forensic-tools- wh...](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/forensic-tools-whats- reliable-and-whats-not-so-scientific/)) have shown them to be sometimes less reliable than thought and the experts at times overly confident in their results.</comment>


A theory about the recent crypto price plunge - <AUTHOR> https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/01/18/2197837/a-theory-about-the-recent-crypto-price-plunge/ <comment><USER2> Registration required to view the article.

<comment><USER3> Yep. No thanks.</comment></comment>