I discovered glassdoor.com a few weeks ago. It seems like a good site. Basically, it's a place where people can rant or rave about employers (either past or present). The reason I was drawn to the site was because I wanted to know more about how much software engineers get paid. I was surprised at the amount of information they had collected from their users on the subject. It was also fun to compare different companies, and there were even a few surprises. One of my favorites was Lehman Brothers. I know you have to take this with a grain of salt, but look at how many vice presidents and senior vice presidents they had. Had I known this, shorting their stock would have been a no-brainer.
Salary data is nice, but they also have employee-written reviews. Of course, you're not likely to find reviews on small companies, but it seems that any large company is going to have a healthy set of reviews. The problem is that most of the reviews are very shallow. I think this is because of the format they have chosen to use, which consists of three sections: pros, cons, and advice to senior management. I think the last section adds an interesting twist (although I find that most reviewers do not know what to do with it), but all three sections encourage people to just list bullet points, instead of providing thoughtful reviews.
An example of the "bullet point" style that I really hate is when someone says he or she really hates (or in the rare case loves) the corporate culture. This really doesn't help the reader figure out whether he or she would enjoy working there, because a culture that suits the reviewer very well might be a reader's worst nightmare. One thing that would really help clarify these points would be examples of actions or behaviors that the reviewer has observed that demonstrate exactly what kind of culture exists within a company. Perhaps, the three-section format makes it easier to write a review by providing a framework for people to work with, but I think it has an overall negative effect on the quality of the reviews that users submit. Even if you want to write a detailed review, it just doesn't feel like you have space to do it in.
The other thing I don't like about their reviews is that you cannot sort them by helpfulness. Basically what they have is a mini-form where you can give a review a thumbs up or down on whether you found it helpful. This feature is of very little value, because if 10 people write low-quality reviews the day after you write an extremely luminary one, yours will get pushed down the display order. I can see why it would make sense to sort by date, but what I really want is to be able to sort by helpfulness. This should not be difficult to implement, since they already the up or down vote feature.
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