Glassdoor Is Less Anonymous Than Ever Before
Known mostly for anonymous reviews of what it’s like to work for a company, Glassdoor really wants to know your name and location. Let’s go further: try to log into the service, and it will immediately ask for your name. It is not possible to view the site until you respond.
And the company goes even further: Dreamwidth user Cellio stated that after sending an email to customer support, the company added their name and location to their account profile:
After I responded to this support email last week, I discovered that they had updated my profile with my real name and location, [using] the name obtained from the email. … I didn’t think about hiding, because who does that? I never agreed to this change and was clear about it when I objected.
Glassdoor built its company on allowing employees and former employees to leave honest, anonymous reviews and did not always require users to provide their name to leave them. Now, to be clear, I couldn’t find a single recorded case of a name being added to an anonymous post, and thank goodness for that. (I’ve contacted Glassdoor and will update this post if I hear back.)
But anyone who wants to hide their criticism of a current or previous employer—say, anyone who goes out of their way to write a Glassdoor review without giving themselves away —should pay attention to these rules, which include your real name. on account. Glassdoor’s policies say the company uses your name and address “for verification purposes only to ensure everyone is who they say they are.” Despite this, Glassdoor was forced by a New Zealand court order to reveal the identities of negative reviewers back in 2022, so there are good reasons why people might not want their names associated with their accounts.
However, it’s unclear how much Glassdoor might care. Anonymous company reviews are probably the main reason job seekers ever come to the site, but they’re not what Glassdoor pays for. Glassdoor makes most of its money by selling job postings and paid branding tools for companies . It’s essentially a subscription that employers can pay to bury negative reviews so far down the page that most users won’t scroll that far.
Businesses can place their chosen positive reviews at the top of the page, a move that offsets the negative reviews in the minds of anyone checking out the page. Companies can also add multiple sections full of PR fluff on top of the actual reviews. There’s an “Updates” section full of messages about how great the company is, and it takes up the entire scrolling screen. There is also a “Why work with us” section, where companies can talk about how great it is to work with them.
Glassdoor doesn’t publicly say how much they charge for this service, likely because it’s a lot (and because different companies have different rates).
There’s nothing surprising about this, and you might not really care – you just want to read some juicy revelations about that terrible company you worked for. To be clear: I find this relatable. But Glassdoor is a company that is mostly useful because its employees and former employees feel comfortable anonymously revealing their true affiliations with the very companies that pay Glassdoor to keep the service running. This is, if not corrupt, extremely rude.
You may want to delete your account after reading this message. There are now instructions for closing your Glassdoor account , but you should keep in mind that this doesn’t actually delete your data, it just suspends your account. You will need to use this form to request deletion of your data. Note that even in this case, your data may only be “anonymized” and not deleted, but it’s better than nothing.