Replacement for Glassdoor and Indeed

Has anyone noticed how useless Glassdoor and Indeed have become?

To start with, you need an account. To even get started. To read a few reviews. Really?

Then there’s the obvious: Not every review gets published. In particular those that make companies not look good. Honi soit qui mal y pense. There’s a lot of speculation out there why that’s the case, so I’m not going into details. But if honest reviews aren’t published, then it perverts the purpose of a review site.

Those reviews that do get published are useless. For the company that I work for (a large stock exchange with HQ in NY), there are only maybe 10 reviews in the span of the last 5 years that actually mention something substantial. Every other review is limited to “Pros: Fruit and the view from the balcony” and “Cons: Train management better”. Some even have nothing written, only a star rating.

And I get it: What else could you write that would be published? You could write about their office narrative they call “workplace culture” (hint: it isn’t a culture, for a culture requires some level of sophistication to begin with). You could write about the outright toxicity of some managers. You could write about the social injustice that is promoted within the company. Or the two-faced-ness of the entire premise of “access to financial markets for all”. But anything that is substantial and would actually help applicants to discern whether this is a good shop to work at, wouldn’t get published.

So we stick to the banalities. The obvious things. You get a piece of fruit. They pay your gym membership. Well, at least part of it. They provide coffee, tee and dry cookies. And some people are not so great.

That’s it.

Does this help?

I think not.

Therefore, this blog is reserved for the spicy things…