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My side project: Rank your tech company based on culture
- Ave 13y agoThe white header/light grey body text is very hard to read against that background image.
- madisonhamman 13y agoRoger that. Thanks for the feedback.
- Karunamon 13y agoI like the idea (kinda like a no-frills Glassdoor), but the moment I went to plug in my company, the first thing that pops up is a LinkedIn permissions page. No prior explanation of what the data will be used for, no assurance that my information will be anonymous, nothing. Closed the tab. Please consider supporting alternate signup methods for those of us that don't want personal information tied to reviews. I know you very well may not do this, but if you don't tell people that up front, the mind goes places...
- GeneralMayhem 13y agoSeconded. If you want people to be honest about their employers, tying it to the one place employers are almost certain to see it is a little daunting. I understand if you want to make sure they're actually employees of the place they're talking about, but (a) you should say that, and (b) what's to stop me from faking my LinkedIn?
- madisonhamman 13y agoThanks for the feedback! We're adding a bit about the LinkedIn verification. For this MVP it is an easy way to check (within reason) someone actually works at a place. Sure, they may lie to linkedin, but for the MVP it was an 80/20 decision.
- andreyf 13y agoIn its early days, Facebook used email verification at a certain domain to verify membership to a uni. Perhaps you could do the same?
- madisonhamman 13y agoI like that line of reasoning. I think the anonymity and peace of mind a company has NO way of tracking who visited the site would be degraded with work emails. Most US companies can and do read employee emails...Thanks for the feedback!
- alukima 13y agoAgreed. I just deleted my LinkedIn due to privacy concerns so I couldn't use this if I wanted to.
- madisonhamman 13y agoEXCELLENT feedback - I really appreciate it. We piggy-backed LinkedIn to "build on the shoulders of giants" but agree the explanation is necessary. Thanks again!
- codezero 13y agoAt this point, you might consider a more manual verification of people. Do things that don't scale, remember? :) From experience, you can manually verify a lot and have a very few false positives. You might just require a bit more person to person interaction.
- madisonhamman 13y agoNice point... this is what we do now for HR (paid) accounts... worth considering for sure...
- mattdeboard 13y agoYep, totes. I deleted my LinkedIn account months ago. This service could be pretty useful/interesting/funny to share around the office, but requiring LinkedIn is a killer (in a bad way) for me.
- madisonhamman 13y agoThanks for the feedback. We're looking at other ways now to check if someone works at the company without requiring LinkedIn. We will repost to HN once we add a second verification feature.
- milkshakes 13y agofor what it's worth, this doesn't really seem like an effective way of verifying that someone works for a company in the first place.
- madisonhamman 13y agoThanks for the input!
- mathattack 13y agoYes - this is the problem that most feedback sites have. I believe that Glassdoor uses Facebook as the verification. That way they at least know you are a real person, even if they can't explicitly verify that you actually worked there.
- madisonhamman 13y agoIndeed. We toyed with Facebook login, but we really wanted the current position information, without having to do a domain (work email) verification.
- madisonhamman 13y agoThanks again for the advice - wanted to let you know we updated the site over the weekend with better explanation of LinkedIn, an explicit privacy policy, and an alternate (albeit it a little heavy) way of asking for an account without LinkedIn.
- synaesthesisx 13y agoNeat concept....keep in mind that culture and fit can vary from person to person and you're going to have a range of experiences. What's important is organizing companies based on their culture so people can match themselves better.
- madisonhamman 13y agoThanks for the feedback. This is our MVP so we're interesting in all things related to transparent HR practices... -Madison
- xivzgrev 13y agoYea like what does a score of 80 mean? Maybe company A really values free spirited people, a bunch of people rate them highly because of that, but the reader doesn't like that. How can you make the scores more relevant to a new visitor? I'd personally like a little survey that asks me what I value in a culture, and then calculates a match based on what other people have seen.
- madisonhamman 13y agoInteresting idea- we were interested in the score to start so that companies with great culture can wear it with a badge of honor. Statistically, anything above 50 is above average. 80s, and 90s would be very very good Candid scores.
- michaelochurch 13y agoLinkedIn permwall. No thanks. Flagged.
- bhauer 13y agoI'm no fan of LinkedIn, but flagging seems a bit harsh. I'm not interested in registering, but looking at the sign-up page, it seems signing in with LinkedIn is optional, is it not?
- dapole 13y agoNo, it actually says you need to sign in with LinkedIn to verify you work for the company you say you do(also not hard to fake so don't know why they insist, my bet is this is a LinkedIn employee). No thanks, and no guarantee that your info isn't shared etc. This seems like it has a high potential for abuse.
- madisonhamman 13y agoWe'll add the guarantee your info won't and can't be shared. No account is Candid required, we simply use the LinkedIn API to check that the current position for that would-be reviewer has a current position at the company they are trying to review. As you mention someone could scam that of course. We're working on ways to get even better data (i.e. real current employees). This is our MVP and we wanted to get people scoring companies as frictionless as possible.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dinkumthinkum 13y agoFlagged is a bit much. It is a fair criticism to make that requiring LinkedIn is probably very inappropriate and probably completely counter productive but that is enough I think.
- madisonhamman 13y ago
- jedanbik 13y agoThe first thing I looked for was a geographic search feature. Add this for job seekers like me who want to learn more about the good stuff in their communities!
- madisonhamman 13y ago"Window-shopping" is definitely a driver on the post-mvp roadmap. Geo search is an interesting idea... Thanks for the feedback!
- greatsuccess 13y agoHow about a real response. FUCK YOU
- sytelus 13y agoYour algorithm for calculating final score seems flawed. For example, if I give location as best rating but pay sucks, the company's rating is still pretty good. In reality, pay matters much more than location. You should adopt overall happiness as the final score and leave everything else as details instead of doing average or weighted average of individual score. Also other questions you might want to include: * Do you think, on average, you work with smart people in your area? * Would you recommend this company to your friends? * How do you feel about management/politics/agility? PS: I like the idea of using Linked-In profile. Nice.
- madisonhamman 13y agoVery nice... We surveyed a hundred or so corporate types to settle on our 7 factors... but we do want to experiment with new questions. We also envision a responsive algorithm based on a variety of variables (i.e., questions skipped or ignored repeatedly).
- bradhe 13y agoWow. Searched for 10 well known companies and nothing. Pretty lame. Side project indeed.
- blueskin_ 13y agoPerhaps it's new? </s>
- madisonhamman 13y agoBrand spanking new - Launched last week at LAUNCH Festival in SF.
- madisonhamman 13y agoYup just launched last week. Working on roll out plan now to prime the pump.
- blueskin_ 13y agoShame it needs LinkedIn permissions. How about some kind of privacy policy?
- madisonhamman 13y agoWe'll be adding that shortly. LinkedIn was the 'easiest' way to do a litmus test on whether someone works as a place currently or not. Not perfect, but was a good start.
- Pacabel 13y agoA list of the known companies would be useful, rather than just having to search.
- madisonhamman 13y agoGood point - we're thinking of reworking the main page to scroll more featured/recently scored companies.
- madisonhamman 13y agoThanks everyone for the input! I wanted to let all those who gave feedback know we updated the site over the weekend with better explanation of LinkedIn, an explicit privacy policy, and an alternate (albeit it a little heavy) way of asking to review a company without LinkedIn.