Looking at my LinkedIn network of over 200 people, most people have been at more than one organization. If you take a random sample and interview you are bound to hear politically correct stories like

• I wanted more money.
• I felt under appreciated.
• I did not get along with my boss.
• I found a better opportunity.

Or you might find out that the person felt like they had their soul sucked out by Dementor kisses. Glassdoor.com is the place to air their filthy laundry about employment experiences anonymously. Registered users can review their previous position and talk about the benefits and gotchas of the employment experience. Registered users can also see the salaries for various positions within the companies.

There is a catch. In order to register, a person needs to contribute a review of one of their positions. I see this as a barrier to the success of the site. With smaller companies, it will be easy to tell who posted the review as they will be one of the only people with that particular position. If the industry is somewhat small and incestuous, like advertising for instance, this could harm a person’s reputation and get them blackballed within their industry. My suggested solution is for Glassdoor.com to give people the option of having their held review until they get enough similar at which time they would release. This could protect people from being sleuthed particularly if they are still in the position. Glassdoor could post that they have 3 positions for Logan’s Xtreme Consulting and and need 2 more to publish.

I also think that the CEO approval could be unfair. Polls should be a slice of a particular time period. Of course Yahoo’s CEO is currently embattled due to his handling of potential mergers with Microsoft, but it would be interesting if this was based on opinions over time. It would be nice if a user could see approval over different time periods such as this week, this month and all time popularity.

I spoke to Gregory Ng and we both classified this site as dangerous. If a company ends up with secrets exposed, dirty laundry aired or personal attacks on the site, there will be repercussions and they could ask Glassdoor to remove reviews or prosecute them. If that happens, then the purity of the site is destroyed and the site becomes a parody of itself. The site addesses this by disguising itself as a resource for employers so that they know where they stack up. I do not see companies taking the position that a handful of poor reviews is an impetus for wholesale organizational changes. I would like to hear the corporate PR perspective on the site. As of now, it is probably not any large corporation’s radar screen.