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“Real life at Google has NOTHING to do with what you read in the papers. Management is mostly useless and doesn’t know how to manage projects, let alone people.”

So says an anonymous product marketing manager for the internet leader on Glassdoor.com, a website launched today that lets employees compare salaries and opinions about the places where they work.

The service provides a fascinating insight into corporate cultures in Silicon Valley, a place whose workforce always seems to have half an eye on the next job opportunity.

Google actually gets a pretty good rating as a place to work - averaging 4.2 out of 5 from reviewers.

A user experience designer writes:

“Google is an extraordinary place to work: the perks are second to none, the quality of employees is exceptionally high, and the products are mostly cutting edge and interesting. Google treats its employees very well and believes in leadership from the bottom up.”

That of course matches the public perception of Google, so descriptions that debunk company images make the more interesting reading.

“They will try to work you to death,” says a senior product manager at Cisco Systems (employee satisfaction rating 4.3).

“I would like a few more video games to play and possibly a shuttle in San Francisco just for the SF office but you can’t have the world,” says a more reasonable criticism from a Yahoo employee (satisfaction rating 3.7).

However, Jerry Yang, the chief executive who has been fighting a Microsoft takeover, gets only a 59 per cent approval rating, compared to 88 per cent for his counterpart Eric Schmidt at Google, its biggest rival.

Glassdoor says it reviews all submissions before publishing and requires a valid email address, which does not seem to rule out abuses of the system.

It is not the first to provide a forum to rant about your company and compare notes with other workers. Jobvent.com, Employerscorecard.com, Vault.com and Salary.com all do similar jobs.

Glassdoor is focused on Silicon Valley high-tech companies and New York financial services firms. It also does not try to make itself a source for job classifieds and sees more of an affinity with review sites as people travel from job to job.

“Our beta launch is just the first step toward Glassdoor becoming the TripAdvisor of the workplace,” says Robert Hohman, Glassdoor’s chief executive.

June 11th, 2008 in Internet | Permalink