Robert Hohman

Sausalito, CA

Bob Hohman is the CEO of Glassdoor.com

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Recent Posts by Robert

Where Happy People Go to Work…

Posted by • August 22nd, 2008 • zero

Apparently the energy and utilities sector is the place to be, based on the top 10 list on Glassdoor.com. According to 53,000+ reviews we have gathered in just two months since we launched, more 700 employees in this sector at companies like GE Energy in Atlanta, Georgia and Consumers Energy in Jackson, Michigan are proud to say they like their jobs. On average, employees rate this job sector a 3.5 on a scale of 5 possible points, and CEOs have an average approval rating of 62.1%.

Top ten happiest job sectors:

Energy & Utilities
Environmental Services & Equipment
Insurance
Aerospace & Defense
Agriculture
Banking
Cultural Institutions
Education
Food
Health Care

It’s no wonder when one employee at Valero Energy in San Antonio, Texas writes “Company works with you. You pretty much have a set schedule, but have the availability for appointments. If any questions you can call your boss. If you need an emergency day off, you can call your boss or another manager to fill in. If you are having problems with a task, or a question, you can always call another manager ...

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It’s Not Too Early to Start Planning Your 2009 Pay Strategies

Posted by • August 21st, 2008 • one

In a recent article for The Career Journal in the Wall Street Journal, Sarah Needleman writes about planned compensation increases for 2009 based on the research of many employment consulting firms like Mercer consulting and Watson Wyatt Wordwide.

Overall, the average raise for 2009 is expected to be 3.7% — just slightly below 2008, which was an average 3.8% increase. With the tightening of budgets, how you rate on performance will be more important than ever as “middle of the pack” and “low performers” will likely see less dough. Employers said they plan to give their highest-rated workers — an estimated 14% of their work forces — an average merit increase of 5.6% in 2009. The lowest performers, who represent 7% of workers, are likely to receive just a 0.6% salary upgrade. For someone making $105,000, how you rate at annual review time could be the difference of more than $5000 per year.

So how can you get ahead?

Check in with your boss. If you haven’t had an official mid-year review, make an appointment to see how you’re performance is stacking up to his/her expectations and your peers. Ask if there are things you can do to improve or ...

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CEO Approval Ratings Forecast Job Tenure

Posted by • August 12th, 2008 • more

Could Glassdoor’s CEO approval ratings be an indicator of CEO job security? Magic eight ball says: Signs point to yes – but only time will truly tell. No matter what analogy you use, Glassdoor shows promise as an indicator for CEO longevity based on employee approval ratings.

Case in point: AMD and Alcatel Lucent. The recently ousted CEOs of these companies had a significantly low approval rating. Pat Russo, former Alcatel Lucent CEO held an approval rating of just 5% and Hector Ruiz, former AMD CEO held an approval rating of 8%.

Alcatel Lucent employees stated:

“A once-great company surrounded by the smell of death”
“The future will be ripe with opportunity, all that’s missing is leadership.”
“Poor management makes this a place to avoid.”

And AMD employees under Ruiz commented:

“Fire Hector or at least make him take a salary cut.”
“Hire new senior management.”
“Stop committing company suicide”

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Glassdoor.com update includes new filtering, sorting tools

Posted by • July 30th, 2008 • zero
Deloitte Ratings by Location

Ever wondered which Deloitte office is the best to work for?  Or which Google location is happiest?  Last night we updated Glassdoor.com with new features that make it easier to sort and sift through the more than 48,000 reviews on over 11,000 employers on our site.

For those of you that have been coming back to see the latest reviews for your company, you’re probably well aware of how hard that can be, so we’ve added the ability to sort reviews by date, overall rating, and date + helpful.  That last sort allows you to see the most recent reviews that have been flagged as helpful by other users, another feature many of you were requesting.  But we didn’t stop there – we also allow you to filter reviews by keyword, overall rating, location, and job title.  Want to know how many Microsoft employees in Redmond mention “bureaucracy”?  Now it is simple and easy. (and the answer is – about 10% !)

Here are some interesting charts I’ve put together this morning as I stroll through the data:

Deloitters in San Jose are the happiest, with an overall approval rating of 4.38.  The lowest?  New York City, with an overall rating of ...

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What’s the Best Kept Secret of Top Wage-Earners: Salary Transparency

Posted by • July 21st, 2008 • zero

Here’s a great example of how transparency around salary and compensation in the workplace can be a terrific tool for negotiation for both employees and employers ripped right from the headlines.   Earlier this week it was reported that UBS AG will increase compensation for financial advisers in its wealth management business.  UBS has been losing talent to a competitor with a more attractive compensation package.

If you run in “big bank” circles, news about compensation and who’s offering what travels fast, furiously and freely. Why?  Because everyone stands to benefit from the information.  If you’re talented you want to make sure you’re getting the best deal. Equally, the banks want to remain competitive and recruit and maintain top talent.  This is even more important in today’s competitive economy than in recent history.  Ask yourself why these rules should only apply to the top wage-earners at the most elite firms?  There is no good reason.  No matter what industry you call work, the basic principles of competition and fairness are in play. Salary negotiation is a key component of that process.  Glassdoor is the only site that offers free salary information on a per-company basis.  And, unlike other sites, Glassdoor breaks down ...

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People Want More!

Posted by • June 23rd, 2008 • zero

According to a recent USA Today poll, 94% of readers said they would use Glassdoor.com to post anonymous company ratings and reviews.  Our own research reveals a similar finding – people want more information about compensation and company information – and that’s the whole reason we built Glassdoor.

USA Today Survey

More convincing than research or polls, though, has been the overwhelming response we have received since our beta launch. As of this morning, we are approaching 50,000 company reviews and salary reports for more than 11,000 companies!! We’re already bringing more transparency to the workplace and folks are starting to get a sense of just how powerful this information is. In a recent blog post Oren Hurvitz examined if it would affect Apple’s bottom line if they increased the salary of its engineers, which appear to make less than their counterparts at other leading tech firms.  It’s a fascinating analysis. Condé Nast Portfolio reporter Kevin Maney laments Motorola and spotlights input from employees who joined the Glassdoor community as a key indicator of the company’s woes.  And, U.S. News and World Report’s Liz Wolgemuth offers workers some great tips on what to do now that ...

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First “Review of the Month” winner

Posted by • June 17th, 2008 • one

Last week, shortly after we launched, I had the pleasure of notifying one of our new members that his review had been selected as our first “Review of the Month” – an honor that also came with $500.  You may have seen a note about this award while posting your review, but I think it’s worth mentioning again – both the review and the award.   Every month we are selecting one review for overall quality and thoughtfulness, and for being everything we want Glassdoor to be.  That review wins a place in our history as “Review of the Month” and the user wins $500 to go celebrate.

Our first winning review comes from an employee at Netflix.  What got me about this reviewer was that he had taken the time to offer other users insight that you could only get from being on the inside.  He had distilled his experiences, both positive and negative, into a few paragraphs that really gave an amazing peek inside of Netflix.   Where was this information before?

I personally learned two things from this review – first, that Netflix is a hard-driving, type-A environment.  The reviewer sums it up:

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Keep it comin’….

Posted by • June 13th, 2008 • more

Growth has been phenomenal – when we launched, we had coverage on 250 companies with about 3,300 reviews.

As of this morning, we have:

32,000 reviews…
Covering 6,679 companies…
Representing 84 countries around the world…
With people in more than 165 countries visiting glassdoor.com

When we launched, we made a commitment to inspect every single review by hand – and we’re doing exactly that.  In fact, we’ve found that we’re rejecting 1 or 2 out of every 10 reviews because they violate our community guidelines in some way, are clearly bogus, or are someone trying to post duplicates, etc.

As we had hoped, the community is helping us to keep content accurate.  We accidentally let an intern’s salary flow into Apple’s fulltime salary chart, and someone caught it and emailed us in under 3 minutes!  Needless to say we fixed it in the next 60 seconds.  If you see something suspicious, don’t hesitate to flag it to us at content@glassdoor.com and we will investigate.  (and we will have easier flagging tools in the near future on the site)

If you’ve posted a review and haven’t seen it on the site, know that we are working furiously to get content approved.  To be honest, we’re a bit buried under this ...

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What a first day…

Posted by • June 11th, 2008 • more

What a day! We all remember the first day of a new job and at Glassdoor, we’ll certainly never forget our first day.  It’s been a busy one and I know many visitors had some slow first encounters with the site as we adapted to public life, but I think we’ve got it under control now.  (Although we are still behind sending registration validation emails because of a mail server glitch, which has been fixed - if you haven’t gotten yours, or got more than one, we really apologize - we will be caught up shortly.)p>

In just a matter of hours today, we collected more than 10,000 new reviews, and they continue to come in rapidly.  If you haven’t seen your anonymous review or salary details post to the site yet, don’t worry - we’re still making our way through the backlog and you’ll likely see the information uploaded soon.

Since we came out of the gate at 8:45 p.m. PDT June 10, 2008, we’ve had

more than 1,200,000 page views
more than 10,000 new salary reports and reviews…we’re rapidly approaching 15,000, or about 5x where we started
3,000 new companies received first content…bringing the total companies with data to more than 3,250…. and growing and growing
...

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Wow!

Posted by • June 11th, 2008 • more

Thanks to everyone for the interest in our site and your feedback. We have had a tremendous amount of web traffic, and received more than 600,000 page views before noon!

We are experiencing some hiccups and we are working fast and furiously to iron them out.

In just a few hours this morning, with your help, we have more than doubled our salary and review content, and they will be posted live over the next 48 hours as we review content.

Thanks so much for your patience as we work through these growing pains. Email us at info@glassdoor.com with any questions.

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