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Ask Slashdot: My Company Wants Me To Astroturf, Should I?
An anonymous reader writes "Posting as AC for obvious reasons. The company I work for put an app in an app store. The marketing people think it isn't selling very well, so they sent out an email asking people to get on all their social media sites and friend or like the app to build up traffic. The thing is, most of the employees have not used the app, but we are being asked to say that we like it. We just saw stories about companies not being allowed to ask employees or interview candidates for access to social sites, but what does it mean when a company asks employees to astroturf? Will the marketing or HR people look at who has astroturfed, and who has not at raise time? How would you deal with this?"
Things are that bad at RIM and AppWorld, eh?
Look, if Thorsten wants you to astroturf, he should at least offer some examples.
Trolling is a art,
liars are liars.
there is only one answer ...
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Putting the obvious moral issues aside, how loyal to this company are you? If the answer is "not very" then I think you already know what you should be doing (i.e, looking for another place of employment). If, however, you are a loyal employee, then suck it up & just do what they ask...finding a place to work that you actually enjoy is tough, especially in this economy.
As a fellow anonymous, representing the big E and the A, we get it in our inboxes daily to astroturf our products.
This seems to be a common practice nowadays, and I guess it shows you have some faith in your product. I have nothing against it as long as you like what you are doing. If you don't like astroturfing for your stuff, then don't.
What concerns me though is that you seem to be not very keen on this app. Care to elaborate why?
I worked at a company where we were actively told to astroturf. It was a bad sign because the product sucked and instead doing something about the criticism, they buried their head in the sand. The criticism was completely well founded. My advice is to not worry about astroturfing and start looking for a new job. Your management isn't looking to fix problems, just cover over them.
Can't say that I would do it.
The problem is the original poster, not the policy, at least so far. The original poster is an epic fail because:
The thing is, most of the employees have not used the app
You have to do that before you can decide what to do with:
we are being asked to say that we like it.
Note that you don't have to like the genre to say the product is best in class, or at least somewhat "like-able". Many years ago I was asked my opinion of an ethnic food product my former employer sold; I can't stand that kind of stuff, but I could honestly say my employers individual product was an excellent example of the genre. If I had to eat this junk in general, this is the one I'd eat. This is your out if the app is something like a female ovulation calendar app or kids educational app or whatever.
I deleted my facebook account years ago, but the social norm at the time was some dude you sat next to in 8th grade once is a "friend" and anything vaguely novel is "like", so its not as if they're asking you to get a tattoo on your forehead or become a booth babe. The standard for "like" an app is probably "it didn't make my phone catch fire, so thats good enough".
If its just too rancidly repulsive to appeal to you, or in your opinion, anyone, you need to run like hell and start emailing resumes because:
1) They're obviously grasping at straws if its so awful they have to pay people $75K/yr (or whatever) to grudgingly admit they like it.
2) After grasping at straws comes the layoffs, downsizing, bankruptcies, etc, next week. So get a jump to it.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
When marketing (or most anyone else) sends an email to the entire company, ignore it. Duh.
Twice, actually. Once it was actually my project being shilled (I liked the project and thought it was useful - though I did end up getting fired from there, I'll still gladly tout its benefits in the appropriate context), and once I hadn't bothered trying the product. The latter one sucked, and I told the other team exactly why, and how I thought it could be improved. I got called into a meeting with other employees who'd complained, and the project lead took notes while we ran through the demo showing what we didn't like. The project went back for another round of revisions, and eventually came out much better for it. I never talked about the project publicly, and didn't get fired, either.
Dishonest ass-kissing will get you promoted, because you make bosses like you personally. Honest critiquing with respect for politics will get you respect, because you show that you're dedicated to the company goals.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.