Understanding Start-up Employees’ Communicative Behaviors on an Employer Review Website: A Comparison of TikTok and Snapchat

ABSTRACT To provide insights into start-ups’ reputation management, this study aims to explore how employees of a start-up, being, in a broad sense, an entrepreneurial firm, evaluate their employer on an employer review platform. Specifically, it compares the reputational opportunities and challenges of TikTok as a start-up and Snapchat as a more established company in the same industry. It explores the cognitive and evaluative representations employees associate with their employers in reviews. To do this, a total of 644 English-language employee reviews were collected from Glassdoor, an employer review platform on which former and current employees anonymously post reviews about their organizations. Content analysis was then conducted, unveiling 14 thematic topics. The top three most frequently mentioned topics were work environment, co-workers, and salaries and benefits. A comparison of the two companies showed that TikTok received a proportionately higher number of positive reviews about career progression opportunities, work environment, and office and location. However, it also received proportionately more negative reviews on work arrangements, salaries and benefits, and intrinsic rewards. Theoretical and empirical implications are discussed.