Abstract :
[en] We analyze one million employee reviews in the US, and find that employees are more satisfied in privately held companies than in publicly held companies, and that changes in corporate ownership have minor effects on employee satisfaction except for two cases. Employee satisfaction plummets after a Private Equity firm takes control for the first time (Primary Buy-Out), as documented in the literature, but the largest effect is the decrease in satisfaction after a Venture Capitalist (VC) exits. These effects are not driven by firm age, size, or industry. We estimate a Structural Topic Model. Before a VC exits, employees are abnormally satisfied, and gripe about the fast changes occurring at the company. After VC exits, employees complain about senior management becoming more controlling and less supportive. Our findings bode well with the theories of Venture Capital as a company standardization device. Finally, we show how ChatGPT can generate an automated human-like summary of employee views which corroborate and substantiate these results.
