Am I wrong to post personal opinions on a professional network?
Anonymous
Am I wrong to post personal opinions on a professional network?
I have over a decade of experience in the content writing field and have been a manager to several diverse and global teams. But I got tired of the industry and switched to the eLearning industry a couple of years back. Given that I am a professional with expertise in the previous industry, many newbies asked me for advice and tips, so I started using the professional LinkedIn network to write posts for newbies and managers alike with the hopes of helping them navigate uncharted territories and hopefully guide them to be the better version of themselves. While most of the time my posts are from my personal experiences, sometimes they are also influenced by the experiences of close friends. Some of my posts have been about negative experiences as well where I have covertly called out companies without naming or shaming anyone. My network is huge so my voice gets heard and also impacts people in a good way as some companies have changed their behavior after I called them out covertly.
Now since I am still kind of new in my current industry I refrain from posting about it as I don't consider myself an expert yet so all my posts are about my previous industry and experiences. A year back, I wrote a post about how some companies don't respect after-shift hours and it's wrong. I added that managers (I am a manager myself) are accountable for ensuring that teams are not forced to sit after hours to work. Someone sent a screenshot of this post to my CEO who called me up and was unhappy but wanted a clarification. I told them it was a generic post and at the end of it, I had mentioned how lucky I was to be working at my current industry and workplace where people respect each other's time even though we all work from different time zones. My manager told me to just add the company name at the end so it doesn't appear that I am making this company look bad. So I did that. I was curious as to who sent that screenshot though but they didn't tell me.
I have been working for 4+ years at my current workplace, where I am well loved by my bosses and peers a like. I have been told by my bosses and teams that I am easy to work with, respectful, have helped produce record breaking amount of projects efficiently and have been appreciated verbally by the management multiple times. I could not think of anyone who would want to show me in a bad light but I ignored it thinking that I should have mentioned the company name after all since I did say I was lucky to work where I work now. I never post negatively about people I work for or work with.
Six months down the lane, a friend had some terrible experience with a local company who, despite being a senior, was asked to write a piece for an assessment and then was not selected, only to learn that later that piece of assessment was used as a post by that business. This was wrongful practice and I myself have been at the receiving end of this a few times. Because I felt strongly about this, I wrote a very short and simple post stating how some local content companies in my country had this wrong practice and they should be mindful. Now mind you, the business I work for is neither local, or small but us an off-shore office of a company that resides in another country. I work for an eLearning firm and not a content writing firm at all and still someone sent the screenshot of my post to the management AGAIN. My manager took it lightly saying I had clearly stated the country and local market so it doesn't seem like a post about my current company at all but an hour later a seething CEO called me up and threatened to terminate me saying people at office looked up to me and my words mattered. The only reason he said he wasn't terminating me was because my manager put his neck on the line trying to convince him for over an hour that my post was not about them. But he wasn't convinced completely. I had to take that post down and apologize. He was not willing to listen to my explanation.
Since then I have not posted anything on my professional network. Not even educational stuff. I am scared to because I might get fired for an unintentional post. But it's been around a year since this fiasco and I think the management still holds a big time grudge against me as I get nominated but never receive awards, my manager pushed for me to get a promotion twice but was rejected both times on grounds that I could not be trusted to uphold a positive outlook for this company. I checked with HR after this as well but we have no social media policy apart from not posting publicly about company's internal projects. I am so demotivated right now. No one ever mentioned the positive posts I put up about this company before this whole fiasco. Even though I have a team and manager who loves me, I want to switch my job and leave. I can't believe that all it took were screenshots of 2 stupid posts for them to overlook my five years worth of positive contributions to this company. I am heartbroken.
Am I really wrong for posting anything about the market I previously used to work with in general? Do all my posts have to be positive stuff? Why can't I respectfully call out people from my previous industry on a professional network where my voice is heard and creates an impact? I love working in this new industry and I enjoy working with my team but in all my years of work experience, I have never faced such hatred from any management before over such stuff. It's badly impacted my mental health and has shaken my confidence.
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