Most of the career advice out there cautions employees from saying anything negative about their managers or company out in cyber space. But there are times trashing your boss on Facebook or Twitter is OK.

For the past few years I’ve been writing about how the government was pushing back on employers who fire employees for saying bad things about them online. A story I wrote for TheAtlantic.com in 2010 looked at how the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an independent federal agency that defends employee-organizing rights, was beginning to step up and take complaints from workers who felt they were fired unjustly.

The NLRB felt companies were beginning to violate a long-existing provision of the National Labor Relations Act that provides protections to employees who get together and complain about a host of workplace issues - everything from conditions to benefits. Just because the discussions occur in cyber space doesn’t make a bit of difference, Jonathan Kreisberg, the NLRB’s Regional Director in Connecticut, told me then.

Well, it looks like the agency has solidified it’s standing on this topic. (more…)

I know a lot of you don’t take Twitter seriously, but a recent rogue tweet by a once-prominent CEO proves otherwise.

Jack Welch, the former head of General Electric who went on to make a career for himself as a writer for a host of business publications, decided to take his political fervor for Mitt Romney and trash the staff at the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS.

You see, he was apparently upset that the BLS’ unemployment data for September showed a drop in the jobless rate and wrote a tweet that questioned the integrity of the BLS numbers.

Here’s his tweet:

“Unbelievable jobs numbers…these Chicago guys will do anything…can’t debate so change numbers.”

I was particularly perturbed over Welch’s tweet because I know many of the folks at the BLS and they’ve always seemed to have the utmost integrity no matter which administration they served under. But clearly, Welch has a right to say what ever the heck he wants.

But, and here’s the big but, it can end up hurting your career, as it appears to have in Welch’s case. (more…)

No matter how many stories and blog posts I write about not mixing politics and work, people still keep asking me whether it’s a good idea or not.

Yes, this is America, land of free speech. But folks when you go to work today you’re not protected if you spout off about the Republican convention, or any other political topic.

The First Amendment says Congress can’t pass laws curtailing speech, but taking political sides or appearing to take sides can be hazardous to your employment, even if you’re not doing it during work time. There is no free speech in the private-sector workplace.

To make matters worse many of you are not only engaging in political conversations with co-workers face to face, many of you are also increasingly using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, or blogs, e-mail and instant messaging, to get your opinions out this political season.

This from ‏@VCUPav on Twitter today:

“Gov Christie is so fat he doesn’t follow polls, he changes them by altering planetary alignment.”

While this one is funny, if I read another how-fat-is-New-Jersey-Governor-Chris-Christie joke I’m going to scream.

And you definitely don’t want to make your co workers or managers scream.

Here’s a scenario a lawyer from Proskauer, one of the top labor law firms, sent me yesterday:

(A man returns to his office from a lunchtime rally decked out in campaign buttons supporting a candidate or political party. On the way to his desk, he enters into a heated discussion with another employee with opposing views. His boss asks the man to remove the buttons and refrain from engaging in politically-charged debates at work. He refuses, asserting his right to “free speech.” Who’s in the right?) (more…)

You would think a Google employee would know how to use Google+, the search engine giant’s social networking site and its answer to Facebook.

Alas, this week a Google engineer named Steve Yegge posted a manifesto ranting about everything that’s wrong with Google on Google+ for all the world to see.

The rant is now gone from his Google+ page but thanks to the never-ceasing Internet, a host of publications have posted it yet again for all the world to see. Here’s a particularly bad part where he dogs Google’s head honchos:

Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo).

We all don’t get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood. The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought. We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call.

He is now claiming he didn’t mean to post it for public view but thought he was posting it internally.

I posted a long opinionated rant tonight about how I think Google could be doing a much better job of thinking from the ground up in terms of services rather than products. Sadly, it was intended to be an internal post, visible to everybody at Google, but not externally. But as it was midnight and I am not what you might call an experienced Google+ user, by the time I figured out how to actually post something I had somehow switched accounts.

So, should this guy, who toils into the wee hours of the night for his employer, get fired? (more…)

Social media is a great thing and employers know it. That’s why so many companies are using services such as Twitter and Facebook to get the message out about their products and services; and also getting their own employees to tweet and post comments in an effort to promote their wares.

A reader recently wrote me that he uploaded something personal on his company Facebook page by mistake. He ended up deleting it immediately, but wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t caught his error.

What would have happened? That’s the big question. Employees are sort of in the dark on this because so many employers don’t even have policies regarding social media use. A new study of multi-national employers found that (more…)

Conventional wisdom has been that you err on the side of caution when it comes to putting anything out there in cyber space, especially if it relates in anyway to your employer. The thinking has been, “you never know when the boss is watching.”

That idea is slowly changing as the government continues to scrutinize employers who fire workers for exercising their free speech rights on social networking sites, especially when it comes to dogging your employer. The way officials at the National Labor Relations Board see it, Facebook and Twitter are no different than traditional water-cooler chatter.

Basically, if workers get together to discuss working conditions at their employer that’s considered protected speech under the nation’s labor laws. So, doing the same on the Internet is no different, the federal agency argues. (more…)

By Evelyn Hayman

I don’t particularly care if Bob is at the mall, or Stacy has visited Burger Heaven ten times in the past two weeks, or if Jane has been to three different grocery stores today.

Welcome to the new, annoying world of location-based social networking. Now you can know where your friends are every second of the day whether you want to or not. And if you connect with people at work, your coworkers and boss may also know that you’re sipping on a latte at Starbucks when you should be finishing that overdue report.

Am I square for hating Foursquare? (more…)

Did you know January is one of the best months out of the year to ask for a promotion?

It turns out, most employees in the United States get promotions in January, June and July, according to LinkedIn, which tapped into its data base of 90 million professionals to figure out when most of you get promoted.

And the data also found that the promotions cycle for professionals is gradually changing due in part to millennials or professionals that were born in the 1980s. Millennials are the professionals who are the most likely to be promoted throughout the year (rather than just in January which is the case for most professionals)

“LinkedIn was launched in 2003, but our data allows us to identify professional trends that span decades,” said DJ Patil, LinkedIn’s chief scientist. “By shedding light on professional patterns, we hope to help our members achieve their career goals by using LinkedIn in the most effective and productive way possible.”

So, you have just a few days left to angle for a promotion if you want one before the summer.

If you want some tips on asking for that promotion, check out this column I wrote on the topic. Good luck!

Social media, including blogging, Twitter, Facebook and the rest, have given people everywhere a chance to make themselves heard and express themselves like never before. It’s a new age of freedom of speech but your employer wants you to shut your cyber mouth.

Things are happening so fast on the Web that companies are both embracing social networking when it comes to promoting their products and services, and simultaneously kicking it to the curb when it comes to average working stiff’s privacy rights. Two recent cases, which I discuss below, involve workers who were using social networking and got a pink slip for their efforts; and it’s just the beginning of a Internet privacy battle that will rage in our nation’s workplaces in the months and years ahead.

We’re literally watching the world change before our eyes and it’s unclear if worker privacy will triumph or die, said Scott Peterson, a labor attorney for Tully Rinckey, a law firm that represents employees. “Because things are changing so quickly it’s becoming difficult for employers and employees to manage expectations of what is and is not allowed,” he explained. “The bigger issue is to what extent do employees have the right to express opinions?” (more…)

We all get upset when we apply to a job posted on a job board and get crickets in return. It’s a frustrating reality of today’s job market. Hiring managers are inundated with applicants right now and, while I’m not letting them off the hook too much, it’s sometimes impossible to even read through all the resumes, let alone get a back to you.

That’s why recruiters at some of the top companies in the United States are scaling back on the number of jobs they post on job boards like CareerBuilder and Monster, and that means you all are going to have to step away from the job boards.

It’s long been known that most jobs are filled through networking not help wanted ads and job boards, but now more than ever hiring managers are rethinking job boards and reaching out for some sort of connection with a job seeker. The big focus now — LinkedIn. (more…)