Do You Get Fired For Blogging When At Telstra?
This one has been hitting a touch close to home as I've watched it happen over the last week.
Tom Roberts, a Telstra employee and blogger on Telstra's public Now We Are Talking blog (a corporate blog that is allegedly 'honest'), was fired last week. Cam Reilly first broke the news on Wednesday last week, News.com.au were quick to pick up on it, and then Cam pointed out that only a week later Telstra removed all evidence of Tom's blog (and it's disappeared from the Google cache too).
And today Mark Jones published a story in the Australian Financial Review (that I went out and bought so I could read the story - you have to pay for AFR content online) about it, showing that it's still unclear as to why he was fired. I'd scan it in so people could read it, but that's probably illegal, and I don't need the AFR coming down on me for copyright infringement :)
The reason that it's become a big deal is that he was sacked not long after publishing a blog post about how he was going to start being completely frank and open about the bad as well the good about Telstra, admitting fault and trying to come up with solutions and soliciting feedback from readers.
And now he's gone, and all evidence is removed.
So why do I care?
Until I started at Readify a couple of months ago I was a Telstra employee. I never actually tried to find an official company blogging policy, but that was simply to keep myself off the radar. On my blog I mentioned once only (maybe twice at most) who I actually worked for. To be honest, I was scared to admit it - both because it was embarrassing admitting that I worked for a company that I had so little respect for *grin* but also I because I didn't want to be a target.
Don't get me wrong, the department I was in was great, and I loved working there. It was a fun and challenging time with a lot of great things to work on and awesome people to work with. But it stopped as soon as you crossed the boundary of the building I was working in. The 'company' that was in the ether outside my building I had no respect for nor interest in. I saw too much red tape, poor decisions, hours wasted and money squandered to have any other attitude. As I said, I loved where I was, so I certainly didn't to rock the boat and lose my pay packet :)
While no-one still seems to know exactly why he was fired, I can't help but think that I now made the right move in never mentioning my employer on my blog. If I wrote a post like this 3 months ago, would it be noticed in by someone in corporate Telstra-land? Would they start trying to track me down? It wouldn't be hard - I might have never mentioned Telstra by name, but I don't disguise my name, and all Telstra employees can find any other employee with a simple intranet search.
I'm sure there's Telstra employees out there that don't agree with me, and that's fine. We all have different perceptions and opinions, and I can only go by my own experiences. But when it came to my blog, I rarely felt safe. I was always very careful to just say 'at work', or 'the guys I work with'. Or 'I'm working on something that does <insert vague generic description here>'. You know, just in case...
But anyway Tom, I hope you find a better, higher-paying job where you're allowed speak your mind without looking over your shoulder. I know I have. I honestly hope you fired for something that warranted it (awful as that sounds) rather than what everyone is surmising and that you get fired if you speak ill of Telstra. If it is true, then it's simply disgusting, and I hope you can sue them for unlawful dismissal.
I still miss my old department though. They really were good times.