An Indian employee has shared their story online, saying that their boss started targeting them after noticing the “Open to Work” tag on their LinkedIn profile. The story was shared on the subreddit r/IndianWorkplace with the title “Height of targeting by boss because I opened myself for work on LinkedIn.”

In the post, the employee explained that they had quietly updated their LinkedIn status to show they were open to new job opportunities. But soon after, things took a bad turn at work.

According to the post, the employee's foreign boss had already done two rounds of restructuring in just 13 months. The company staff went down from 50 to just 7. The employee had survived both rounds and decided to look for better career options by updating their LinkedIn.

But after the boss saw it, the situation changed. “Now he targets me,” the employee wrote. “Says I don’t work a dedicated nine hours just because I come by the clock and leave by the clock. My salary is credited two days after everyone else’s. My work is now scrutinised under a magnifying glass.”

The employee also mentioned that earlier, the boss had trusted them deeply: “I was his sweetheart. He trusted me with work and shared inside information.”

Other Reddit users gave their advice. One said, “Block him on LinkedIn. Keep searching.” Another wrote, “Use LinkedIn’s option to make the ‘Open to Work’ status visible only to recruiters.”

Some users also warned against public job searching. “Don’t put the open to work tag. It actually hurts your chances,” one person said. Another added, “Get the new job, block whoever can jeopardise it, and then unblock them after.”

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