In the past year or so, people started writing about the phenomenon of quiet quitting. It isn’t new, but it somehow became trendy as more people ar...
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This whole "quiet quitting" thing baffles me. What I've seen it described as is the same way I've worked the vast majority of the time at every job I've had over 27 years.
In one of my first jobs, our boss made a big point of us never working outside the hours we were supposed to. They believed totally that work and life should be kept separate, with the latter always taking priority if there were conflicts. I've carried that with me and pretty much stuck to it. It seems perfectly reasonable to me, and I don't understand why you'd want to do otherwise.
You work to live, not live to work.
This attitude is common in western Europe but in the US "success" in your work means more than that. It's an external sign of your (religious) virtue as Max Weber first identified
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protes...
Of course many people do that without thinking about the religious background nowadays because it's deeply embedded in the culture
I tell my anxious juniors all the time when they're talking about shifting their vacation because something went wrong at work or doing some extra hours because they really want to impress: "The only reward for saying yes to everything is burnout".
I 100% agree with that. A loyal company would force you to take vacation and won't bug you on vacation. Having a normal vacation isn't quite quitting.
I leave work every day around 3pm and my boss is 100% OK with that. I need to spend time with my kids. I make up for this later and they get me.
"Quiet Quitting" is a phrase used to get people back into the office after COVID and nothing else.
Middle management and executives think employees are remote working as a result of the pandemic, but in reality, the pandemic just accelerated a shift that was on the horizon.
IMO remote working is here to stay, and people can throw around as many new phrases as they want, but it won't change the fact that people are more productive from home.
Edit: Totally agree with @estahn too. Commutes are a total waste of time now that we have technology to work from home. Not to mention how much cars pollute the environment.
The fact is that some people are more productive at home, some are not. Stating anything else as "a fact" is an evangelism. And evangelism for working from home is no better than evangelism for working from office.
It's kind of pointless to argue with employers about whether remote work improves productivity; at the end of the day, that's the employers problem to figure out.
Making your employees show up at the office is an additional cost, either directly (better pay) or indirectly (employee satisfaction, retention, etc.) and any company needs to figure out for itself whether on-site working is worth paying the price.
The red herring about productivity is just a cheap attempt of getting workers caught up in a conversation about a "common goal" of increasing productivity that they shouldn't be caring about in the first place.
What the conversation should look like is: I drive X hours to work each day, so you will have to pay me Y more to get me to do that. Plain and simple.
By that logic everyone should have got their wages cut during the pandemic as they not had to drive those hours to work anymore.
When I first read "Quiet Quitting" I had assumed it must mean something more like doing no work at all during remote work hours; imagine my surprise when I read what it actually means.
I highly recommend reading or listening to the audiobook "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" By Daniel H. Pink.
It analyzes the science behind what motivates people and speaks to how most "management" in business has been out of touch with the reality of it for decades.
There are a number of case studies. All of them fascinating, and It's written from the perspective of viewing the ideas & practices of "management" as an old operation system in desperate need of an upgrade.
After my experiences working in corporate, then listening to the audiobook several times, I understood the truth of it and haven't even been back to that setting since. I've transitioned to 100% contract/freelance and I seriously doubt I'll ever return to a corporate position. If I do, it will be me interviewing them to determine their worth as an employer, not the other way around.
This right here is the core takeaway of your article IMO.
"But the thing about corporations is the constant restructuring, you can’t develop trust and good working conditions, without building that culture from the top-down. It’s also hard to plug this culture into a company that’s already too big."
No matter how good the people you work with can be, there are always changes made by inept decision-makers that can turn a great work environment into a nightmare. Always wanting to "fix" what isn't broken without any input from those affected most. Large companies that don't have a good culture baked into their mission statement and practices from the get-go can never change their culture for the better, or do so at glacial paces.
Quiet quitting is about decoupling loyalty from my ability to perform well at my job. Most employers want you to be believe that you cannot succeed lest you are loyal. That anything but loyalty is toxic. That just isn’t true and never has been. Loyalty [in the workplace] is a currency that lacks return on investment and people are finally waking up to that.
I feel loyalty is something I give for my own sake. This is similar to my view of Karma. I'm not a believer in that, I think I need to be a good person for my own sake. It makes me feel better spiritually and more productive as a person.
I can't compartmentalize these things. I don't think of this as a currency for which I get an immediate or even an eventual return. Its reward is inherent for me.
Wow this was a surprisingly interesting, nuanced and mature analysis. Thanks a lot.
Also it reminded me of "Exit, Voice, Loyalty" from Albert Hirschman
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voic...
Exactly. Abusive employers call it "Quiet Quitting". But it really should be called "Doing your Job" 🤷.
That's a great insight. I don't like the term "quiet quitting" at all. It's all about doing your job as prescribed, and not more than you're supposed to.
My biggest problem is when employers take you on for a certain salary, and then fail to deliver inflationary pay rises when you're doing the job they hired you for year in year out to a good standard. That figure is, in real terms, shrinking in value every year. They're effectively cutting your pay & hoping you'll not notice & that you'll put up with it. The past few years in the UK inflation was fairly low, but now that Brexit and the pandemic and the Ukraine war are all hitting at once, it feels like we're being mocked, especially when the boss is driving a brand new Aston Martin & you're just hoping your 14 year old Audi doesn't throw its balance shaft drive chain. Inflationary pay rises for good work should be the norm. The company definitely puts its fees up year on year, and they lose so many good experienced workers to other companies by this shortsighted approach. If it takes £3-4K to hire a new developer, why not give half to two thirds that money to the developer you already have, to keep their loyalty and engagement? Worker exploitation is a sure-fire way to get worker disengagement & knowledge rot.
Spoken like an employer. We can talk about loyalty when the business is a worker co-op or collective.
I'm an employer and also an employee. Notice I specifically start and highlight the fact that employers need to be loyal to employees first. For a while. For this to actually work.
I agree, labor unions are a great thing. Not necessarily in the programmer community where the demand is very high and individual contracts offer pretty compelling rewards. In our specific niche people switch jobs too quickly to form a union.
What specifically did I say that was problematic?
Welp, without giving you a list, the core of the issue is I think you're failing to account for the power dynamic involved. There is no amount of "loyalty" an employer can demonstrate that will offset that fact that they exploit the labor of individuals for profit. There are no acts of supposed loyalty that hold any meaning while workers have no say in how a business is run and how the value of their labor is distributed. It's lip service to a two way street where you're the only driver.
Fair. But let me ask you this: if you work for a terrible employer that fires in an instant. Has toxic culture and is overall terrible. Is that the same as working in a company where employees are respected?
Companies where we have 1 on 1 with a manager who actually listens. Where when going gets tough, the brass takes a pay cut instead of firing. When a customer complains the manager backs the employee, etc.
To me both companies are different. Yes, I display loyalty to my manager when I worked in a company similar to the latter. I get a lot of recruiter interest from some companies, I flat out reject those companies because I don't want to work in bad environments.
Again: loyalty is individual. Not to a company. To a manager, to a team. But since it's something that's top down, the corporate environment that breeds that team needs to be supportive of this and facilitate such an environment.
👀👀👀
"Jobs often expect loyalty from us."
"A company needs to declare loyalty as its value..."
"A corporation should stand behind an employee..."
"... you can’t develop trust and good working conditions, without building that culture from the top-down."
"Why show loyalty to a company that will fire you in an instant... Quiet quitting becomes an easy way out"
An awful lot of focus on company / corp in article supposedly about individual loyalties. In the context of "quiet quitting" an individual loyalty should have no bearing on another individual's actions in this regard unless the loyalty is to a person serving as a representative of the company, which is the only entity in this scenario that stands to gain from a shift in this behavior. Your distinction is meaningless in this context.
Because loyalty starts from the corporation even though it isn't directed towards it. The managers I had that presented those excellent qualities were supported by a corporation that helped them. They were backed by corporate policies that enabled this. Their managers show similar loyalty to them and it goes up all the way to the C suite.
If I'm loyal to the manager I'll go above and beyond for that person and I know they will do the same for me since they have in the past.
Uh huh. So you’re “going above and beyond” for that person acting as an agent of the corporation. This is a meaningless distinction.
That's your opinion and I respect that. I feel corporations are basically just a collection of people. They aren't a democracy though, but they can do a lot of good when they're run right. I agree that especially in USA, the incentives are to run corporations "badly".
Personally I'm a very left leaning socialist. I'm pro union. Pro workers rights. Pro democracy and progressive taxation. I'm not against corporations though. I think they can be great when we have good regulators on top of them and good employees within them.
If you're for corporations you're not a socialist. It's in the literal definition OMG.
Not the definition. Sweden, Finland, etc. have multiple large corporations and are socialist democracies. You're thinking about communism.
Social democracy != socialism you absolute liberal.
I think you're projecting stuff that I very specifically didn't say. I never told anyone what they should do.
I did advise that companies should improve their attitude to facilitate better attitude from developers. Whether developers choose to do that or not. That's entirely up to them.
When will we start addressing the "Quiet Firing" that has been going on for centuries now? /s
No /s needed; "quiet firing" is actually a term being used to describe when an employer or manager creates an intentionally hostile and unfair environment for an employee to encourage them to quit. It's very much a real problem.
I meant it more in the sense of "you only get paid what your contract states"
Although I can’t do it because I’m also a workaholic and wired to give 100 percent. Your discussion is the first accurate one I’ve seen of this “phenomenon.” Years ago, people were expected to graduate, work at the same company for decades, and then retire. You gave the company your loyalty and the company did the same. As you said, now companies will fire you at the drop of a hat. If the budget is tight, get rid of people. When we’re flush, hire more people. It’s built into HR/project management lingo. People aren’t people, they’re FTEs (full-time equivalents). You can work your butt off and the best you can expect is a 4 percent raise.
As you said, loyalty is a two-way street. If the company isn’t going out of their way to support you, be loyal to you, or reward you for doing more than expected, then why are the people in the trenches expected to go above and beyond and kill themselves for nothing.
I think a more accurate phrase than “Quiet Quitting” is “Working to live, not living to work.”
So, yeah, while I have a hard time working to the rule, I totally get those that do.
Every definition I've seen of quiet quitting is "doing what you're paid for". I don't understand where the idea that this is bad comes from.
When I worked in a call centre I worked my hours. I got paid for each hour I worked. If I was asked to work more hours, and I agreed, I would be paid for those hours.
Is this localised to America? I'm UK based. I've worked in various sectors. I've never been expected to work extra hours and not be paid, or given time in lieu.
It's doing the minimum that's required. That's fine.
I don't advocate going overboard. I leave work at 3pm to be with my kids. But I'm passionate about my job and if I need to do something extra I try to be as available as possible.
I don't want to work in a 9 to 5 place where I have a fixed set of expectations. I want to feel that what I do matters. The thing is, my employer is loyal to me by letting me leave when I need to even though he stays there until 10pm.
I'm not sure what that means. You like being asked to do things that are not within your job description? You don't want to have a job description? Something else?
I think it irks me that it's been called "quitting" at all. People are "silently not allowing themselves to be driven to burn out" is probably more accurate.
Perhaps the people like us who work for companies that value their employees are the lucky ones.
My specific job is fluid. I'm a developer advocate so the job description is so vague. I love that my managers just trust me to do the "right thing" and always have. It's not about hours, it's about a relationship. It doesn't mean you need to give up work life balance.
I think the term is something that people who do it came up with. I agree, it doesn't represent the actual state of mind.
I very much appreciate the luck I've had in jobs over the years. But some of that luck is due to spirit. I rarely interview. Almost every job I ever held was through a person who knew me from a previous job and brought me in. So I think I made at least some of my luck.
I get that. I've been working in this industry for 30+ a lot of it as a consultant. As such I moved between many organizations. I 100% agree that this is the default and the common situation.
I did experience what felt like the opposite of that. Rare cases of companies where people would come back after moving to a different company. Companies where people actually liked the head of HR because she was great and made us all feel welcomed.
Having said that, this post doesn't advocate being naive. I'm loyal to a good boss, but that also means I feel comfortable enough with having linkedin tuned to always looking for new offers. The difference is, if I get an offer I'll let the existing boss counter offer before I move. The same is true for salary in general, I feel free to ask for a raise when I feel I deserve it.
Notice this is about loyalty from the company to employees most of all. Proper compensation is part of that.
I'm talking about the loyalty of the employer to you. Obviously personal family relations are at a different scale. That's a straw man.
If you just come to the job and take a payment with no emotional or ideological involvement like a salary robot that's great for you.
I think most employees haven't worked in a great working environment which is why people shut themselves out of even the possibility of forming some attachment.
At work my only loyalties are to my craft and other craftspeople.
Why would I be loyal to people who's interests are contrary to mine, e.g. they gain if my remuneration is kept low, or to a legal, i.e. imaginary, person, the corporation?
As a person who hires people I feel loyalty to them. I also feel loyalty towards people who give me a chance. The initial loyalty is the first stepping stone. There are many cases where this is tested. This is something that builds over time.
Yes, I agree. Loyalty to a corporation is silly. Loyalty is always to an individual. But as they say: "the fish stinks from the head". If the corporate hierarchy is disloyal and mean... That attitude trickles down.
Oh nice, yet another tantrum about workers doing their jobs.
That's cool and all, but if it's not in the contract, that's just the employers opinion. You get what you pay for.
There's more to loyalty than not being fired for the smallest thing. Just like employer loyalty goes beyond not quitting at the first inconvenience.
If the best you can offer is "I won't fire you", then don't expect anything more than "I won't quit" in return. What are you actually providing an employee beyond what's in their contract?
That's very true. Loyalty is also expressed in many little things but job security and working in the same job for decades... That's a pretty big thing.
I worked at a tech company where people had 10 or 20 year plaques on their desks. Currently, it's amazing if people last 3 years. A lot of that is by their choice because employees don't respect things like work-life balance.
It's interesting because, it's about contract (trade) versus gift. When an employee is invested in his job, he/she gives more than what the contract says, and this is a gift, to his/her employer, customers, colleagues.
And according to a group of research in France (MAUSS revuedumauss.com.fr/) that has studied it thoroughly, "gift", needs recognition, seeks bonding and it also has within it the need to give back more than was received.
In this sense it is very different from trading where the object is at the center, the subject are interchangeable (it's the contrary for gift, it's subjective, centered on subjects, object is secondary).
This is to say your conclusion is totally in phase with this, as the gift of loyalty, can trigger this strong bonding and trigger more gift.
But of course, this is not to be abused, and even a company should remember that common good, which includes the well being of its employee, should comes first.
If I should recommend one book on this topic, this is "The world of gift" by Jacques T. Godbout
Honestly, if UBI was a thing, I'd have a much more positive position towards this whole "loyalty" concept, because then it'd really be about mutual benefit: The employer provides something beyond basic job security, and the employee provides something beyond basic fulfilment of their duties, aka. both parties get more than stated in the contract.
Yep. And it's even more ridiculous, because the definition is too simple to properly cover up how it literally just means "doing your job and going home".
Anyone who has worked in IT for 10 years or more know that Quiet Quitting has always been a thing. They've just named it now so people recognize it more easily.
I remember, over 20 years ago, I was in QA & there was a developer who we all chatted about because at a certain time every day we would hear snoring come from his cubicle. That's a loud form of Quiet Quitting. 🤪
Quiet Quitting has occurred because there is no reciprocation on the company's (manager's) part. I've worked at large & small companies over 30 years in IT, those companies have been in civil engineering, real estate, legal data, ecommerce, banking and bio tech and every single one of them had terrible middle managers.
They cared about no one, didn't help employees.
Maybe we should've made up a term like Maniacal Management and it would've got some traction.
So, finally someone puts term to the thing that has always happened when employees finally react to the terrible management practices & people think its the employees' fault. Nope. If managers engaged employees quiet quitting wouldn't even be a thing except in rare cases.
In 2008, Seth Godin wrote the book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensible? I read it 2 times right away and then I've read it again each year. If you really want to know about the opposite of Quiet Qutting, read that book.
I've tried to get managers to read the book all those years, but none of them will.
Most employees think being a Linchpin means being over-committed to an employer, but it doesn't.
It means being the best you can be.
I'm a vehement advocate for "quiet quitting." I don't believe it as quitting in any sense of the word. I signed up for specific job duties and I make sure that those are done - but I don't willingly take on anymore. I already don't make enough to keep up with inflation vs what I started the job at (I get a <3% raise at maximum every 12 months) so I'm already making LESS money than I did initially. If they want me to perform above job duties, we can get a position formally written up and discuss additional wages. Until then, I will do exactly what is expected of me and nothing more :)
This isn't even relevant, in my opinion.
I have a job. I'm hired to do certain things, and I'm expected certain hours. These are explained when I'm hired.
If they want me to do more, I should be paid accordingly.
It has nothing to do with how "loyal" the company is to me, or not. It has to do with me getting paid for what I'm doing. Nothing more, nothing less. You want me to work more? Then pay me more.
That's not loyalty. It's just how capitalism is supposed to work.
I can tell you with certainty having worked for some of the biggest names in tech loyalty is a one way street in SV.
100%.
This is my problem here. Employers should focus on that. They look at the current short cycle with employees and assume that's the way things "should" be. But that's just the way things are right now. By investing in employees they can change many hard held beliefs in our industry.
The relationship between employer and employee is just a buy-and-sell relationship: I give you, say, 40 hours/week of my time and competence and you pay me an agreed amount of money. That is. As long as every side does its part, none can expect more from the other.
The idea that since you pay me a wage, I devote to you my entire life (in other words, I am your slave) it is just plainly wrong.
It is like when you go buying grocery: do you really expect that the seller gives you more food for the same money out of "loyalty"? I do not. Sure, every now and then the seller can give me something for free to taste, especially if I am a good customer; but that will be its decision and I have no right to expect it.
Loyalty is gained, Never ask for it!
it's an extra good-to-have or motivate/invest to gain,
it's not in the "contract" 🙃
Great article and nice read, Shai!
Well said, Shai. Well said.
I find that some people naturally like to above and beyond because it's just inherently whom they are by nature.