6 ms·

After ‘quiet quitting,’ here comes ‘quiet firing’

21 points by tekdude 4y ago

As_You_Wish 4y ago
I have never worked more than the agreed upon contract. This is NOT quiet quitting. I'm not going over and above, why don't YOU go over and above and instead of paying me $125K per year, pay me $500K? Or pay a vendor twice what the contract said that your company owes them? It's ridiculous. I always manage up, though. Most managers, not all, are going to take your feedback. I'll tell a manager that under no circumstances would I cancel a vacation or anything else for a job. And, most managers I've ever had would never expect that, nor expect me to work from 6 am to 8 pm every day.
nicbou 4y ago
On one side, you have people doing what they're paid to do. On the other you have people creatively firing them, an illegal practice in some countries. I really don't get why quiet quitting is even a term. It's just people not exceeding expectations as a default.
- mistersquid 4y ago
  > I really don't get why quiet quitting is even a term. “Quiet quitting” is a labor-hostile way of describing what labor advocates call “work to rule”. “Quiet quitting” has different connotations than “work to rule” which give the managerial class a handle to oppose the leverage knowledge workers gained during the pandemic vis-a-vis remote work. Workers should counter the term “quiet quitting” with what it really is, “work to rule”.
  - awillen 4y ago
    Except labor was the group that came up with the term "quiet quitting." Also, I'd say "work to rule" is also pretty bad from a branding/comprehension perspective, given the multiple meanings of the word rule. I suppose it's meant to mean "do the exact work required by the rules governing your job and no more" but grammatically the sentence reads as though it's referring to the verb form of the word - i.e. "work in order to become a ruler within the organization."
    - mistersquid 4y ago
      > I suppose it's meant to mean "do the exact work required by the rules governing your job and no more" but grammatically the sentence reads as though it's referring to the verb form of the word - i.e. "work in order to become a ruler within the organization." “Work to rule” is an elision, short for “work according to rule”.
      - awillen 4y ago
        Right, so sounds like I understood the meaning there. The point still stands, though - it's a grammatically ambiguous phrase, which is a bad quality when you're looking for a shorthand way to communicate an idea.
        SlickNixon 4y ago
        Don't think grammatical ambiguity in the names of labor tactics is a significant bottleneck here.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    Yeah, for me it was more like working maybe 2 hours a day and then sneaking out early to catch a movie. Moviepass and "quiet quitting" or whatever you want to call it were a match that made for a beautiful summer in 2018.
    - mistersquid 4y ago
      > Yeah, for me it was more like working maybe 2 hours a day and then sneaking out early to catch a movie. Moviepass and "quiet quitting" or whatever you want to call it were a match that made for a beautiful summer in 2018. That’s not “work to rule”. That’s straight up dereliction of duty.
      - RC_ITR 4y ago
        If you're not paid by the hour and not required to be on call (which seems to be the above case), the it's very hard for an employer to argue that you need to be at home, staring at a monitor just in case. You may feel an urge to behave that way.
      - hotpotamus 4y ago
        Or perhaps quiet quitting? It was quiet enough that no one noticed - and this was not a WFH position. Eventually I got laid off (loudly) if that helps. Lay off had nothing to do with my personal performance (at that point it was covid lockdown and we were completely WFH so I generally spent more hours online anyway), but the business just wasn't doing good, hence all the downtime in the previous years. Branding matters, and work to rule and quiet quitting project different brands to my ear.
Quequau 4y ago
This happened to me in 2006 as part of an attempt not to payout a large severance package, so I don't think it's anything new.
ttyprintk 4y ago
From the headline, I’m sure this is a subplot of “Office Space” (1999).
marginalia_nu 4y ago
"Special projects" are a pretty old way of getting rid of employees when firing them is difficult.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
We have become seriously screwed up when we call “working the job you are paid to do” “quiet quitting.” This implies all jobs are under specifying their actual requirements and by proxy under paying for expected labor, and that’s the employees fault - otherwise they’re not just underperforming but “quitting” quietly - quietly because it’s actually entirely satisfactory. What a hideous dystopia.
- system2 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - daniel-cussen 4y ago
    This is factual and I can prove it is that way from the very beginning of the formation of the economy, when compound interest behaves nearly linearly. But not linearly. From the very beginning. There are arrangements and something feels off but it's mostly (it really is mostly) a very good arrangement for all parties. Then the aptly termed late-stage capitalism, which is not a bullshit thing it's a mathematical concept too. Worked it out in detail, without adjectives, connotations, plain. So early game, capitalism is better, late game, communism is better. Really the best is nature the entire time.
  - krapp 4y ago
    Not for the capitalists, only for everyone else.
  - ChrisLomont 4y ago
    Which economic system do you think has proven better at raising standards of living?
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      Standard of living is great and all, but I'd trade a big chunk of it away for a modicum less alienation. Just a scrap of de-alienation is all. Yes, I'm begging.
  - 4y ago
djohnston 4y ago
There's no reason to quiet fire, just raise the expectations. If you set clear expectations and your employee isn't meeting them, that's that. It's quite simple idk why any of this is "quiet".
- As_You_Wish 4y ago
  Raising expectations? What does that even mean? That I was hired to work from 9-5, but now you expect me to work from 6 am to 9 pm? Have fun replacing me because color me gone.
- pixl97 4y ago
  I've seen that employers don't want to have written expectations beyond the bare minimum. They want to list an 'industry standard' job for $X per hour, but have verbal expectations of far more than that along with verbal and implied failures on the employees part that the employee is not meeting expectations. If they wrote down the raised expectations in the first place most prospective employees would give them the middle finger and seek more fair compensation. Instead they love to feast on the type of employee that goes above and beyond at a standard level of compensation. My wife recently left a job like this as a manager. She got a year end review that her performance was 'beyond expectations" and that her output and quality of work was the highest in the company. Not a month later they attempted to write her up on a PIP for not meeting expectations (which was interestingly right before they were assigning bonuses). She fought it, won, got the bonus and immediately left. The company then attempted to put my wife's workload on one of her subordinates with no title change or pay increase. Needless to say that employee quickly left too.
- RalfWausE 4y ago
  And if you are living in a country with reasonable workers rights like germany then "raising expectations" as a reason to firing employees will only lead to a costly appearens before the Arbeitsgericht for the employer
  - djohnston 4y ago
    I would imagine you don't raise expectations with the inten to fire, you raise them because you hadn't set them appropriately before. If there was some assumption that workers would give 110% for whatever, but now you know they'll give 100%, you're certainly free to raise the expectations next performance cycle. Are you saying that's a violation of workers rights?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dv_dt 4y ago
Seems like quiet firing will become a thin veneer over adverse employment actions.

21 points by tekdude 4y ago

I have never worked more than the agreed upon contract. This is NOT quiet quitting. I'm not going over and above, why don't YOU go over and above and instead of paying me $125K per year, pay me $500K? Or pay a vendor twice what the contract said that your company owes them? It's ridiculous. I always manage up, though. Most managers, not all, are going to take your feedback. I'll tell a manager that under no circumstances would I cancel a vacation or anything else for a job. And, most managers I've ever had would never expect that, nor expect me to work from 6 am to 8 pm every day.

nicbou 4y ago

On one side, you have people doing what they're paid to do. On the other you have people creatively firing them, an illegal practice in some countries. I really don't get why quiet quitting is even a term. It's just people not exceeding expectations as a default.

mistersquid 4y ago
> I really don't get why quiet quitting is even a term. “Quiet quitting” is a labor-hostile way of describing what labor advocates call “work to rule”. “Quiet quitting” has different connotations than “work to rule” which give the managerial class a handle to oppose the leverage knowledge workers gained during the pandemic vis-a-vis remote work. Workers should counter the term “quiet quitting” with what it really is, “work to rule”.
- awillen 4y ago
  Except labor was the group that came up with the term "quiet quitting." Also, I'd say "work to rule" is also pretty bad from a branding/comprehension perspective, given the multiple meanings of the word rule. I suppose it's meant to mean "do the exact work required by the rules governing your job and no more" but grammatically the sentence reads as though it's referring to the verb form of the word - i.e. "work in order to become a ruler within the organization."
  - mistersquid 4y ago
    > I suppose it's meant to mean "do the exact work required by the rules governing your job and no more" but grammatically the sentence reads as though it's referring to the verb form of the word - i.e. "work in order to become a ruler within the organization." “Work to rule” is an elision, short for “work according to rule”.
    - awillen 4y ago
      Right, so sounds like I understood the meaning there. The point still stands, though - it's a grammatically ambiguous phrase, which is a bad quality when you're looking for a shorthand way to communicate an idea.
      - SlickNixon 4y ago
        Don't think grammatical ambiguity in the names of labor tactics is a significant bottleneck here.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  Yeah, for me it was more like working maybe 2 hours a day and then sneaking out early to catch a movie. Moviepass and "quiet quitting" or whatever you want to call it were a match that made for a beautiful summer in 2018.
  - mistersquid 4y ago
    > Yeah, for me it was more like working maybe 2 hours a day and then sneaking out early to catch a movie. Moviepass and "quiet quitting" or whatever you want to call it were a match that made for a beautiful summer in 2018. That’s not “work to rule”. That’s straight up dereliction of duty.
    - RC_ITR 4y ago
      If you're not paid by the hour and not required to be on call (which seems to be the above case), the it's very hard for an employer to argue that you need to be at home, staring at a monitor just in case. You may feel an urge to behave that way.
    - hotpotamus 4y ago
      Or perhaps quiet quitting? It was quiet enough that no one noticed - and this was not a WFH position. Eventually I got laid off (loudly) if that helps. Lay off had nothing to do with my personal performance (at that point it was covid lockdown and we were completely WFH so I generally spent more hours online anyway), but the business just wasn't doing good, hence all the downtime in the previous years. Branding matters, and work to rule and quiet quitting project different brands to my ear.

Quequau 4y ago

This happened to me in 2006 as part of an attempt not to payout a large severance package, so I don't think it's anything new.

ttyprintk 4y ago

From the headline, I’m sure this is a subplot of “Office Space” (1999).

marginalia_nu 4y ago

"Special projects" are a pretty old way of getting rid of employees when firing them is difficult.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

We have become seriously screwed up when we call “working the job you are paid to do” “quiet quitting.” This implies all jobs are under specifying their actual requirements and by proxy under paying for expected labor, and that’s the employees fault - otherwise they’re not just underperforming but “quitting” quietly - quietly because it’s actually entirely satisfactory. What a hideous dystopia.

system2 4y ago
[flagged]
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  This is factual and I can prove it is that way from the very beginning of the formation of the economy, when compound interest behaves nearly linearly. But not linearly. From the very beginning. There are arrangements and something feels off but it's mostly (it really is mostly) a very good arrangement for all parties. Then the aptly termed late-stage capitalism, which is not a bullshit thing it's a mathematical concept too. Worked it out in detail, without adjectives, connotations, plain. So early game, capitalism is better, late game, communism is better. Really the best is nature the entire time.
- krapp 4y ago
  Not for the capitalists, only for everyone else.
- ChrisLomont 4y ago
  Which economic system do you think has proven better at raising standards of living?
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    Standard of living is great and all, but I'd trade a big chunk of it away for a modicum less alienation. Just a scrap of de-alienation is all. Yes, I'm begging.
- 4y ago

djohnston 4y ago

There's no reason to quiet fire, just raise the expectations. If you set clear expectations and your employee isn't meeting them, that's that. It's quite simple idk why any of this is "quiet".

As_You_Wish 4y ago
Raising expectations? What does that even mean? That I was hired to work from 9-5, but now you expect me to work from 6 am to 9 pm? Have fun replacing me because color me gone.
pixl97 4y ago
I've seen that employers don't want to have written expectations beyond the bare minimum. They want to list an 'industry standard' job for $X per hour, but have verbal expectations of far more than that along with verbal and implied failures on the employees part that the employee is not meeting expectations. If they wrote down the raised expectations in the first place most prospective employees would give them the middle finger and seek more fair compensation. Instead they love to feast on the type of employee that goes above and beyond at a standard level of compensation. My wife recently left a job like this as a manager. She got a year end review that her performance was 'beyond expectations" and that her output and quality of work was the highest in the company. Not a month later they attempted to write her up on a PIP for not meeting expectations (which was interestingly right before they were assigning bonuses). She fought it, won, got the bonus and immediately left. The company then attempted to put my wife's workload on one of her subordinates with no title change or pay increase. Needless to say that employee quickly left too.
RalfWausE 4y ago
And if you are living in a country with reasonable workers rights like germany then "raising expectations" as a reason to firing employees will only lead to a costly appearens before the Arbeitsgericht for the employer
- djohnston 4y ago
  I would imagine you don't raise expectations with the inten to fire, you raise them because you hadn't set them appropriately before. If there was some assumption that workers would give 110% for whatever, but now you know they'll give 100%, you're certainly free to raise the expectations next performance cycle. Are you saying that's a violation of workers rights?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dv_dt 4y ago

Seems like quiet firing will become a thin veneer over adverse employment actions.