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The 'Quiet Quitting' Phenomenon
- x3n0ph3n3 4y agoThis term is so incredibly stupid and obviously inflammatory. When I first heard it, I thought it was someone going on vacation and just never coming back to work (I had someone do that). Work-to-rule is a long-standing and better description of the phenomena being described.
- adhesive_wombat 4y agoI'm not sure it's exactly the same, because WtR is generally a concerted, collective overt thing and a way to exert industrial action without a strike (which isn't always legal, possible or desirable). The point is to point out how much all the staff are doing "over and above" and aren't being compensated or recognised for. "Quiet quitting" seems more like an individual doing the same but without an intention to exert pressure on the employer, but just do the minimum (or do precisely what they're paid to, depending on perspective) and clock off. It's not even the classic, decidedly un-quiet "fuck you, pay me". Certainly, as said a million times, it's not a new phenomenon. The shaming around it appears to be fairly new.
- mmh0000 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule
- htrp 4y agoDoing the job that you were hired for shouldn't be considered "quitting"
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- flerchin 4y ago"Accomplishes assigned tasks during working hours" is not a labor action. Granted, many teams would never ship if all they did was their assigned tasks. The vast majority of software development is undiscovered scope.
- cardamomo 4y agoI suggest reading up on Work-to-rule. Another commenter has already linked to the Wikipedia article.
- deegles 4y agoI saw a few tweets talking about "quiet promotions", where employers give you more work and responsibility without a raise in pay or title. They should look into that phenomenon as well.
- channel_t 4y agoI definitely experienced this at a company I worked at for 7 years, starting out very junior but ultimately taking on responsibilities primarily reserved for the highest paid lifers. The only option was to move on. Now I work on far simpler and mundane projects for much greater compensation.
- apohn 4y agoI had a good chuckle at this one. Every job I've ever had is like this. Even if you get a promotion and a raise, the raise will be a fraction of what somebody getting the same title from outside will get. So what's the point? It's easier to switch jobs.
- rhacker 4y agoThe whole thing is a big journalism marketing thing. Since QQ I have now seen Quiet Firing and Quiet Hiring.
- TillE 4y agoIt's genuinely a fascinating case study in how a homogeneous mainstream media wields near-total control over public discourse. If they want to push a specific topic at a certain angle, by god they're going to do it, and unfortunately a lot of people are going to accept it mostly uncritically.
- tmpz22 4y agoThis feels like an attempt to shift public opinion in favor of return-to-work companies by attributing "laziness" to their employees. If you demonize workers as "lazy" you can treat them much worse then if they are viewed as the bread-winners.
- discardedrefuse 4y agoI agree. The pendulum swung, ever so briefly, in favor of the workers and this is just part of corporate retaliation.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoI can't help but think of the productivity-pay chart[1] and think, "meh." 1. https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
- pojzon 4y agoHow much that productivity has increased due to automatization of laborous tasks ? > Data are for compensation (wages and benefits) of production/nonsupervisory workers in the private sector and net productivity of the total economy. Why pay more when a machine can do the same cheaper ? Its pure capitalism.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoWhy do more when you'll be replaced by a machine anyways?
- elcamino44 4y ago> How much that productivity has increased due to automatization of laborous tasks ? For sure some of it. As well as education of the workforce and the changing nature of work. Either way, the reality is that the benefits have largely gone to capital, rather than labor. And that’s just how the system works, which is why strong unions are important.
- _dw7s 4y ago> Why pay more when a machine can do the same cheaper ? Its pure capitalism. Why work more when the pay is the same? Its pure capitalism.
- antisthenes 4y ago> Why pay more when a machine can do the same cheaper ? Its pure capitalism. Why work harder when the gains are captured by the owner of the machine? It's not like the owner is working harder, the machine is performing the labor, right?
- xwdv 4y agoHow can we counteract quiet quitting? Perhaps if an employee is fired due to performance that doesn’t match their peers they can be liable to pay back certain amount of wages from the past few weeks?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sokoloff 4y agoEven in the US (which is not particularly biased towards employees), employees are due the wages for the time they weren't fired. One of the quickest and surest ways to find yourself in deep trouble as an employer is to attempt to withhold wages. If an employer is unhappy with an employee's performance, they may choose to fire them on that basis, but no matter how much of a clown they think they were, you pay them for the time employed.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- adhesive_wombat 4y agoCongratulations, you have acscended to MBA level 3 and have (re-)invented stack ranking. A good way to make sure all your employees are miserable, and spend all their time in-fighting, jostling and sabotaging.
- remote-dev 4y agoI am assuming you're joking, but in the event you are not I can add some commentary here. If an employer wants employees willing to go the extra mile, then they should offer compensation for those who choose to go the extra mile. This could come in the form of a performance bonus. The people who simply want to do the work they are paid to do and nothing more/less (i.e. the people the media is calling "quiet quitters") will get no additional bonus. The name "quiet quitting" is disingenuous, as it leads you to think that it means someone is "quitting" when in fact they are just doing what they are paid to do.
- manicdee 4y agoCatch more flies with honey than vinegar.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throwaway743 4y ago"Act your wage". Nothing wrong with that. What is wrong, is when employers try to exploit their workers for more labor without a wage increase to match.
- paxys 4y agoPeople seem to be conflating "quiet quitting" with not doing the job/wanting to get fired (as can be seen from the Office Space example in the article), whereas the term refers to not going above and beyond at your job. Quiet quitting = I am paid to do X, so I will do exactly X, not X + Δ needed for a promotion. If you want me to do more then pay me more. The fact that people choosing to do this is newsworthy shows just how much corporate culture and corporate propaganda has taken over our society in the last few generations.
- pojzon 4y agoSo it should be called “Quietly doing my job”. Its called “quitting” to impose negative thoughts about ppl who just do what they were hired for. Going beyond and above can cause burnout and boss is the one who gets the promotion either way. Regular worker appreciation is rare. Even monkeys understand what is fair and what is not.
- ok_dad 4y agoYet another fucking term to attempt to shovel the blame for disinterest onto the worker, rather than the management and executives who have done every single thing they can to optimize the worker to the cheapest point they could and cut them out of the decision process.
- ianai 4y agoThere's another term recently coined, too, "quiet firing." (I disagree as it's not particularly quiet.) This is when management singles out someone with loads of work, gaslighting, and generally constructively dismisses them but says they're not under the guise of the Performance Improvement Plan - and variations thereof.
- ok_dad 4y agoYea, I’ve been through that, even trained my replacement who was supposed to be a coworker.
- ianai 4y agoI'm very sorry. I've been through it, too. I suspect "quiet firing" has a much higher prevalence in the past/present than anything on the employee side.
- mc32 4y agoReminds me of the IT staff at UCSF who had to train their replacements… few months later they were having issues with their remote help and I believe they started recruiting a few locals with the bulk remaining non-local. I would have my team quit en-mass. I would not help dig my own grave with the promise of enhanced severance. Eff that! Training your replacements should be considered cruel and undue psychological burden on a fired worker (I mean outsourced staff).
- ianai 4y agoI think that usually flies because "if you quit then you don't get unemployment." For sure, it should be illegal. It'd be like me, as a consumer, trying to get Microsoft to teach Google how to make an Excel replacement under some support contract.
- oytis 4y ago"You’re still performing your duties but you’re no longer subscribing to hustle culture" Why is it called quitting at all? That's just... doing your job. Work-to-rule is a form of sabotage where one in fact doesn't adequately perform while maintaining formal obligations, but the idea of "quiet quitting" is as I understand it from this article is to perform your duties in good faith, just not more. I thought it was called work-life balance.
- listless 4y agoI’m all for this. My compensation is very performance based and the highest performers get the biggest payout. When people do this is makes it much easier for me to get a bigger chunk of their bonus. It’s cynical, but it’s honest.
- falcolas 4y agoThen you, and your company, are exceptions. This is how it should be everywhere. It’s not. Thus, work to rule and nothing more.
- mattgreenrocks 4y agoAs the article mentions, I fail to see why this is even a thing. The only reasonable explanation is the meme was birthed by TikTok and then self-justified by traditional media repeating it enough. Thus, it is no surprise that it doesn’t reflect reality.
- falcolas 4y agoIts a thing because too many companies survive only because their workforce regularly goes above and beyond their job description. If too many people work to rule, the company will not survive.
- avip 4y agoQuiet quitting == millennials so detached from reality they post things on social media instead of grabbing their manager for 1-1 about work/life balance and mutual expectations.
- fortylove 4y agoAll the blue collar millennials I know work far harder than their blue collar baby boomer counterparts.
- hollywood_court 4y agoAnd for far less compensation as well. The blue collar trades are nothing like they were during the boomers time. If you don’t live in an area with a union, the only true way to be successful as a tradesman is to work for yourself.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- keyle 4y agoDeflation will do that to people. You earn as much, but it can buy less, your dreams are fleeting, you see how the system is rigged, etc. It's perfectly normal for those people to mentally checkout from a non mentally stimulating environment. At some point you should do the real quitting. Not for another hustle, but for your own mental health. Because although even the dumbest jobs deserve to be done well, it won't happen without the pride of doing them well. And if you can't get there anymore, it's time for a change. Sometimes, a change is as good as a holiday. And it can bring a different perspective which will change your beliefs and eventually improve your life. Sorry for my 5c of morning philosophy but I've been there, multiple times.
- htrp 4y agoIsn't that inflation ?
- mmaunder 4y agoYou’d need to be heavily invested in corporate retribution to passively aggressively show up for an 8 hour day every weekday and spend most of your time making an effort to do the minimum. What a waste of a life. Your time here is terrifyingly finite, and worth more than all the money in the world.
- h4waii 4y ago"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em and hurt 'em by beating yourself".
- theshrike79 4y agoIt's not about "making an effort to do the minimum". It's about doing exactly what's in your job description, no unpaid overtime or extra work.
- throwaway_au_1 4y ago>making an effort to do the minimum It's worth making a distinction between "making an effort" to do the minimum, and simply doing the minimum; doing the minimum does not necessarily require additional effort as you have implied. Possibly one could argue that if additional effort _is_ required, for either achieving the minimum or achieving more than the minimum, the employer pays only for the minimum, so the choice of whether to expend that effort to achieve the minimum or more belongs to the employee.
- bitwrangler 4y agoI appreciate the nod to the prophetic movie Office Space, but I think they missed the most appropriate scene about wearing the minimum pieces of flair. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7SNEdjftno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7SNEdjftno If people are doing the minimum work required by their employer, it hardly seems like a problem to me. If they decide to miss out on the "rat race" then that's how they choose to participate in their employee relationship. Maybe I'm missing something about this.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- charlie0 4y agoPure speculation on my part, but I sense the media is trying to gaslight everyone so if the economy dumps in the next few months, companies can fire a ton of people and have a good excuse for it. "Well, these people weren't doing their job, so we let them go."
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_quitting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_quitting This term was allegedly coined in 2009. According to Wikipedia editors, it is demonstrated in the film Office Space (1999) where the main character engages in "quiet quitting" and gets promoted.
- xkfm 4y agoI've been trying to figure out where the origin of this phrase was recently. It wasn't a term to me even a month ago. Whoever launched it did a great job. No one I've talked to about it seems to be interested in where it came from. It also works with "quiet x'ing" like other commenters have said for near infinite tongue-in-cheek jokes and content creation. I don't think it'll go away for awhile. You can shit out an article for almost everything a person/business does that ends in ing.
- __derek__ 4y agoWhen the WSJ first invented this phenomenon, I thought they just lacked the cultural awareness to connect it to slack[1]. [1]: The Church of the SubGenius value, not the Salesforce subsidiary.
- dogmatism 4y agoback in the day, we called this "work to rule" It's hardly a new thing
- robjan 4y agoWork to rule is more deliberate though and usually involves using company policies against them. e.g this situation happened in HK where the bus drivers, who are usually very efficient, went upstairs after every stop and checked that everyone was safely seated before setting off. The result was gridlock and increased journey times. QQ is more about refusing to go above an beyond.
- cetahfh14615 4y agoI mean, if employers actually paid people a commensurate amount for work they do outside of the 8-5, we wouldn't be seeing this problem. Sounds like the wsj and their ilk want to have their cake and eat it too. It's a shame that these folks are so out of touch with upcoming generations that their only outlet is churning out more shitstain newspaper articles if this is the best FUD they have, best of luck to them
- oliwarner 4y agoThe term is big-business propaganda. Unless you and your time are worthless, don't work for free.
- fabiofzero 4y agoIt's not quiet quitting, it's doing the job you're paid for. Man, Americans are really weird.