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I think the problem with the term is that it places the blame on the employee —- Sarah “quiet quit” 3 months ago, and that’s her fault for not going above and b

by rchowe 4y ago

I think the problem with the term is that it places the blame on the employee —- Sarah “quiet quit” 3 months ago, and that’s her fault for not going above and beyond, not her manager’s or the company’s. We have a lot of founders that will work 16 hours a day on HN, but I’d be willing to bet that the majority of people (in the US at least) prefer having a work-life balance.

swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
The founders have plenty of incentives for going above and beyond. They own the company, they own stocks, their income will scale with their company. The average employee? Not so much. Stock might be somewhat of an incentive but it's really a dice roll.
- ianai 4y ago
  I’d venture modernity has twisted so far to corporations rights and against worker rights that terms like this should by default be assumed to be used for the worst possible outcome. The almost immediate creation of the term “quiet firing” in addition to this term reinforces this. Toxic work environments are going to use a term like this to denigrate good workers and good faith efforts.
- wellthisisgreat 4y ago
  Unfortunately just loving what you do isn’t good enough for most people. I’ve been lucky to meet people throughout my life who were motivated by that, not by money. Some where in creative professions, some not, some had big salaries, some not. I guess automation and UBI could solve that replacing the proverbial janitors with robots. But then it may just incentivize more people to lay in bed and stare at the ceiling all day. Is it a bad thing? Is it a good thing? I do tend to believe most people will eventually fall into doing some kind of rewarding work-like activity if left to themselves completely and money was taken out of the equation. On the other hand relationships/ families may be a time-suck and many peopl etc would just “spend time with the kids” all days.
  - datavirtue 4y ago
    Unions. Unions buy stock with dues. Union controls company. Replace "union" with another name and you have the only way forward.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      If employees don’t own a meaningful part of the company today and pay 1-1.5% of their wages to a union, how will that give the union enough money to buy a controlling stake in the company? Amazon’s market cap is ~$1.25T. Under the conservative (false) assumption that a union bidding for half the shares would not move the price at all, that union would have to spend ~$625B on those purchases, meaning total employee dues would be that much, implying a wage base (at 1% dues) of $62.5T, or more than 3 years of the entire US GDP. Said differently: if employees could buy half their company for 1% (or even 10%) of their wages, there’d be no need for them to have a union negotiate their wages.
      - danaris 4y ago
        This isn't an argument against datavirtue's point: it's an argument that Amazon (and, by extension, the other major tech companies) are just too big for a healthy society and economy. There's a common trap I've run into in my hobby of game development, that probably has a name that I don't know: trying to solve every problem with a single solution (and also its close cousin, rejecting a proposed improvement because it doesn't solve every problem). This is clearly also applicable to real life, with things like people complaining solar isn't viable at all because it can't provide for every bit of our energy needs on its own. The idea datavirtue suggests is a good one. It just needs other things to be happening at the same time to support it—like strong antitrust action against the tech giants.
      - timellis-smith 4y ago
        i wonder what percentage of shareholders vote and how many shares you need to practically influence a company direction.
        4y ago
kirbys-memeteam 4y ago
duxup 4y ago
Is “quiet quitting” the same as “not going above and beyond”? For some reason I had thought it meant actually not working when you otherwise would / can. I think that’s the problem, everyone has these implied scenarios they don’t mention.
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  Probably depends on the article you read. The ones I've seen define it as not answering emails on nights/weekends, working "only" 8 hours each day, etc.
  - duxup 4y ago
    And for me that’s just “normal”. Not that I don’t put in extra work, but I don’t think of just 8 being quiet quitting.
  - marssaxman 4y ago
    I just wonder why people ever started thinking those kinds of over-work behaviors were normal.
0x20cowboy 4y ago
This term seems to have been co-opted and changed. It went from people phoning it in, actively avoiding or farming out work to “not going above and beyond”. If you want to show up and “just do your job”, that’s not my jam but more power to you. However, “quiet quitting” as I’ve seen it is people being “anti-work” and actively doing as little as humanly possible to collect a pay check. Borderline not doing their job. It takes so much extra effort from the people who are trying to do their job, that the people I have heard about are an active detriment to teams - not a net positive or net neutral. Form what I have seen, these are not people “trying to have a good work life balance”.
yucky 4y ago
>I think the problem with the term is that it places the blame on the employee If quiet quitting means not actually working while still collecting a salary, then who else deserves the blame?

by rchowe 4y ago

swagasaurus-rex 4y ago

The founders have plenty of incentives for going above and beyond. They own the company, they own stocks, their income will scale with their company. The average employee? Not so much. Stock might be somewhat of an incentive but it's really a dice roll.

ianai 4y ago
I’d venture modernity has twisted so far to corporations rights and against worker rights that terms like this should by default be assumed to be used for the worst possible outcome. The almost immediate creation of the term “quiet firing” in addition to this term reinforces this. Toxic work environments are going to use a term like this to denigrate good workers and good faith efforts.
wellthisisgreat 4y ago
Unfortunately just loving what you do isn’t good enough for most people. I’ve been lucky to meet people throughout my life who were motivated by that, not by money. Some where in creative professions, some not, some had big salaries, some not. I guess automation and UBI could solve that replacing the proverbial janitors with robots. But then it may just incentivize more people to lay in bed and stare at the ceiling all day. Is it a bad thing? Is it a good thing? I do tend to believe most people will eventually fall into doing some kind of rewarding work-like activity if left to themselves completely and money was taken out of the equation. On the other hand relationships/ families may be a time-suck and many peopl etc would just “spend time with the kids” all days.
- datavirtue 4y ago
  Unions. Unions buy stock with dues. Union controls company. Replace "union" with another name and you have the only way forward.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    If employees don’t own a meaningful part of the company today and pay 1-1.5% of their wages to a union, how will that give the union enough money to buy a controlling stake in the company? Amazon’s market cap is ~$1.25T. Under the conservative (false) assumption that a union bidding for half the shares would not move the price at all, that union would have to spend ~$625B on those purchases, meaning total employee dues would be that much, implying a wage base (at 1% dues) of $62.5T, or more than 3 years of the entire US GDP. Said differently: if employees could buy half their company for 1% (or even 10%) of their wages, there’d be no need for them to have a union negotiate their wages.
    - danaris 4y ago
      This isn't an argument against datavirtue's point: it's an argument that Amazon (and, by extension, the other major tech companies) are just too big for a healthy society and economy. There's a common trap I've run into in my hobby of game development, that probably has a name that I don't know: trying to solve every problem with a single solution (and also its close cousin, rejecting a proposed improvement because it doesn't solve every problem). This is clearly also applicable to real life, with things like people complaining solar isn't viable at all because it can't provide for every bit of our energy needs on its own. The idea datavirtue suggests is a good one. It just needs other things to be happening at the same time to support it—like strong antitrust action against the tech giants.
    - timellis-smith 4y ago
      i wonder what percentage of shareholders vote and how many shares you need to practically influence a company direction.
      - 4y ago

kirbys-memeteam 4y ago

duxup 4y ago

Is “quiet quitting” the same as “not going above and beyond”? For some reason I had thought it meant actually not working when you otherwise would / can. I think that’s the problem, everyone has these implied scenarios they don’t mention.

bcrosby95 4y ago
Probably depends on the article you read. The ones I've seen define it as not answering emails on nights/weekends, working "only" 8 hours each day, etc.
- duxup 4y ago
  And for me that’s just “normal”. Not that I don’t put in extra work, but I don’t think of just 8 being quiet quitting.
- marssaxman 4y ago
  I just wonder why people ever started thinking those kinds of over-work behaviors were normal.

0x20cowboy 4y ago

This term seems to have been co-opted and changed. It went from people phoning it in, actively avoiding or farming out work to “not going above and beyond”. If you want to show up and “just do your job”, that’s not my jam but more power to you. However, “quiet quitting” as I’ve seen it is people being “anti-work” and actively doing as little as humanly possible to collect a pay check. Borderline not doing their job. It takes so much extra effort from the people who are trying to do their job, that the people I have heard about are an active detriment to teams - not a net positive or net neutral. Form what I have seen, these are not people “trying to have a good work life balance”.

yucky 4y ago

>I think the problem with the term is that it places the blame on the employee If quiet quitting means not actually working while still collecting a salary, then who else deserves the blame?