I am sick, everybody. My tummy hurts, and I was sick yesterday, which was a Sunday. I wanted to sleep, but my stomach refused to let me, nagging me to get up. And this is exactly how I feel about Quiet Quitting, a term invented by bosses that refers to workers “only doing what they’re meant to at work” with a side helping of “finding their new work balance.”
Someone noted that you can trace a lot of the problem to the fact that our newspapers for decades had a "business" section that didn't mention workers once. It fetishized management culture, stock prices and corporate malfeasance..., sorry, intelligence, and continued the steady reduction of people to merely profit centres on the balance sheet.
There were (and are) endless breathless reports of "profits at XYZ Corp went up by 5% last year and the CEO got a well-deserved bonus" but absolutely nothing about how this was achieved.
If our business pages had been about careers, training, social programs and community involvement, which are also a key part of business, we'd have a very, very different view of what 'work' means.
If a manager sees underperformance when an employee simply does their job, as the job is defined, then the manager should be fired for incompetence. The most basic function of any manager is to clearly define what they expect their employees to accomplish, and how those accomplishments will be measured. Employees aren't mind readers. If you hire somebody to do A, and they are doing A without making a big fuss, being dissatisfied that they are not doing A +B is bonkers.
I only encountered the term "Quiet Quitting" a couple days ago, and at first what I thought I was reading about were people who are quietly *not doing their jobs*, as distinct from people who are quietly *not going "above and beyond"*. The term itself facially suggests _someone not doing what they are paid to do_. It does not facially suggest _someone doing what they are paid to do_.
It's simply a dumb term, and a lot of the panic is no doubt wrapped up in people interpreting it to mean something different from what the practitioners apparently mean. I think half the talking heads who are all flummoxed here can't get past the word "quit" and the idea that they just imagine a lot of people doing nothing at all.
The confusion in turn allows the actual whiners to hypercharge their arguments by concocting visions of loafers as a way of countering legitimate concerns about semi-forced overwork. This is of course your central point, that the overwork is not being discussed at all. The media simply rolls along with the panic because that's what they do best.
I believe that companies, some of them very intentionally, many of them less so, have so come to overrely on overwork that it is actually embedded in the corporate culture that they will accept high turnover as the price to pay for squeezing people. Not that they've actually conducted any kind of coherent study about it... they've just come to internalize the idea that after a certain amount of time a person will be Highly Productive (probably through overwork) and that if that person leaves after 3 years, but 20 of those 36 months were Highly Productive, it's all good, after all, people are going leave anyway, turnover is going to be high anyway, other places are like us anyway, blah blah blah.
If you just treat people well - not even above and beyond well, because if you have to go above and beyond to treat someone well, then you're doing something very wrong in the first place - if you just treat people well, they will be happier, they will stay longer, they will ultimately be more productive without having to overwork to do it. Which, of course, is what you've been preaching for months.
You are 100% correct with this article. I do not like the "quiet quitting" phrase, but enjoy that people are willing to admit this (even without attribution). For years we called it "being unengaged". You are correct that it does no harm to a business (things they need get done). But data shows that when workers are engaged, they give extra effort because they WANT to, not because they are being forced to. It leads to higher productivity, higher sales/profits, and lower absenteeism and turnover. Organizations spend billions to work on "engagement" with almost nothing to show for it.
The worst part, the answer is so easy and so clear that it isn't even funny. It would simply require organizations to focus on people AND profits, not one or the other. Mostly, it would require organizations build people managers who treat them like humans and, not productivity managers who focus on how many tasks got done.
FYI - if you want to find someone to blame for the current crappy state we are in, it is Milton Friedman and his idea of the responsibility to the shareholder.
This reminds me a lot of my last company, which I left earlier this year, I worked there for 7 years, during which I lead multiple projects that had very tangible financial benefits for said company, multiple times I was not given bonus on these because they were not specifically planned out in my annual goals, which is an absurd expectation given that many projects are created out of responding to different issues or opportunities, I was also told that in order to get a raise, I would need to be promoted to a senior role, which of course the solution to how to get a senior role, was always some poorly defined extra credit project, the entire process takes any ownership off of managers to recognize and reward people who do good work, instead the people who grow are just people who write "good" goals. A broken process
If it weren’t so pathetic, it’s been almost comical watching the reaction of commentators on this subject. It’s been mostly my fellow boomers showing such disdain for those they’ve decided are lazy slackers who wouldn’t know a hard day’s work if they saw one. It’s the only compensation they have for sacrificing far too much of their lives without any concept of why they were doing it. I for one, am thrilled to see that younger generations are smart enough to call foul. The world, and our children’s world, will be much better for it.
Not to be a fanboy of Office Space, but Peter's interview with the Bobs kind of summed it all up pretty well. "The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. ... It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob, I have eight different bosses right now. ... Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired."
"The bosses that are claiming that Quiet Quitters will be “the first to get fired”" I can't think of a single manager at my company that knows what an individual contributor's productivity is outside of how many hours they're in the office. Or if they're answering emails at night or on the weekend.
I'm lucky enough to have escaped The Office 2.5 years ago and for the past twelve months work for myself. Every one of your articles resonates with my experience. I just couldn't put what I was experiencing into words. Great work.
It's tipping, isn't it? It's bosses who expect their employees to tip them with extra work because that's just how things are done and of course working out what's appropriate is an exercise left to the employee.
Quiet quitting strikes me as the classic nothing burger -- to resurrect a stale phrase.
So some people are doing their jobs while others are staying late and frantically waving to the boss to “notice me!” This has been going on since Cain killed Abel for slacking on the job.
Now some people are realizing that working so hard that you die at your desk like a Japanese salary man isn’t getting them anywhere. The Prodigal Son’s workaholic brother realized that too. (To cite another biblical story.)
In other words quiet quitting is nothing. Most people are still working much to hard for what they’re being paid. Readi some of these stories that quote people who confess to “quiet quitting” and it sounds like they’re working pretty hard.
On the other hand, it’s easy to see why the Wall Street Journal decided to contrive a “look at those lazy kids” story designed to appeal to their mostly older, affluent white male readership. That the whole idea is based on a few Tik Tock videos doesn’t matter.
Media catering to the biases of their audience is also nothing new.
It also fits in neatly with the corporate drive to force everyone back to the office. “See!” they say without evidence. “Letting them work from home has made them lazy.”
I also suspect it is a reaction to the worker shortage. Businesses are trying to force the few workers they have to do the extra work of those they can’t hire.
This is such a wonderful post, Ed. It summarizes and crystallizes a lot of the things I've been feeling/thinking over the past few years. As a Gen X'er, I've been working for a LONG time, and for better or worse I was raised and/or am wired to always work "above and beyond". I suspect it's a second-generation American thing. However in the past few years something finally clicked, and I was able to see that I was killing myself with very little to show for it. I discovered that "working above and beyond" wasn't really as important or recognized as "constantly notifying everyone that I was working above and beyond" -- which, as an introvert, just rubs me the wrong way.
Today (reading your post) was the first I've heard of "quiet quitting". I didn't think I could get more disgusted after seeing Malcolm Gladwell's recent interview ("working from home is bad for you... don't you want to work on something bigger than yourself? etc, etc), but learning about "quiet quitting" and how it's being weaponized makes me nauseous. I'm so glad you are punching back/punching up, and I am optimistic that our Millenial/Gen Z colleagues will lead the revolution that is a long time coming. But I'm hoping there doesn't need to be a revolution, and that we can just get past all this BS with common sense.
Hm... I left blue collar work for years ago for just these reasons. My boss at the time paid little, trained his people not at all, and was incensed at the lack of loyalty. I concluded that everyone who worked there was very young, or had problems, or was moving on. I fell into at least two of those categories but at least my problems weren't so deep that I was unable to put myself into the third and move on, eventually in a big way. I still wonder at his incredulity that he couldn't get more highly skilled people, nor that his employees seemed to last such short times.
A lot of the things you say apply specifically to offices but can easily be transplanted to any industry in the world. I'm young and have only worked 3 jobs in the service industry. The first one never gave a shit about me, when other employees quit over the workload and I was saddled with way more than I could handle, they started chewing me out for "taking too long" ie doing the job correctly, and eventually fired me when I refused to risk other people's safety in the name of doing things the quick and dirty way.
Second job basically forced me to become a snake oil salesman and did their best to incentivize charging people for things they don't know they're paying for, and eventually fired me for unknown reasons, when queried citing a specific instance where I made a sale at the actual listed price for a woman who came to me in desperation.
Current job so far, despite being arguably the most work of all of them, I've been far happier at thanks to bosses who really seem to care about their employees and want them to stick around. Started at $13/hr and within three months hit $15/hr which is great for a relatively suburban area - not nearly enough to cover any sort of rent, but that's outside their control, let's hope the absurd housing market collapses soon - and seem to hand out dollar raises every couple of months to loyal workers. I put up with so much more bullshit than any previous job but I'm happier to do it because I know my bosses have my back and truly value my work.
Someone noted that you can trace a lot of the problem to the fact that our newspapers for decades had a "business" section that didn't mention workers once. It fetishized management culture, stock prices and corporate malfeasance..., sorry, intelligence, and continued the steady reduction of people to merely profit centres on the balance sheet.
There were (and are) endless breathless reports of "profits at XYZ Corp went up by 5% last year and the CEO got a well-deserved bonus" but absolutely nothing about how this was achieved.
If our business pages had been about careers, training, social programs and community involvement, which are also a key part of business, we'd have a very, very different view of what 'work' means.
If a manager sees underperformance when an employee simply does their job, as the job is defined, then the manager should be fired for incompetence. The most basic function of any manager is to clearly define what they expect their employees to accomplish, and how those accomplishments will be measured. Employees aren't mind readers. If you hire somebody to do A, and they are doing A without making a big fuss, being dissatisfied that they are not doing A +B is bonkers.
I heard somebody state that it’s not “quiet quitting”, it’s “acting your wage”.
I only encountered the term "Quiet Quitting" a couple days ago, and at first what I thought I was reading about were people who are quietly *not doing their jobs*, as distinct from people who are quietly *not going "above and beyond"*. The term itself facially suggests _someone not doing what they are paid to do_. It does not facially suggest _someone doing what they are paid to do_.
It's simply a dumb term, and a lot of the panic is no doubt wrapped up in people interpreting it to mean something different from what the practitioners apparently mean. I think half the talking heads who are all flummoxed here can't get past the word "quit" and the idea that they just imagine a lot of people doing nothing at all.
The confusion in turn allows the actual whiners to hypercharge their arguments by concocting visions of loafers as a way of countering legitimate concerns about semi-forced overwork. This is of course your central point, that the overwork is not being discussed at all. The media simply rolls along with the panic because that's what they do best.
I believe that companies, some of them very intentionally, many of them less so, have so come to overrely on overwork that it is actually embedded in the corporate culture that they will accept high turnover as the price to pay for squeezing people. Not that they've actually conducted any kind of coherent study about it... they've just come to internalize the idea that after a certain amount of time a person will be Highly Productive (probably through overwork) and that if that person leaves after 3 years, but 20 of those 36 months were Highly Productive, it's all good, after all, people are going leave anyway, turnover is going to be high anyway, other places are like us anyway, blah blah blah.
If you just treat people well - not even above and beyond well, because if you have to go above and beyond to treat someone well, then you're doing something very wrong in the first place - if you just treat people well, they will be happier, they will stay longer, they will ultimately be more productive without having to overwork to do it. Which, of course, is what you've been preaching for months.
You are 100% correct with this article. I do not like the "quiet quitting" phrase, but enjoy that people are willing to admit this (even without attribution). For years we called it "being unengaged". You are correct that it does no harm to a business (things they need get done). But data shows that when workers are engaged, they give extra effort because they WANT to, not because they are being forced to. It leads to higher productivity, higher sales/profits, and lower absenteeism and turnover. Organizations spend billions to work on "engagement" with almost nothing to show for it.
The worst part, the answer is so easy and so clear that it isn't even funny. It would simply require organizations to focus on people AND profits, not one or the other. Mostly, it would require organizations build people managers who treat them like humans and, not productivity managers who focus on how many tasks got done.
FYI - if you want to find someone to blame for the current crappy state we are in, it is Milton Friedman and his idea of the responsibility to the shareholder.
This reminds me a lot of my last company, which I left earlier this year, I worked there for 7 years, during which I lead multiple projects that had very tangible financial benefits for said company, multiple times I was not given bonus on these because they were not specifically planned out in my annual goals, which is an absurd expectation given that many projects are created out of responding to different issues or opportunities, I was also told that in order to get a raise, I would need to be promoted to a senior role, which of course the solution to how to get a senior role, was always some poorly defined extra credit project, the entire process takes any ownership off of managers to recognize and reward people who do good work, instead the people who grow are just people who write "good" goals. A broken process
If it weren’t so pathetic, it’s been almost comical watching the reaction of commentators on this subject. It’s been mostly my fellow boomers showing such disdain for those they’ve decided are lazy slackers who wouldn’t know a hard day’s work if they saw one. It’s the only compensation they have for sacrificing far too much of their lives without any concept of why they were doing it. I for one, am thrilled to see that younger generations are smart enough to call foul. The world, and our children’s world, will be much better for it.
Not to be a fanboy of Office Space, but Peter's interview with the Bobs kind of summed it all up pretty well. "The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. ... It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob, I have eight different bosses right now. ... Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired."
https://youtu.be/j_1lIFRdnhA
"The bosses that are claiming that Quiet Quitters will be “the first to get fired”" I can't think of a single manager at my company that knows what an individual contributor's productivity is outside of how many hours they're in the office. Or if they're answering emails at night or on the weekend.
"they’re the ones who have failed to create incentive structures for working harder and doing more"
Oh but they DO incentivize! If you wear 37 pieces of flare you sometimes get a lucite plaque! with your WHOLE NAME on it /sarc
I'm lucky enough to have escaped The Office 2.5 years ago and for the past twelve months work for myself. Every one of your articles resonates with my experience. I just couldn't put what I was experiencing into words. Great work.
It's tipping, isn't it? It's bosses who expect their employees to tip them with extra work because that's just how things are done and of course working out what's appropriate is an exercise left to the employee.
Quiet quitting strikes me as the classic nothing burger -- to resurrect a stale phrase.
So some people are doing their jobs while others are staying late and frantically waving to the boss to “notice me!” This has been going on since Cain killed Abel for slacking on the job.
Now some people are realizing that working so hard that you die at your desk like a Japanese salary man isn’t getting them anywhere. The Prodigal Son’s workaholic brother realized that too. (To cite another biblical story.)
In other words quiet quitting is nothing. Most people are still working much to hard for what they’re being paid. Readi some of these stories that quote people who confess to “quiet quitting” and it sounds like they’re working pretty hard.
On the other hand, it’s easy to see why the Wall Street Journal decided to contrive a “look at those lazy kids” story designed to appeal to their mostly older, affluent white male readership. That the whole idea is based on a few Tik Tock videos doesn’t matter.
Media catering to the biases of their audience is also nothing new.
It also fits in neatly with the corporate drive to force everyone back to the office. “See!” they say without evidence. “Letting them work from home has made them lazy.”
I also suspect it is a reaction to the worker shortage. Businesses are trying to force the few workers they have to do the extra work of those they can’t hire.
This is such a wonderful post, Ed. It summarizes and crystallizes a lot of the things I've been feeling/thinking over the past few years. As a Gen X'er, I've been working for a LONG time, and for better or worse I was raised and/or am wired to always work "above and beyond". I suspect it's a second-generation American thing. However in the past few years something finally clicked, and I was able to see that I was killing myself with very little to show for it. I discovered that "working above and beyond" wasn't really as important or recognized as "constantly notifying everyone that I was working above and beyond" -- which, as an introvert, just rubs me the wrong way.
Today (reading your post) was the first I've heard of "quiet quitting". I didn't think I could get more disgusted after seeing Malcolm Gladwell's recent interview ("working from home is bad for you... don't you want to work on something bigger than yourself? etc, etc), but learning about "quiet quitting" and how it's being weaponized makes me nauseous. I'm so glad you are punching back/punching up, and I am optimistic that our Millenial/Gen Z colleagues will lead the revolution that is a long time coming. But I'm hoping there doesn't need to be a revolution, and that we can just get past all this BS with common sense.
Hm... I left blue collar work for years ago for just these reasons. My boss at the time paid little, trained his people not at all, and was incensed at the lack of loyalty. I concluded that everyone who worked there was very young, or had problems, or was moving on. I fell into at least two of those categories but at least my problems weren't so deep that I was unable to put myself into the third and move on, eventually in a big way. I still wonder at his incredulity that he couldn't get more highly skilled people, nor that his employees seemed to last such short times.
A lot of the things you say apply specifically to offices but can easily be transplanted to any industry in the world. I'm young and have only worked 3 jobs in the service industry. The first one never gave a shit about me, when other employees quit over the workload and I was saddled with way more than I could handle, they started chewing me out for "taking too long" ie doing the job correctly, and eventually fired me when I refused to risk other people's safety in the name of doing things the quick and dirty way.
Second job basically forced me to become a snake oil salesman and did their best to incentivize charging people for things they don't know they're paying for, and eventually fired me for unknown reasons, when queried citing a specific instance where I made a sale at the actual listed price for a woman who came to me in desperation.
Current job so far, despite being arguably the most work of all of them, I've been far happier at thanks to bosses who really seem to care about their employees and want them to stick around. Started at $13/hr and within three months hit $15/hr which is great for a relatively suburban area - not nearly enough to cover any sort of rent, but that's outside their control, let's hope the absurd housing market collapses soon - and seem to hand out dollar raises every couple of months to loyal workers. I put up with so much more bullshit than any previous job but I'm happier to do it because I know my bosses have my back and truly value my work.