So… Doing your job well is “quiet quitting” now? I don’t want my boss to think I’m quiet quitting, I Guess I’ll have to underperform instead.
Quiet firing on the other hand is giving raises that are under inflation. Companies should stop this quiet firing shit.
stop this
Bosses everywhere: taking notes “no… more… raises.” sets down the notepad “see, now they are speaking my language!”
“Quiet quitting” is a bullshit term meaning to do your job but nothing above or beyond that. Joshua Fluke has done multiple videos on this BS, and at this point there are plenty of other idiotic terms thrown around to try and make workers look bad.
It was always a stupid fucking term that equates doing a job with quitting.
Not increasing pay isn’t quit firing, because there is no firing. It is just businesses being stingy.
Not increasing pay with inflation is a pay cut because your pay is literally worth less without it.
In a sane world, if the fed is dictating the money supply, with their actions directly impacting inflation, every workers pay should be indexed to inflation. Same goes for taxation, welfare payments, etc. Companies raise their prices regardless.
I agree it’s a dumb term, so I made up my own dumb term. (At least I think I made it up)
Employees are allowed to be just as stingy as businesses.
Not increasing pay isn’t quit firing, because there is no firing. It is just businesses being stingy.
it’s constructive dismissal.
Only if it targets specific employees with the goal of getting them to quit. If the business doesn’t give raises in general they are just being cheap.
I feel like meeting that to a legal level is a stretch. Minor cost of living raises that don’t meet inflation doesn’t rise to that level in my uneducated understanding
Yeah it wasn’t entirely serious.
I’ve taken a pay cut two years in a row for that reason. Last year was somewhat understandable with the insane inflation but this year kind of stung
How is taking a pay cut when there’s massive inflation even remotely understandable? Inflation means that they need to pay you more, not less; your costs are rising.
Businesses don’t care about your costs. They care about paying as little as possible for as good a quality as they can.
Same way you don’t care if your grocery store mega chain got hacked and lost $300 million, that’s not your problem, if they raise the price of bread you’ll go somewhere else.
I mean it’s understandable that they didn’t give everyone 6.5% raises. That’s a pretty huge raise
Find another job. You’ll quickly find out if you are worth the raise you wanted. My bet is you are.
I’ve got my feelers out there but I’m gonna stick it out here for another year - currently working on a certification to switch to a higher-paid position and the company is paying for it
Quiet quitting: doing what you’re paid for
Normal working: doing what you’re paid for but also asking managers for more work when you’re done -> that’s what’s expected from management and also takes some load off their shoulders, they love that
Over achievement: doing what you’re paid for and more without asking management -> management will promise you a seat at the table of you continue doing that long enough!
If there’s advancement opportunities try to do the second one until you reach a point where you’re happy and then do the first one :)
Or crawl so far up management’s ass while throwing all your coworkers under the bus. THAT is how you get ahead. Stepping on your coworkers.
This person is a manager
Not a manager, just someone who did exactly what I said, worked a bit harder for a year and a half, moved two steps up the ladder and now sitting cozy doing exactly what I’m paid for and nothing more as I don’t want to move any higher because it would mean being in a position of authority.
Do you really think I would tell you to aim to reach a point where you’re happy and then start to work your wage if I was a manager?
I actually thought you were joking until the last sentence
Get off your knees, you slave
“you slave”
He said to the guy telling others to reach the point where they’re happy with what they’re doing and to then work their wage and nothing more.
If I was on my knees in front of management I would be telling everyone to just keep working harder forever, not to stop doing it once they don’t have or want advancement opportunities.
I’ll simper to no one for “advancement”
Then work your fucking wage and that’s it then, don’t bitch when others decide to put a bit more effort in order to move ahead if you’re expecting to be offered the same opportunity without showing that you’re actually able to do more than what is asked of you.
If I see someone eating the same meal every day I will come to the conclusion that they’re either unable or unwilling to cook something else so I won’t ask them to cook me something else.
See? There’s that slave mentality again
“Master won’t like you unless you work harder!”
If you don’t have any initiative don’t be surprised if you never achieve anything in life.
Tell me you’re 14 and have never worked a day in your life without telling me you’re 14 and have never worked a day in your life.
Gonna have to add a couple of decades to that number buddy.
Ah, just never had to work a day in your life then.
I work a job that requires a highschool diploma and that offers advancement opportunities and people at my level and higher are younger than me.
In fact, my manager two levels above me is quite a bit younger than me and he started at the most basic level years before me, so I guess these opportunities are open to people younger than me… Huh…
Also, very funny that you’re taking to a millennial like they were a boomer…
OK boomer.
Hahaha someone’s living in fairy land.
If they deep throat the boot hard enough, maybe they’ll get to wear it someday!
If you don’t have any advancement opportunities where you’re working change job or work your wage. Same if you don’t want to move up, work your wage.
I don’t know why you guys don’t get it…
Can’t work your wage if it doesn’t keep up with inflation, you’d just earn less every year.
I’m a skeptic when it comes to lots of things where the common man is getting fucked.
May I ask y’all how highly-paid individuals in high positions came to be that way?
Are they ALL the results of nepotistic practices, ALL inheritors of wealth? Or 80% got there that way?
(In the SF Bay Area, certainly seems I know high performers who work their asses off, make shit tons of money, get promotions before jumping ship to other companies, work at startups that get acquired…)
Disclaimer: not endorsing neglecting your family or personal life for a pipe dream of prosperity, just sharing one perspective
In the current climate, internal promotions are a rarity. They say that you should be changing companies roughly every 3 years to ensure you’re getting paid what you’re worth, as pay raises don’t keep up with experience. New responsibilities come quickly while promotions and pay raises come slowly. The number of times I’ve heard somebody say that they left a job for an immediate 10-30% (or even 50%!) pay raise and reduced responsibilities for even the same job has gotten to the point where I just expect it now.
Like everything else, it varies, but company loyalty is long dead.
Ah yes! Had to add:
Edit: I forgot, the argument could easily be “the vast majority of high earners got there by job hopping”!
Yeah, and there’s the old saying, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” Even ignoring the nepotism that that can obviously be applied to, there’s something major to be said about social networking and finding a good job (whether that’s a new job or a promotion within a company or even changing fields entirely).
When I was in college over a decade ago, our school had a program set up with GDC (the Game Devlopers’ Convention) to send 3rd year students and put them up in a hotel for the duration of the convention so that they could meet industry professionals and see what was new in the industry. And right from the first day, our professors expressed how important going to the convention and getting to know the people in your major were because they could potentially lead to you getting your next job, whether your first year out of school or decades later. And that was years before the current climate of the job sector had really taken off. Some of those guys had been making games since the 80s or 90s.
Make a good impression on someone, and they might call you about a new job opening before it’s publicly posted.
Makes some sense, eh? The social creature thinks to those with whom it has relationships when deciding who to nominate for an employment relationship.
Certainly downsides, like missing better candidates you’ve never met and a bias against introverted or socially anxious candidates. That said, not a phenomenon I imagine changing much. So many applicants for every post - an IRL filter is effective at, if nothing else, shrinking the pool significantly.
The Bay Area is a well known warp in reality. Don’t expect your experiences there to map to experiences elsewhere.
And even so, it’s usually who you know, how well you can sell to VC, and luck that determine success out there.
:) good point. Can be a nice reality warp, for the non-super commuters who can enjoy the weather by the Bay/Pacific.
Edited in an obvious miss:
Edit: I forgot, the argument could easily be “the vast majority of high earners got there by job hopping”!
Luck really helps too. Pretty much a necessity.
A good point on the luck aspect, and you reminded me of the fact that people who already have money have “better luck” in the respect that they have more opportunities to try new things.
It’s like one of those carnival games where you throw darts at balloons. Middle-class kids might get one or two darts while wealthy kids get 10. And the poor kids are the ones working at the carnival.
Something like 20% of businesses fail in their first year, and 80% are gone by year 5. If you can afford to start 5 different businesses, your odds of one surviving long enough to get bought up by Google or something are much better than somebody who put their life savings into their company.
Absolutely!
We built some proof for the darts phenomenon in an economics class. Professor gave everyone a certain number of pieces of candy. Everyone was allowed to trade for a while, then we counted candy at the end. (Might’ve been stipulations on how trades worked, can’t recall). As you’d imagine, any kid who started with 10 pieces of candy ended with more candy than any kid who started with 3 pieces. Powerful example 🍭
I can’t wait until AI hits these middle managers that were just enough good at their jobs to earn a promotion and now spend their days sending angry emails to the people that actually do the work, while collecting more income than the workers… 🖕
AI’s can do their job right now. Haven’t you ever seen an AI not work right?
(Most managers suck, I like mine right now, and it’s odd. He’s stuck in meetings all day so I’m not. )
I fail to see how we are responsible for the emotional well being of our management. Did I do my job? Yep! Did I do it well? Yep! Stand and deliver thy raise O manager, or face the wrath of my competing job offer.
Quiet quitting is the practice of meeting minimum expectations with low moral or engagement. Underperforming could lead to termination for not meeting minimum expectations.
The issue many people have is how some bosses redefine underperforming as “not doing enough unpaid overtime”.
Well that’s completely fucked. I don’t work for free. That’s also illegal.
Well that’s completely fucked. That’s also illegal.
Exactly. But a little illegal activity never stopped a corp. Wage theft is rampant, estimated at $50 billion a year.
I don’t work for free.
And that’s called quiet quitting in OP’s post.
I said this in another thread, but I’m not criticizing quiet quitting. I’m criticizing the managers’ response to it. If your employees are meeting expectations but unhappy, you should try to improve their work life, not shrug your shoulders because you don’t have a reason to fire them.
Woosh.
Also quiet quitting isn’t anything except a bullshit term dreamed up by capitalist crybabies.
More like inexperienced middle-management. Discussing the team member’s reasons for disengagement could lead to a solution for them, or even multiple team members. Saying “I have nothing to complain about” proves ineffective leadership looking for cause to terminate.
Engagement and disengagement are effectively separate forms of labor expected of an employee, though, and they’re virtually never formally codified. If I’m a coder and my job is to write code, don’t expect me to be enthused about writing terrible medical billing software. Enthusiasm and engagement are emotional labor, which I’m not compensated for, and which, to some extent, you can’t realistically expect me to demonstrate. I’m not able to “be engaged” beyond performing my tasks and whatever technical or administrative duties I’ve been assigned. Expecting me to contribute in a way orthogonal to that requires my job to be fundamentally different from what it actually is.
The only solution I would accept involves guillotines for the rich and the immediate end to the exploitation of the proletariat globally, so I don’t think that’s going to work for most middle managers.
That’s fine. I’m just saying the managers in that headline are the problem, not the employees.
You are saying it in a way that sounds like someone doing their job is disengagement.
Engagement and morale are independent of performance. A good leader will know their employees well enough to be able to ask what’s going on. Sometimes it’s a personal issue that’s on their mind. Other times it’s dissatisfaction with the work environment or company as a whole. It’s your job as a manager to address work-related concerns, and if you’re a good leader, you’d address them simply because you care about the employee. It’s one of the differences between a leader and a boss.
Then just make the minimum 30 pieces of flair 🙄
this. every so often someone posts an article on how wages are beating inflation and im like. where? who? this is not my experience.
If you want an inflation beating raise, you need to get a new job. Companies have long since stopped caring about employee retention.
Probably if you take an average and include the multimillionaires getting bigger raises.
News organizations have employees as well. It doesn’t surprise me that they are in on the gaslighting.
If they don’t play ball, you think they’ll keep their job?
I am not placing blame, just observing that News Companies still have staff and could be on the side of the Capitalists when it comes to worker rights.
Edit: I think I understand. I agree, not all staff writers (or any?) could be in a position to refuse the editor when they say “write me a piece on quiet quitting”.
Giving raises? My employer quiet quit that more than a decade ago. Meanwhile inflation and price gouging march on.
What proportion of people have jumped ship in the last ~8 years as a result? (Understand you could have good reason for sticking around.)
It’s a very small company. About 1/3 have moved on. The attraction is that it’s relatively accommodating for other things in your life.
Ahh, flexibility definitely compensates for a good bit of opportunity cost. Know people who stay in easier remote jobs to avoid the responsibilities and demands that come with moving to certain higher-paid positions.
There’s also freedom from corporate culture, which I have had enough of in the past. Overall I think I’m happier keeping my perfectly tolerable job in its place and earning less, though I can see how others make a different choice and would negatively judge what I do.
tacit admission that you started a business but you really wanted to start a cult. tell you what: you start paying me as much as you possibly can regardless of our employment agreement, I’ll start working as much as I possibly can regardless of our employment agreement.
Spoiler: I won’t actually work as much as I possibly can.
Yep. I want a reasonable amount of money for a reasonable amount of work. I have a life outside work, which seems incomprehensible to employers nowadays.
“How dare the slaves have time for other things and not prioritize our profits first?”
Get a vasectomy. I don’t want to provide more wage slaves to these shitters. Exploited cradle to grave, what a life to leave your children.
You can always raise quiet quitter to mess with capitalism lol
The cycle of abuse stops here.
his penis wishes.
If they are completing their assigned workloads where does the quitting happen?
The next time they’re denied a raise.
The idea is that they complete tasks ahead of schedule and then slow play results to the predetermined deadlines. It’s hilarious to me that people are saying this is a genZ thing, since this shit has been going on in tech fields forever. Literally everyone I have ever known has taken “working vacations” by pretending some work is taking longer than it really is.
Bonus points if you are smart enough to still turn it in a day early to keep the heat low.
And thus is my greatest weakness cause I hate being bored so if I run out of work I look for more.
Get a second job. Start a hobby. Start your own side gig.
If you just do extra work for the megacorp for no extra compensation, then they’re just using you.
It used to be called “looking busy” and people have been doing it ever since working at a job was a thing.
Quiet quitting has always referred to the extra bullshit that employers pressure employees into doing.
In America we’ve created this work culture that implies you aren’t really part of a team unless you are constantly putting forth more than what the employer is paying you for.
The undertone of this headline is that managers feel uneasy because so-called “quiet quitters” won’t take on extra work or hours or exhibit overwhelming enthusiasm, but just do literally what they have to at a passable or high quality.
The gaslighting part is that those workers aren’t doing anything wrong, but they aren’t bending over backwards so corporate America wants to paint the picture that those workers are awful time thieves instead of just burnt out wage slaves.
I hear some countries in Asia are CRAZY bad for these kind of expectations and have been for a long time.
Look up China’s 669 practice. South Korea is also known for having an especially brutal work culture. The two manage to make even Japan’s work culture look almost reasonable by comparison (Japan famously requiring long hours and lifelong dedication to your employer).
Oh absolutely. In Japan for example if you are unable to work or you get removed from your career, it is socially understandable for you to consider suicide. Lots of Japanese citizens put their job before even their families or the potential of having a family.
It’s actually pretty fuckin crazy what Japanese work culture does to their citizens.
I’ve been reading Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs and evidently they don’t fire people in Japan. If they want rid of you, they just give you less and less to do until you’re sitting in the office all day getting paid to do nothing, and the cultural expectation is that you quit out of shame rather than just accepting money for nothing.
How do I get one of those jobs as a WFH employee in the United States? I’ll gladly accept my shame.
Oh I’m so ashamed. Whatever will I do. Please don’t pay me MORE money that would make the shame even greater!
Oh no, not a bonus! The shame, it burns!
I wouldn’t recommend anyone become a software engineer but its worked for me
Heh. I already am that, but I do have to work. It’s not as hard as when I was digging ditches for a living, but it’s definitely still work. Sometimes it’s slow, sometimes there’s a million things to do.
It only works for cultures where individuals have to sepukku if they bring shame on family.
In the USA, bringing shame upon family is considered a rite of passage so it doesn’t quite have the same effect
Where do I sign up?
I wonder if this also has something to do with the company itself avoiding shame too. Like firing an employee is a sign of weakness, that you hired someone like that in the first place? Or potentially a difference in benefits or a pension that they have to pay?
Irish Times is known for their clickbait articles. Not too long ago, an article that was written just to generate outrage (fake tan is cultural appropriation), was found to be generated by AI, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was also the case. My advice is to ignore anything Irish Times is writing. (I’ve been living in Ireland for well over a decade, and I learned to regard IT as the low end of the already poor media landscape here.)
I was just going to say, of all places, this gets published by an Irish news outlet? Hah! It has been my experience moving there that in workplaces in Ireland is you go there, do your job and go home. No bullshit, the workplace is not a family, your colleagues are not your friends. In and out. Very efficient while on the clock, couldn’t give a fuck immediately after.
Translation: “Workers aren’t happy with their pay and we keep refusing to give them a raise despite noticing a ceiling in their productivity.”
PAY. THEM. MORE.
Labor isn’t free, you cheapskate bastards.
Shes just working there…menacingly!
“Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.”
– George Carlin.
So they just work?
Oh yes. The company where I work at does these performance reviews: doing 100% gives you a ‘C’ (as a grade). I do everything that is expected from me without anything to complain about? Yeah, that’s not good enough.
Fuck that.
There is the silent complaint that you could do more… Give up your spare time for your work. Work yourself tired and burn out for your company! That’s what they want to see.
I’m looking for a new job while I still work there.
Oh man I would just make it a point to celebrate getting a C with my colleagues.
Can we stop calling every behavior we don’t like “gaslighting” already please?
gaslighting noun gas·light·ing ˈgas-ˌlī-tiŋ : psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator
i’d say use of the word is actually accurate here
It’s as if I’m being gaslit into thinking I don’t know what the word means!
“Jill, I’m afraid we have a problem. Your quality work is very high, as always. But you don’t look enough like your job isn’t soul crushing. I’m not saying you look like you’re bored out of your mind or that I think working here is depriving you of your will to live. I’m just saying that there are times when you’re not smiling like a completely unhinged person and that makes me question whether you really want to be here.”
Reminds me of my art professor’s story about getting her doctorate, in which a bunch of tenured professors came together to review her work to give her the degree. One professor disagreed with giving her doctorate because apparently she didn’t look like she had a tough time getting it. That sent my art professor over the edge because she’d worked so hard and suffered so much for it so she started crying in front of the professors and told them she wasn’t going to bother getting her doctorate anymore and that she was quitting right there and then. The other tenured professors were quick to convince the other to change their mind and eventually gave the degree, but my art professor still remembers how shitty it was to decide something so important to her on the basis that she suffered much less than her peers in producing something good or better work.
Trading Places needs a reboot. Speaking of old movies that got it.
the manager in that scene is Mike Judge and knowing that makes his bit so much more enjoyable to watch
I had basically this exact conversation with my supervisor last week. She was like, “I like to have ___ done by Thursdays,” because I was sick on Thursday and said I’d do it first thing Friday morning. So I said, “Ok, so is the deadline for this task Thursdays then? Because that’s never been communicated to me.” And she said, “Well, I like to have it done by Thursdays.” Holy fuck, JUST TELL ME HOW MANY PIECES OF FLAIR I NEED.
Anyway, I’m looking for a new job because I can’t work in a place that wants to penalize people for not living up to expectations they didn’t know existed. My entire review (first one in 2 1/2 years) was a series of “Remember this thing from months ago? Well we didn’t like how you did that but we never said anything and just sat on it until now.” Cool, thanks for setting me up to fail, appreciate that.
Remember this thing from months ago?
Remember the most basic principles ever?
Exactly. I’ve always known my boss was great at most of her job but not very good at people management (because I don’t think she particularly wants to do it), but being blindsided with things it’s too late to even address was so demoralizing. What the heck am I supposed to do about a phone call from December about an issue that’s been long since resolved?
Unfortunately all you can do is try to thicken your skin and attempt to “manage upwards”.
“I appreciate the feedback and I’ll bear that in mind in the future, but there’s nothing I can do about this months later. Next time let me know when I still have an opportunity to correct the issue and I’ll gladly course-correct.”
And refuse to sign the review. Be specific that you don’t accept being penalized for mistakes you made months before you were told the rule.
You can push back while being polite and professional in some places, so it’s worth a shot if you’re already being shit on or are on the way out.
If you’ve tried it and gotten nowhere though, just disengage and try to stop caring so much.
Your manager’s failure to communicate is their problem, not yours.
It’s time to rematch office space
It’s time to rematch office space
Rematch it to what?
(I know what you mean)
I could rematch it against The Cube and see which scenario is worse
Rematch with two girls at the same time
That’s it? If you had a million dollars, you’d rematch with two chicks at the same time?
Damn straight. Chicks dig a dude that rematches.
I wanna punch Olive.
