What is “Quiet Quitting” and Why I Don’t Recommend It
Hi there, it’s Laura!
Today I wanted to talk about the new phenomenon that’s making the rounds on the internet called “quiet quitting” . When I first heard about this, I thought it just means that people stop showing up to work one day, effectively quitting but never really putting in their resignation. Imagine my surprise when I read that’s not the case at all.
What is Quiet Quitting?
Quiet quitting refers to workers simply not doing anything beyond their responsibilities and, from what I gathered, leaving work on time. The flip side to quiet quitting is also something that has been meme’d for a while, something called a quiet promotion. This means that you suddenly find yourself having more responsibility and tasks but there’s no change in title or compensation.
To be honest, at first these concepts just puzzled me. Then I realized that if these concepts puzzle me, they must be puzzling someone else so I’m going to break these situations down, based on what I’ve seen in practice. So if that sounds interesting to you, keep on reading.
The Usual Career Path
Let’s first start with what I think the natural path of a career is. At first you get hired to do a job. In the beginning, you’re ramping up, learning what you’re supposed to do and trying to become good at what you do. Then, in order to progress to the next level, you’ll start doing things that are expected of the next level, and after that a promotion follows. I guess if we use the concepts above, you get a “quiet promotion” before you get your actual promotion. Meaning that you get more responsibility and stuff to do before you get a new title or a new salary. This doesn’t necessarily have to hold true but it does depend on the compensation structure of your company. That is to say, you might get raises and bonuses to show appreciation for the extra work.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a promotion happen without significant signs foreshadowing it. These signs generally are, you taking on more responsibility, open conversation with your manager about your performance and career aspirations and maybe even a failed attempt at promotion, depending on how this process works in your company. I don’t think I can name a company where you just get promoted without displaying some skill and work at the next level - assuming your dad isn’t the CEO that is.
I wanted to mention all of this to highlight just how odd of a concept this “quiet quitting” really is. It implies - at least from what I understand - that you are not actively seeking a promotion or progression of any kind.
Saying that the concept is odd might also be my A type personality shining through.
What To Do Instead of Quiet Quitting
Part of me thinks that this movement came from employees feeling helpless in their career progression. This isn’t any sort of definitive analysis of the start of the movement, it’s simply what I am speculating is the cause. I can definitely see someone evaluating that their career is not progressing, despite them making an effort, and thinking “Well, if I can’t improve my circumstances through hard work and dedication, why should I try at all? If I can’t work for more money, if the money that I get is not proportional to my work’s output, why should I give anything extra?”. To reflect this, quiet quitting has also been referred to as “Acting your wage”, a funny nod to the classic “act your age” advice some folks like to dish out like it means something.
Hence, I think if we want to address this phenomenon we need to address the root cause of the issue: the lack of control or the perceived lack of control in our careers.
I spoke about this in my series on managing your manager, but let me reiterate some of the points there.
You should actively engage and discuss with your manager, what the career progression looks like at the company: what is the process, where do you find yourself of the spectrum of job performance for your craft and level, what should you be doing to get to the next level, what is the compensation structure look like along the way.
These are things you NEED to openly discuss with your manager so that you can evaluate not only what your situation is but also how to progress. As I also mentioned previously, part of your manager’s job is to help you progress in your career and also identify what path is best for you, given your preferences and aspirations. This type of conversation can ensure that you don’t work on the wrong things and instead focus on work that has the most impact to propel you forward.
Imagine you think you need to deliver more work or faster work in order to get promoted but your manager and stakeholders would instead prefer that you deliver higher quality work, even if it less volume. Of course, your manager should be actively communicating this, but unless a conversation happens on this topic, you’d be none the wiser. After a while, you’ll feel very frustrated and unmotivated since you’re putting in extra hours to deliver more, but it’s not going anywhere. I would say, take the bull by the horns, take control of your career and set up a meeting with your line manager to discuss all of these. Yes, you can wait for them to initiate, but why should you take a passive seat in your own life? That’s never a good idea.
Similarly, to make sure that you are working towards the right direction, you should actively seek both formal and informal feedback from your main stakeholders. These people interact with you constantly and have finer insights on things you can improve and also on things that you are great at. You should also have and engage your mentor on this, as they can offer an outside perspective to what might be going wrong.
Quiet quitting, in contrast to what I mentioned above, is just throwing up your hands and saying “Welp, nothing more to do, nothing else to try. I guess this is my life now.”. I don’t think that this is true, you always have at least some degree of control on how your career is going.
When To Leave Your Job
All of that being said, let’s take a moment to appreciate that there are situations where you should just cut your losses and run. Again, I don’t advocate for quiet quitting, but instead brushing up your resume and interview skills and starting to look for a new job. I can think of a few situation when this is warranted, but this is by no means an exhaustive list:
If your manager is not supportive: they don’t support your growth, they don’t give you honest feedback or any feedback, if they blame you or backstab you when things go wrong. I think this is the case of working for a toxic manager and the situation is not going to improve with staying.
If you see others being rewarded or promoted when they don’t meet the criteria. This is the classic case of favoritism and again, I don’t think you can win against. I have also experienced this and I can swear by the fact that leaving that position was the best thing I ever did for my career. If you’re not the favorite, you’re not going to have a good time.
If your situation is at odds with your professional goals. This might be a more nuanced situation than before but if you’re working towards your promotion or a certain compensation and you see that your current job promises these things but consistently fails to deliver, you should probably leave. For example, if you’re being declined a promotion for a 3rd or 4th time, it’s time to ask yourself what is going on. Either you’re doing really bad at performing at the next level, or your manager is totally not being honest with you about the process, your performance, what it takes to make it to the next level and so on. Maybe they just don’t know despite being well intended, but that doesn’t really improve your situation.
If you’re working a dead end job. I think this is pretty obvious but I do want to include this option here. A dead end job is one where you have no more progression opportunities, either because of the nature of the job or because of the nature of the company you’re working for. Here's a Litmus test for you: if you see that there are people 3-5 years your working seniors doing the same job for the same (or every so slightly more) money, you might be in a dead end job.
If you find yourself in any of these cases, quiet quitting will most definitely not improve your situation. If anything, it will make it worse and you’ll be taken over by resentment. No good will come from you staying in that job.
When To Quiet Quit
I think it’s also important to recognise that there is ONE situation where I can say that “quiet quitting” is what you should be doing. Generally, this can be summarized as the situation when you aren’t in a position to focus on your career at the moment but you also need to pay the bills. This means that outside factors prevent you from trying to interview externally and jump ship and at the same time, you can’t invest in your job performance more than what fits into the 9-5 schedule. You’re not interested in getting promoted and you very genuinely can’t give more than what is the job description.
Let’s face it, sometimes life happens. You have to take care of your mental health, you have to take care of a sick loved one. Maybe you want to invest more time into your personal relationships or bond with your kids more. Whatever the reason, sometimes life gets in the way and I’m pretty sure everyone out there has had these moments. This is definitely a time when you should be doing your job and keeping things rolling because you can’t afford to stop.
To be honest, if your company is fair, delivering on the job requirements should get you some sort of “meets expectations” rating in the performance review.
That being said, even if your company is being fair, I don’t think this is a viable strategy in the mid to long term. This is because you will be compared to others doing the same role and at one point, despite doing what the job description asks, you will be found lacking. If your company also engages in stack ranking performance ( how I feel about that is a whole other discussion), your quiet quitting will get you at the bottom of the rank and ultimately fired.
I know how privileged I am to be recommending this, but try to get out of this state as soon as you can to get back into the regular flow of things, where you are invested in your performance and career progression. Quiet quitting is not a long term strategy I would recommend in times of normal circumstances.
Quiet Quitting vs Hustle Culture
At the very end, I want to hypothesise a bit on the where this quiet quitting comes from.
I’m sure most of us remember or still see the “rise and grind” posts on social media where some dude bro (often in sunglasses for some reason) would tell us stuff such as “Sleep is for the week. You need to work all day everyday. You need to be on your grind and make money every day” and other nonsense. This movement, as far as I can remember, came to be as a reaction to the 2008 recession, where a lot of young people felt they needed to have a side business, a second or third job to feel financially stable. That was also unfortunately very true, where people couldn’t actually pay their bills with just one job. Unemployment was rampant and people struggled as a result, giving birth to this unhealthy obsession with idolizing work.
While I was researching and thinking about this topic, it came as a natural question to ask “Is quiet quitting a delayed reaction to the hustle culture?”. To be honest, I think the answer is “sort of”. While you can definitely see it as a reaction to hustle culture, I think it’s more part of the anti-capitalist movement that has been floating around in the past few years where people just don’t want to play the capitalist game or work for a living. At the same time, reality hits and they still have to pay the bills so they “act their wage” and not do anything extra. I can appreciate the sentiment and I totally understand where this is coming from. However, I still maintain that if you want to successfully participate in the capitalist game of corporate life and corporate careers, you shouldn’t be “quiet quitting” unless you’re forced to by outside circumstances.
What are your thoughts on quiet quitting and quiet promotions? Have you ever done it? Why and what happened during that time? I’m very curious to know your thoughts.
That’s it for today, folks.
Until next time, this is Laura signing off.
