Everyone should be ‘quiet quitting’
spectator.co.uk
spectator.co.uk
> Turn up on time. Do your job. Do it right. Do whatever is asked of you provided it's lawful, reasonable. [...] Do not one thing more than that.
they are essentially saying do nothing that is not asked of you; that is to say, do nothing that requires agency on your part. That's not something that organizationally companies are able to afford.
As an individual worker, that strategy probably will work in keeping your job, at least in good times. That's not to say it'd be a fulfilling job--I need some sense of personal agency at work for happiness, but plenty of people don't--but it satisfies the goal of maximizing income while minimizing stress.
But if that attitude becomes more widespread than it already is, companies will then create or prioritize jobs categories that assume no agency on the part of employees. These jobs are both more depressing, more subject to automation, and lower paying than the ones that expect personal agency.
Companies have a strong preference for this kind of job. They need no additional encouragement to create them and havent since the beginning of the 19th century.
Ironically, I think they tend to be a lot less subject to automation even if the companies clearly want it more. Amazon automates the hell out of its warehouses and for the remaining tasks it tries to robotize humans.
They might prefer it, but there are always tradeoffs. The equilibrium we are at now has a certain proportion of agentful jobs. In a world where hiring for them is riskier than the world we have, at the margin companies will shift away from them toward agentless jobs.
> I think they tend to be a lot less subject to automation even if the companies clearly want it more.
Companies generally prefer humans over automation. Automation is a capex; humans are an opex. Automation runs the risk of flagrant failure; humans can fill in gaps in rulesets and ignore or modify bad ones on the fly to get work done. Automation requires complete legibility into the problem space; humans have private knowledge that is often essential to the problem.
As of now, we don't have automated systems that can exhibit agency. Deconstructing jobs into ones that require agency for smaller and smaller problems makes automation much more tractable, because you've already done a lot of the work.
I do agree that we're likely to build systems that can exhibit agency before we get to the point where robots can perform as well in the physical domain as humans do; radiologists are more at risk in the near term than nurses.
The problem is the seemingly ubiquitous paucity of quality management - there is literally no one appreciating your effort. Many managers, right up to a CX level are so detached from the purpose of the business they manage they can’t determine whether work done good or not.
My belief is this general lack of appreciation of excellence and intrinsic disinterest in excellence is the creation of the Friedman/Welch school of business - that the purpose of a business is to maximise value to shareholders. I see this as abstract and empty. It removes any value placed on, “we create great products that out customers love,” and replaces it with the dollar reward for shareholders. Make great products everyone wants? Why bother when you can create crap products with misused staff that are cheaply produced that returns more dividends for our shareholders. If you have talent and can produce quality go somewhere where you are appreciated. If you don’t, maybe go with the Homer Simpson approach and sink those companies who equally can’t deliver.
I don’t think this article is geared towards people who have it that good.
Like the work I already have.
I wish these folks the best in figuring that out that hard way.
The people on HN are more likely to be in well-paying roles that have lots of room for advancement.
>They’re disillusioned and it’s because they are better acquainted with today’s labour market than their critics. It’s not the Eighties anymore. You can’t graft your way to an ex-council house, uPVC windows, a Ford Escort and two weeks on the Costa Brava. You can’t go in at the bottom and work your way to the top. Men born in the late 1980s were at least twice as likely to begin their careers in low-paid jobs than those born in the 1970s. They have also climbed the ladder more slowly. Women born in the late Eighties started their careers at the same level of the labour market as those born in the Sixties.
I do think this is bad for society, and it is bad for people; but, it's also the reality for a lot of people.
You've already missed the point. You can have pride in your work regardless of payoff. I worked at a restaurant while in highschool and took pride in my work.
Steve Billings : I'll be back, all right - putting in my required hours, mandatory paper work. But as far as effort goes, I don't know what's between zero and the city mandate minimum, but from now on, let's call that "the Billings".
I see these sorts of contracts at a decent number of jobs, but I wouldn't say the majority. Every time I've been presented with one, they've been fine adding an exemption for my hobby work - as long as it's distinct from my professional work. I believe California requires such an exemption - I've gotten a fair number of contracts where it was already specified that they only owned the right to code that was related to my professional duties.
In your case you're talking about a specific technical hobby which is also cool. Just code all of it on your personal comp not during work hours. Once it get big hire a lawyer and get a llc. Don't limit yourself, identify problems and find solutions. Be an engineer. You got this.
1. That level becomes the new norm - and is expected of you regardless of your pay. (Expect to be treated better? Probably not.) 2. You may set yourself up for resentment from your fellow workers (a lesson I was once taught in hard and multiple ways in an industrial setting.)
In my nonprofit public policy advocacy (lobbying, really) job out of grad school (I was 33 when I got my MSW), I worked my butt off. Went in early, stayed late, worked most weekends. I LOVED the work. This continued until I got married at 40. And then I wanted to spend time with my husband and his kids. Guess what. . . The weekend work stopped, at least the bulk of it. My board chair said something to me one day about my productivity tapering off. I took it as an observation, not complaint or criticism. And then I explained I got married blah blah blah. She totally understood.
I have to say, though, that the hard work and commitment was worth it. Not long after I was married, my husband had a cancer scare. The board and executive director gave me all the time off I needed to help him recover and none of the time was charged to PTO. A colleague was given the day off of work to hang with me while he had surgery. I took a month off and then left work early for probably another month. Work sent food the day we got home from the hospital. Sure, I worked when my husband was sleeping, but I was not anywhere near 100%.
100% agree. upper management does almost zero real work and gets paid 5-50x more than you.
relationship with employer is purely business transaction, if not from you, then 110% from them.
It's easy to explain where the WEALTH goes, sure, but not where INCOME goes.
As for "needed" - well, goal of this whole thing is to provide overall growth. Concentration of wealth boosts growth. Concentration of income reduces growth. That's the principal difference.
There is of course the question of measuring that.
I think there's good evidence to show an excess of wealth (thus power / corruption) in the hands of a small group of people is detrimental to overall contentment.
The communist regimes of the 20th century didn't remove this wealth + power disparity between elites and proles and that is why it failed, along with aggressive competitive moves from and towards the U.S.
I wonder if green socialism in a circular economy has a hope of working outside of a global hegemony though.
You shouldn't do more than you're contracted to do, don't work overtime, work smart. Within the hours you're working and within the amount of stress you can tolerate, give your best, take responsibility and take the best decisions. Sure, if your employer win you're not guaranteed a win (hence why you're not overworking, and why people with equity tend to overwork more) but there is a higher chance of personal fortune if your employer doesn't go broke.
They'll claim they're doing acceptable work, but only in their own eyes. They invariably have a bad attitude and make work more of a drudgery just by being around. Team morale suffers because of their insufferable selfishness.
Everyone has to be a hero in their own narrative, and the quiet quitter is a hero in their own mind by sticking it to the man. What they don't see or care about is the rest of the team.
I have no problem with quiet coworkers. Their salary does not go out of my pocket. In contrast to them, I can appear even more competent. If the team does not meet some arbitrary deadline, it's not my problem -- I can show you the list of Jira tickets that I completed, and it's not my fault that the company decided not to hire more people for the project.
I am not in the business of persecuting my fellow human beings. Not because I am an angel, but simply because I literally have no incentive to do so.
Hypothetically, suppose that I get super resentful towards a quiet colleague, and I expose his behavior, and I get him fired. Congratulations! What happens next? Most likely, instead of hiring a replacement, the company will simply split that little amount of work he used to do among the remaining team members. Without increasing our salaries, of course. So now I have successfully harmed all team members, including myself. Why would I do that?
Also, you often do not know what is happening in your coworkers' private lives. Maybe their parents or their kids are dying of cancer, and they just can't find in themselves the energy for enthusiastic unpaid overtime. Or maybe not, and they are merely exhausted. It's not my business to investigate.
The discussion is actually about "quiet quitters". A totally different thing.
> I am not in the business of persecuting
Good for you. What does this have to do with the discussion or what I said?
> you don't know what is happening in your coworkers lives
If you show up an put your shoulder to it like the rest of us, that's all we ask. If you show up but habitually don't put your shoulder into it and everyone else has to continually make up for your slacking, then, guess what will happen?
I agree and identify strongly with this article.
> Turn up on time. Do your job. Do it right. Do whatever is asked of you provided it's lawful, reasonable. [...] Do not one thing more than that.
I struggle to understand this mindset a bit. Barring early "first job" jobs, when you were hired, presumably you agreed to / negotiated a compensation that was not the absolute minimum your employer could pay or that you would agree to. So to start, they're already not paying you the least they can. But then, if you're not doing anything more than the minimums/what you're expected to do, why would you expect anything more than minimum compensation raises? If you want more pay, and higher pay, you have to be doing more than you were originally hired to do. Especially because part of the hiring process is acknowledging that you will not actually be up to speed for anywhere from a few months to a few years.
Do I think companies should do more to retain and compensate their employees? Yes. Do I think that most companies are short sighted as to the true cost of losing valuable employees over compensation issues? Yes. Do I think that companies should try to do more than "the minimum"? Yes. But I also think all the same things about being an employee. I'm not saying you give up everything to the company, but I've known more than a few people in my life who were hardline "minimalist" employees, and they were always surprised by the fact that they were treated equally minimally by the employer.
> But then, if you're not doing anything more than the minimums/what you're expected to do, why would you expect anything more than minimum compensation raises?
I put this back in the companies court. Why would I want to go out of my way to do more than the bare minimum when you won't offer more than that for my efforts? I didn't start out with that mentality but it's been shown that these companies will absolutely take advantage of that for their benefit. For over a decade I've done Way more than the bare minimum for work, taking on more projects, responsibilities and impossible deadlines. Delivered 'steller' results, and pioneered work efficient improvements, etc. Every single year have gotten a 'top performer' yearly review. Every year except 1, received a measly 3% raise and told I should be happy it's so high.
After a decade of being lied to, shit on, and taken advantage of; tell me _why_ would I continue to put in amazing efforts for shit compensation increase? I don't expect great raises for mediocre work. But I did expect great raises for documented great work. That hasn't happened and frankly, I'm beyond busting my ass for piddly pay and being told I should be thankful for it.
Again, what I said in my parent comment. They want to pay the minimum, they'll get the minimum effort.
When I go to the store, there is a listed price for an apple. I pay that price, and nothing more. I get an apple, and nothing more. That's not lose-lose.
> Turn up on time. Do your job. Do it right. Do whatever is asked of you provided it's lawful, reasonable.
This is a totally reasonable transaction. You're not slacking off. You're not failing to do your reasonable duties. You're not showing up 2 hours late, or playing hooky.
> Do not one thing more than that.
If someone is asking you to do something unreasonable, you should have the freedom to refuse that. It should not be considered a defection or a betrayal. It might not always solve things, but it should be a normal and satisfactory outcome.
Again, this is the outcome every time I go to the grocery store
How you gain leverage is situational. At some companies, going above and beyond actually _reduces_ leverage, because you may find that after five years working at said company, the value you add is mostly tied to your knowledge of company internals (processes, systems, people, etc), and you may have actually fallen behind in the actual "transferable" skills that the market values.
You're hurting the people who will be fired if they don't pick up your slack.
I left an employer without notice not long ago where the prevailing attitude was more or less to do the minimum you could without being terminated and let the on-calls pick up the slack, after being "accidentally" placed on-call for roughly 7 weeks.
It literally destroyed my life in every possible way.
I'm not even open to working in that industry anymore.
The buck has to stop somewhere or the checks stop coming.
This is essentially open advocation for sociopathy.
Take better care of yourself going forward, no one else will. That is what the message is, self care over a nebulous business.
I don't want to work any more than you do, but it's not my fault or management's fault that you're not doing your job when nobody's watching.
It's a choice you make to shirk the responsibility you've been paid to assume, and it affects your colleagues much more than the corporation.
edit: honesty is important. call it as you see it. if that doesnt work: join em or walk
My point is that there's a contradiction in this argument.
A work culture where everyone is held accountable is a culture of authoritarianism, blame and metrics gaming.
A work culture where everyone is expected to act like an adult and do their job even when nobody's watching with the red pen, is a work culture in which the least you can do to not get fired is exactly nothing.
Everyone can't "quiet quit" by any reasonable definition, as that amounts to doing nothing and when nothing is delivered nobody gets paid.
It does not compute.
Either the output of what you do has an impact on the bottom line or it doesn't.
Guess which one gets let go first when push comes to shove.
I can’t say I’m sympathetic to your analysis at all. I don’t blame any of my coworkers who were able to work according to their actual express duties and not beyond, not one bit. I find it appalling that anyone would describe that as “sociopathy”, even in colloquial terms. With few exceptions, people are employed by organizations explicitly designed to extract as much value from every resource—human or otherwise—for as little expense as possible. And they’re employed or managed by people who either benefit from that or reinforce it. Speaking of colloquial (albeit wrong) use of the term “sociopathy”, that sure sounds like a perfect fit to me.
Even if someone extends their effort just a little bit and it’s not traumatic in the way you and I have experienced, they’re generally trading part of the most precious thing they’ll ever have, time, to enrich someone else at their expense.
The point of fulfilling your duties, and doing no more, isn’t to “hurt the corporation”, it’s to protect yourself from being harmed by it as you and I have. This is, curiously, where I find myself more philosophically at odds with the article than I think you are. The article advocates for quietly acquiescing to the fact of exploitative work expectations by quietly sneaking some semblance of not being exploited. You advocate for more people sharing the burden of being exploited, more evenly. Maybe Homer Simpson and America are wrong, and a healthy organized labor movement which prioritizes solidarity between workers, at the expense of employers and management where their priorities are harmful is a better compromise with reality than either “hope I don’t get caught doing my job and only my job” or “I’m destroying my life because my peers aren’t willing to destroy theirs along with me”.
The buck does have to stop somewhere. Why does it have to stop with the people who will likely suffer as we've suffered? Why are they the focus of ire and not the expectation that they sacrifice themselves too?
If nobody does anything, nothing is delivered and nobody gets paid.
If you don't want to work, don't take a job.
I don’t know if you’re conflating these things because the article poorly laid out its premise, or because you’re sympathetic to the demanding expectations you’ve participated in, or because it was so traumatic you see in your own right laziness where people are merely enjoying the fruits of their labor without toiling for other people’s fruits. In any case, I sincerely wish you recovery from any remaining burnout. And I sincerely invite you to have solidarity with others who don’t want to experience the severity of overwork we have, and to defend them in rejecting cultures of overwork rather than defending caricatures of workers who would be just as harmed if they were in our position.
If you don’t want to be overworked, don’t drive excessive work for those who’d benefit at your expense.
I left. The colleagues I left behind could handle the situation better than me and still work there. And I don't fault them either, the on-call schedule as well as how it was run was defined by management. Down the line that experience made me violently advocate for my current team not to be on-call, and with a bit of luck and support I was able to pull it off. The result was demonstrably more stable services and a team that can spend more time on high value work. Which is to say: change is possible. Sometimes.