Quiet Quitting

There has been an erosion and change in the nature of the employee-employer relationship.

Back in the day that the author initially started working, the nature of the relationship was probably much more balanced: the employee got a decent wage, was trusted to fulfil their duties with reasonable concessions and freedom (sometimes possibly doing overtime if necessary, but also being able to leave early on days when they had to take care of their kid), and they probably had much better implicit labor protections: in the event of economic downturns, the company was much more accommodating and tried its best to take care of the employee. In other words, the employer was trusted and the employee was trusted to "take care of each other". The job was "for life", after all.

Fast forward to these days: companies have stripped away a lot of the care they took for employees; in the event of economic issues, big corps will fire people basically at random. Most employees are monitored to the minute, and leeway from the employer is unheard of in most situations. All of this "taking care of your employees when things go awry" is expensive (like insurance) and employers have tightened their belts.

It's not surprising then that the employer also starts looking for ways of not doing more than they are contractually obliged to do.

It is mostly about the erosion of trust both ways.

I worked 200% for over 15 years in Silicon Valley. You know how many raises I got without changing jobs? Zero. You know how many promotions I got? Zero. You know how many bonuses I got? Zero. You know how much more work I got assigned? A TON.

Hard work only begets hard work these days and not further compensation. The old paths to higher compensation and career growth are dead, and employers killed them. There's no reason to go above and beyond anymore unless you want to be overworked to death. You won't get compensated more for it.

Times used to be you'd be recognized for your hard work and get raises, bonuses, and promotions but those days are gone. Now you have to change jobs to get ahead. So why put in any extra effort at a temporary job?

It irks me that some people use this term to mean "doing your job, as expected."

I would imagine it to mean "doing the absolute smallest amount you can get away with without getting noticed and subsequently fired."

Fulfilling my duties but not doing overtime seems like "doing your job" rather than "quiet quitting."

It's interesting to see this from CERN, which is essentially an institution that enables young people to work unlimited hours for next to no pay and virtually no chance of ever attaining significant recognition of their work.

In my brief time there, it was not uncommon to hear stories of people who had moved there and not even unpacked all of their belongings after a year or more.

On the plus side, if you love particle physics and/or the surrounding context, it's one of the best places to be. On the minus side, you'll have to give up everything else and be quite smart in addition to move ahead.

I'm gen X so sort of right in the middle. I consider my generation on of the last of the american dream is attainable for the average worker.

I was able to buy a home in my early 20s and climb the wealth ladder. I busted my ass working a 40hr a week job and doing side hustles to make it happen.

If you are looking for a home now outside a major city and don't want a 2hr commute things are so slim even if you work your butt off why do it then?

Its not that they don't want to work its why work? Its not a work issue but its a wage issue. Wages haven't kept up with inflation and cost of college.

Kids have been pushed by their parents to take office jobs when they could be making 2 times what they are currently working if they went into a trade.

My dad owned a sand/gravel company and sold it because he couldn't find young people that wanted to drive a truck or run a frontend loader. He was offering $25/hr in a low cost of living area and no one wanted to do it because they've heard since they were 8 years old how bad working with your hands are and they should get an office job

I finally 'quiet quit' when I realized being a minority in tech means I'll never break the glass ceiling past senior engineer regardless of how hard I work or how visibly I help. Even in school I was shoved into secretarial work until I finally convinced professors to let me work solo and would smoke entire groups.

People for some reason think I am good enough to interview for lead or architect then seem surprised when I show up and saw "Ooo, hmm. I think you are a better fit for senior." or "Hmm. I think we'll hire you as a second or third hire instead" or when I am inside, I am told for years "you're up for a promotion".

I am disregarded and mistreated, treated like a pariah. I thought if I worked hard enough, people will like me and see my value; a meritocracy! Nope. It's got nothing to do with actual skills and everything to do with who you are and who you schmooze.

It's weird as fuck that they are interested and crawling over me until they talk to me as a person. I am doubtful it is my abilities. It's likely because I am autistic and a little eccentric (talk fast / ADHD & a little overwhelming to talk to if I am being honest). I am well-spoken and fairly clear to speak to, I actually give talks about my work. I just chalk it up to wanting a square when I am pretty clearly and happily a circle.

I can either bury myself and personality to become a grey corporate square or I can shut my mouth and disregard the dudebros that seem to only promote fellow dudebros that ask me how to solve their problems then pretend they didn't.

Humans have been doing this forever, just working hard enough to not be fired. If anything it's idealistic youth who tend to buck that trend and subscribe to hustle culture en masse. From the 1999 movie Office Space:

> Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.

> Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?

> Peter Gibbons: 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?

"Quiet quitting", because "healthy boundaries and balance" doesn't roll off the tongue quite as smoothly.

Hustle culture is great for those with significant equity, but ultimately happiness comes from within, and work is usually just a stepping stone to finding a sense of purpose beyond making a handful of individuals rich.

Here's to hoping that quiet quitting is merely the beginning.

I am seeing this happening on multiple occasions in my career. One: there was this engineer I in my sister team. They put in just enough effort to get by and not to get pipped. They were not incompetent, I would argue the opposite. I thought they were lazy for doing minimal amount of work to get by while I was putting in 200% for the customers. Fast forward a couple of years, I couldn’t get to the promotion I needed the most. They retired and then retreated to a LCL area. Looking back, I would admire them for being conscious about work.

Second: current team, there is this employee who has been with the firm for over 18 years. They are in product management, not an engineer. Recently performance review questioned why they stay at that role for so long: was that because of complacency or just incompetence? Their manager answers that they are good of what they’ve been doing for over 15 years, but have no motivation for moving up because they care more about work life balance and family relationships. They were put to pip next quarter.

Those two experiences have shaped my perception of work very much. Especially the 2nd one, where I was involved in the performance review. I see all the nasty side of management and stack ranking system designed to screwed employees, albeit they are doing a decent jobs. I’m still pushing for my promotion everyday. But, I no longer am invested emotionally heavily in that rat race. If I am to be promoted next time, it is great. If not, it’s not because I’m incompetent, just quiet quitting.

Peace and take care of your health, fellows.

This article is another one in a long line that continues to “not get it.”

First off, just stop saying “quiet quitting” this way. Doing your job isn’t quiet quitting. We should be suspicious of any term like this that suddenly spreads across mass media.

This is the monopoly guys of the world trying to label and shame people for having boundaries and realizing that their hamster wheel leads nowhere. Working hard for someone else’s gain just wastes the one life we were given to us.

If there is a legitimate use for a term called “quiet quitting,” that would be more like pretending to work and legitimately slacking. Completing the required job generally on time isn’t quiet quitting.

The article treats this introduction of healthy boundaries by the youngest generation as if it’s a problem for companies to solve, and suggests that employers start to recognize employees’ accomplishments more.

If what companies want is extremely dedicated employees, I say, that recognition isn’t nearly enough.

Here’s the thing: younger employees are simply following the incentives that corporations are giving them.

Corporations don’t even incentivize extra hard work despite asking for it! They don’t offer commissions or profit sharing unless you’re in sales. They don’t give out bonuses for putting in extra hours or delivering work early. The equity they offer is worthless bullshit that’s filled with caveats.

Corporations rarely promote from within, they hire outside managers and friends of current management, double the word “rarely” if you’re a woman or minority.

Corporations don’t incentivize long tenures, they’d rather you leave or be laid off so that they can run the company like a pro sports team and optimize their labor force. If a team is misallocated, they’d rather lay off the team and hire a whole set of new employees where they’re needed. Retraining and cross-training don’t fit on their balance sheets.

Finally, corporations don’t keep salary increases paced with inflation or career growth so they incentivize job changes.

If you want me to dedicate my life to your company, you better be doing a whole hell of a lot better. Just because I like the work I do doesn’t mean I have better things I can do with my time that I enjoy more.

I’m out of here by 4. If you don’t like it, find someone else.

Looking at one very narrow slice of the UK labour market, it seems to me that what's changed is this: in the old days, contracts said that employees would do "reasonable" unpaid overtime, and on a 100% job you ended up doing perhaps effectively 120% or something like that. You knew periods in the year that would always be busy, and periods in the year where no-one cared if you went home a bit earlier except if there was an unplanned crisis (which happened, but was rare). Everyone knew the actual deal, and it mostly worked.

Now, it seems like there's always a crisis, the definition of "reasonable" somehow went above 150%, and you're constantly being pushed to get more done with less. Also pay rises have been below inflation since around the early 2000s, and are definitely not keeping up with the current cost of living crisis.

I don't blame employees for going, if the employer's definition of "reasonable" overtime is anything but, what about if I work the number of hours I'm contracted for and no more? Because the unofficial actual deal worked as long as both sides were ok with it.

> Loss of purpose, lack of fair recognition and the need to preserve work–life balance seem to be the main motives of the younger generations for quiet quitting.

It's because the cost of everything keeps increasing but pay doesn't, especially housing costs. Why work my ass off if I'm never going to be able to buy a house?

The economy can cool down, but it won't matter - if rent is $2000/mo., no one is going to take your $11/hr jobs unless you're very flexible, because people will need multiple such jobs to survive if that's all they can get.

Can someone please explain to me how you work 200%?

Does this mean that a person claiming this worked 16 hours days, and then in order to eat, skipped two hours of sleep time, so typically would only get 6 hours of sleep, and no other time off during the week?

Or, that they decided not to see children (who need 10-12 hours of sleep a day, so that would clearly make it impossible to see them if you are not occupied by work except for 8 hours a day, presumably at night), except on the weekends?

And, that they didn't write blogs back then? It takes me two or three hours of total time, and I've never had a job that paid me to write in my personal spaces, so I cannot figure out how I would have done that kind of work. Maybe the kids are optimizing by using Snapchat which takes much less time?

... is not a thing.

To employers bitching, you get what you pay for. Put up or shut up.

I handed in my notice today I have been with the company for 7 years and am nearly doubling my pay by going else where. Last time I got a significant promotion or raise was because I got another job, stuck with the company put in the work got nothing else. Now im quitting again suddenly im the most valued member of the team and they are going to move heaven and earth to make it work.

I don't like having to threaten my boss with quitting in order to get anywhere.

My friend starts looking after 2 years and makes a boat load more than me. Loyalty and hard work just don't get you paid, knowing your market value does.

Not to be rude but a 50+ years old who works at CERN for 20 years and probably is paid X times the min wage _will_ not understand the mindset of quiet quitters

These people haven't "worked" a day in their lives, either because they pursue their dreams or because they have extremely comfortable working situations. Same people who ask construction workers to work until 65/67 years old. "if I can do it everybody can", yeah no sorry we're not all pursuing our dreams and getting paid $$$ for it

Incredibly tonedeaf post from an ombud org; framing this phenomenon of setting boundaries and having healthy work-life balance as only negative thing and musing about how to eliminate it. Hey, how about considering that there might be good aspects there too?

I wonder if there's any interplay here with the "radically flat" organizations of our generation, especially in tech.

For better or worse, when I first started out, and the first 2 companies I worked, there were something like 10-15 layers from me to the CEO. This created a hypothetical ladder of responsibilities and titles I felt I could climb, with rungs 3-5 years apart, getting wider the higher you go.

In more recent roles, I have been in 3000 person organizations where even as an IC, I am known to, and speak with, people in the C-suite short of the CEO. I work for someone with 50 people in org, who works for someone with 1500 in their org, who works for the CEO.

A lot of these radically flat orgs expect ICs as "senior engineers" or "staff engineers" or some other made up title to do some ad-hoc mix of IC, people management, project management, etc.

In effect a lot of us get asked to do a job we don't have, and in fact, will never have, given the 50:1, 1500:1, and 3000:1 ratios from IC to each of the 3 levels on the ladder.

The second dimension is that software project lifecycles have always been shorter than traditional engineering, and have become shorter. This leads to a lot of hopping between firms as your project hits peak and is on the disinvest cycle.

> I read an interesting Korn Ferry article on the term that the newest entrants to the workforce have for not going “above and beyond” their specific work duties: they call it quiet quitting.

No they don't. Only opinion columnists call it that.

This was a more balanced post than I expected. I'm probably older than the median here on HN and I think it's a generational thing. My parents were of the generation when folks tended to work for a company for a majority of their career and work hard to try to stay. But they grew up influenced by their parent who lived through great depression (technically mine did too but they were young) - jobs were a lifeline. So I'm a couple of generations removed from that and, even though I'm still biased towards 'work hard, job is important' my attitudes have been shifting as well (even though I'm in tech, my wife is a schoolteacher and also works incredibly hard).

I did not enter the workforce at an age where I was constantly deluged with 24 hour news and media feeds that the world is a terrible place. I've talked to multiple folks in the past 5 years or so who were just entering the workforce and they were even wondering what the point in getting married, having kids, etc. was. I have to believe that's a factor as well.

> I tried to explain that, when I started to work, and throughout my career, I gave 200% of my energy to my job and it would never have occurred to me to question this.

It did not occur to the author that values above 100% of something may be excessive? Somehow, I don't find that convincing.

> I also shared with them my view that going “above and beyond your work” was the only way to continue learning and developing

That's a strong argument against investing effort and enthusiasm, right there. It's saying that even doing your job properly and well means no development and no "learning".

> it would pay off eventually

1. It.... probably wouldn't.

2. Today's labor market is much more precarious; chances of a person staying at the same workplace for more than several years are mediocre-to-low. So by the time "eventually" comes around, the employee will need to be someplace else, doing something else, i.e. no payoff.

3. Even if the employee stayed put - they will live in poor material conditions while waiting for that eventuality to materialize.

Quiet quitting is not working until you get fired. Doing your job and nothing more than that isn't quiet quitting.

This article is very ironic: it is written by the CERN's Ombud, who has a lifetime employment contract like all of CERN's management, and probably obtained it at a time when CERN was printing them like hot cakes. Today's reality is much different: the chances of obtaining this contract are very low and mostly depend on older colleagues retiring, otherwise you are limited to a 5 year staff contract. The disconnect between the Ombud and the people she talks about is striking, for example when she describes them as "obviously disoriented" for refusing to get into the career grind.

Not mentioned at all is most people's salaries cannot buy you the same life that it was able to afford baby-boomers. The work-life balance re-assessment is partially based on a recognition that they are getting less benefit per hour spent at work, and for many the tradeoff is no longer worth it.

If the best that people with degrees, trade qualifications or good ol' fashioned hard work can look forward to is just scraping by, forever on the rent treadmill, then what was all the hustle for? They may as well scrape by and enjoy their life.

No-one is under any illusion that just by making it to the next tier in their company they'll suddenly be bonafide middle-class Americans either. They can tell their management is in the exact same boat.

I won't bother mentioning dollar figures, because that really doesn't translate well across the conversation. People are looking for a good life in their chosen community, whatever that costs is what is fair for a hard worker. If I were to mention a salary amount it would mean a different level of living for everyone who read it, depending on where they live.

So this is "doing what you're paid for and stop giving employers your time for free"? I don't see how that is not the norm.

There's no such thing as a free lunch, remember? That goes both ways.

Are the author's observations really representative of a generational difference? When I was younger, my attitude would have been "work hard and party hard", which was a commitment to an active rather than relaxed work-life balance. Among my fellow students, I could observe a whole spectrum from "work hard" to "party hard". My own current anecdotal evidence with young adults from my extended family still includes examples of both. Therefore, I am not sure if the average has really shifted.

I consider myself fortunate to love these damned infernal machines such that my passion and the-good-work aligns. Early in my career at AWS, after a bit of ego alignment, I realized the tremendous opportunity to just grind and get things done.

Going above and beyond was learning more and more. I read years of COE reports learning why and how massive distributed systems fail which made me a better team mate, better code reviewer, and help me help managers. Sure, I had a job to do, but the going above and beyond should be self interested.

Boomers look surprised, and I think they fail to see the reality of current times. Decades ago, an university teacher, could afford to buy a home for his family , not too far from where he/she/* worked. Nowadays, even with FAANG salaries you can't buy a decent size home for your family even in a "30 minutes drive" radio from where your offices are. Imagine other professions who are not paid as much. People see through the "hustle mentality" grindset, usually only the ones telling you to hustle and grind are the ones making the big bucks. I understand there are outliers , people who did hustle and became very wealthy, but the problem I see is, the older generation fails to see the evident changes in the social and economical landscape that push their people towards this type of attitude towards work.

I worked a lot on my first job. I thought this company was my company, and I tried to help a lot, failing in every attempt. Boy... it was very painful.

After 6 years without a raise, I went to another company. After my departure, 4 people are hired to do my work. And six years later I went back to the first one, with a 700% increase in salary. What I've learned over the years is that with an external proposal, you get a raise 99% of the time. And that your effort is basically irrelevant. Politics and social capital are much, much more relevant. If your competitor is the owner's son, friend of the boss, you will lose.

In the end, with some social capital you can't work in practice and you'll never get fired. Quiet quiting is for people without social capital.

If, like me, you have zero social capital, my recomendation is to be very professional: I work 8 hours and if the company has an emergency, like a DDOS, I help, but I ask for a day off in the same week. If there's an opportunity for a raise, I'll try. If I see an opportunity to help the employer, I try, but without suffering. If employer try to umilate me or do not accept the days off from a emergency, like DDOS, etc I will find another job. Your employer will likely never be truly professional, but you can be.

There have been generational changes which may explain the different attitudes. I am an older millenial, and was brought up on the idea of putting in extra to learn and develop my career. I followed the leads of my boomer seniors.

But I don't get the benefits they did. For my line of work (not IT), I work harder, I am paid less, I pay more on my mortgage, I live in smaller, less salubrious places than they do, I will get a smaller pension, I need my wife to continue working to pay for everything. My children will have less opportunities, their university education won't be funded.

I think my specific generation were the suckers, and I can't, hand-on-heart, tell the Gen Z juniors that if they just work their arses off, they will be given some career with these kind of rewards.

Yet another aspect is that the boomers were largely male, with wives and kids who hardly saw them. This is far less tolerable these days. For every keen junior who committed 200%, there was an unhappy partner doing all the housework and bringing up the kids.

There is also a 'slowdown'[0] or a go-slow-strike which doesn't have to be overt, i.e alerting employers that you're going to work slowly. You can quietly not put in the effort required of you.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowdown

> This concept is illustrated by a video that has gone viral on social media. “You are still performing your duties but you’re no longer subscribing to the hustle culture mentality that work has to be your life,” the young man in the video says.

They really needed a word to describe having a rational (as in rational self-interest) attitude towards work.

> I also shared with them my view that going “above and beyond your work” was the only way to continue learning and developing in the workplace and that it would pay off eventually … but I realised that I did not convince them at all.

I totally love my job. But sometimes I wonder if I would love something else even more. I make tons of money but unfortunately I spend tons of money. If I did like those FIRE folks do, maybe I could take years off of work and try something totally new and different - thru-hike the AT or PCT or take a crazy long boat trip or just code on fun projects at home.

Keynes said we'd be working 15-hour work weeks [1]. Sounds like some of this younger generation might just embrace it? I'm too chicken to try the stuff I list above.

[1] http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

I'm not particularly happy with the term "Quiet Quitting." I think that, if someone does the job they are expected to do, at the quality level that is expected of them, for a fair compensation, then that does not count as "quitting."

I think the blame for the current mess the American (and this seems to be mostly an American issue) labor force is in, rests squarely on the managers and executives of corporations.

I don't know if I'm just privileged, but I've never worked with anyone that "just wants to get the day over with." I've always worked with people who are passionate about the work they do, and use that passion to "power through" the parts that don't kindle that passion.

But it's pretty important to help folks to feel good about the work they do, and for the place where they spend 1/3 of their life. You want them to give more than 1/3? Make it worth it to them; and it's not just money (but money is important. It is a visceral signal that you are valued).

I was a first-line manager, for a large portion of my career. I seem to have done a fairly good job of keeping my employees motivated, passionate, and engaged. It took a lot of work and humility, on my part. I was not really supported by my superiors, or the HR department. I spent a great deal of time, shielding my employees from the rapacious nature of HR.

I did work for a company that was run by older, more business-oriented folks. There wasn't a ton of money to be made (we were basically specialized, and Quality-oriented), so our top-level leadership was fairly pragmatic. I am so glad that we weren't run by one of these twenty-something billionaires that can't even understand people that aren't rich, or trying to be rich. That sounds like a nightmare.

As far as "work-life balance," I don't see why young people seem to think older folks value this less.

You want to learn about "balance"? Get married and have kids.

A phenomenal amount of words are being written about this topic but it seems far simpler to me than most are suggesting. People are sick of those who are already extremely wealthy capturing so much value from economic activity, without truly earning their wealth (by any reasonable definition of "earning"). Since people still need to eat, we are entering into a spite-centric model where I earn as much as I can, but in competition with my employer rather than collaboration. The easiest way for me to do that is to minimize the benefit they can get from my employment, while not offering any excuse to get rid of me specifically.

The best way I can see to recover from this trend is for employee ownership models to gain traction.

Fundamentally, the price you pay from working a job in terms of time and energy lost will very rarely be worth it to the individual. There is a disconnect between the human mind, which has complex desires, and the place of any individual human in the world, where getting anything done requires either sacrifice or prior luck and your role is very small for the most part. For a job to be satisfying, it will either have to be something you'd do anyway (which is rare) or something where your contributions live up to the demands of your mind (which is even rarer)

Agile sprints might as well have been designed to facilitate quiet quitting.

> Loss of purpose, lack of fair recognition and the need to preserve work–life balance seem to be the main motives of the younger generations for quiet quitting.

The fact that the author is not even recognizing "how much less money earned is worth" summarizes the entire problem. I wish you could pluck these people from the castle they have built for themselves and throw them back into the real world as a fresh 20 year old and tell them to do everything they did the same, and see how it turns out for them.

I find myself saddened by the 'quiet quitting' meme.

If people were simply promoting trying to find a new employer if your current employer doesn't value your hard work properly, that would be great. That would benefit workers.

If people were simply promoting a balanced life in which it is okay to take leisure time and not make your whole life about your career, that would be great. That would benefit workers.

But 'quiet quitting' isn't just those things. It actively encourages people to stay where they at but to perform the minimum required to maintain employment. In many cases, it promotes a sense that you are sticking to the man; you're finally causing your your employer to get what they deserve.

But adopting apathy towards your career hurts you proportionally far more than it hurts your employer. 'Quiet quitting' is a meme that can easily harm the people who are most enthusiastic to put its tenants into practice.

Years ago I read an autobiography of a Black gentleman who came from very poor beginnings in the US South but ended up having an accomplished career laid on the foundation of the hard work he had put into being successful in his academic pursuits when he was young. He discussed some of the challenges that other young Black boys and men faced. In some parts of the Black community, young Black boys would insult their peers who were interested in academics by saying they were 'acting white'. Although it is virtually certain that these young boys had legitimate grievances about the 'white' society in which they were growing up (which was early to mid 20th century America), this had developed into a meme in which trying to be successful at learning was derided as pointless or as selling out. This was a tragedy since becoming successful at learning was in fact one of the best things that young Black men could do to raise their standards of living.

The similarities with the 'quiet quitting' meme seem sadly clear to me. Hopefully it will pass before too many young people's future growth is inadvertently self-sabotaged.

To be clear, I don't mean to deny that there are problems with the typical 21st century "employee-employer bargain". Let's just try to find a way to fix those problems without spreading a self-harming meme.

The Cousin to "quiet quitting" is a culture of "immediate gratification".

The number of quick-fix, no-code, RAD tools that are delivered via SaaS are experiencing amazing growth.

Front line Information Workers are increasingly conditioned to use the cloud for solutions. Managers are quick to approve budget for these tools. Is this working smarter? More resourceful? Or just lazy?

Whatever the conclusion, the Hacker community can turn this into a thousand opportunities.

This will not abate at all given an economic downturn.

The old school keeps waiting for these deeply rooted changes to blow over like a reddit fad. During a downturn I expect the "mellenials" (and all the gen x and others who have joined them) to double down.

I currently jump at any chance to take less pay for less work. The opposite direction holds no appeal to me unless it is my own gig.

Something this pervasive and organic does not blow over.

> From the Ombud’s watch post, I confirm that giving fair recognition and appreciation

Interesting that compensation is not included in this list.

I imagine cern pays pretty well, however I’ve seen HR at many companies try stuff that either literally or figuratively amounts to a pizza party, while trying to not give raises.

>>> Loss of purpose, lack of fair recognition and the need to preserve work–life balance seem to be the main motives of the younger generations for quiet quitting.

Work-life balance and over-and-beyond are opposites. You can get one or the other. Lack of fair recognition for going over and beyond is a thing. I would say recognition should have a significant monetary component to compensate for loss of work-life balance.

Loss of purpose is dual edged. A lot of times there is a part where you have to experiment and throw away certain implementations. People go “above-and-beyond” in some of these situations and end up with nothing to show for their effort. It can get very demoralizing. In that, maybe failed experiments need to be recognized as well as successful ones if sincere effort has been put in.

Either way a successful upward trending career and work-life balance are at odds with one another. It’s for individuals to make the choice. Not giving 200% isn’t quiet quitting. Not giving 100% is.

I wonder how quiet quitters and the overemployed[1] fare in the mass layoffs.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/

Why are some people working more than they can? For their own startup or doing a PhD they are passionate about I understand it, but for a random company?

Nowadays employers fail miserably at fulfilling basic needs like, believe or not, giving someone a Linux computer.

One of the quotes from younger people is "I realise the things I’m doing are above my pay grade" – "above my pay grade" is definitely not a term invented by the youth. Nothing being attributed to young people here is new. If the author can't see that, and thinks this attitude wasn't present in the Boomer generation, then they themselves aren't putting in the necessary reflective work.

The tenured boomer view of indifferent younger colleagues is just survivorship bias (or ageist hiring practices or both). Because the company is only hiring younger people each of the boomers that still work at the company remember the good old days. What appears to be a generational shift in work ethic in reality is just people that survived at the company for multiple decades telling tales about their work experience (and it's easy to say, or think, that you worked long hours when there is no one around to correct you.)

Point being, if the company hires boomers as new employees they will likely find that the indifference spans generations, and what does that tell you about the management and long term viability of the organization?

A new generation figured out how to balance work and life... and boomers call it 'quitting'? While those same boomers gain more wealth each year than gen X and Z are able to save, because they cling to real estate that they got on the cheap? OK Boomer...

This honestly reads like satire.

Step 1: *systematically kill the middle class over a generation*

Step 2: "noooooo, why are these workers not pushing themselves like they used to? are you not believing in our mission statement? but we've introduced Pride Month this year! what else do you want???"

Step 3: ???

If you feel the urge to quiet quit, you're either at the wrong company, or worse, in the wrong profession.

Alot of young people are being influenced by stupid trends on reddit (like /r/antiwork) or this 'quiet quitting' nonsense. Alot of young people also believe that meritocracy doesn't exist in the modern workplace, which is dangerous, because we all know it 100% exists.