IMO, people generally only want a few things out of work:
- Sufficient money so you don't feel ripped off or left behind compared to others in your social class
- Agency over your day - you can take an afternoon off if you're feeling down, your kids are sick, etc
- Enough free time to relax and have an out of work life
- Lack of obstacle/roadblocks to actually doing good work
Most modern companies get all of this wrong. They pay the bare minimum and raises are small and slow, encouraging job hopping. You have to beg for time off like a child. No clearly defined off hours for most employees. The daily job is filled with bureaucracy and excessive micromanagement that slow you down at every turn.
Being disengaged is the logical response to these conditions.
The reason I’m on year 20 with an employer is because they tick those boxes. And also box 5: reasonably interesting/challenging/creative work. For me as a software developer that’s as simple as ”not making CRUD webapps”.
> No one interested in box 6: not fcking our planet and other humans?*
Empirically, no. It's an exernality. Expecting private parties to manage externalities in economic transactions is nice, but demonstrably insufficient.
I think you need a level of stability which generally doesn't exist in today's working environment to be able to pick an employer based on that metric.
I don't argue that choosing his employer is a luxury few can afford, but this is true of the other boxes. You might have to trade some boxes for the others are will (especially the first one regarding compensation - as it turns out, in this world there is strong correlation between "f*cking the planet and other humans" and making a lot of money)
Depends. I wouldn’t want to work in the oil industry if I could avoid it. But I’m sure it could be greenwashed, even to myself. I’d have no second thoughts about working in defense (I’m from a small country on Russia’s doorstep, not the US if that matters), quite the opposite it would be filled with interesting technical problems I’m sure. But defense usually has terrible wfh policies.
I've been at my current place for about ten years now because it checks all the boxes for me, too. Unfortunately, as all things must end eventually, we're slowly in the process of shutting down and this current job market is terrifying.
If you're getting antsy and thinking of dipping a toe in the market, I'd say wait a year or two.
I stuck things out as long as I could reasonably get off with at my last job past which there would have been "difficult conversations" for a variety of reasons (COVID factored in too)--but that was around the time I had decided I was going to semi-retire anyway. Actually, stayed a bit longer than planned. I still do some analyst work.
- Not to be made to feel like shit constantly with non-stop criticism about every little thing you didn't 100% get perfectly right, meanwhile management has no accountability on all the stuff they fuck up, so long as they stay angry enough and put all the blame on their team.
Not only no accountability, but their fuck ups are actively swept under the rug. Certain higher person in our place had a medium fuck up, which involved changing vendors. They clearly did it in a less than friendly way, because when the fuck up came to light, vendor simply said 'pay me', which the person refused to do. Instead, it became a separate, massive, end of the year project that probably had at least the cost of the vendor quote, but had the benefit of wasting everyone's time and making money for a 3rd party contracting operators.
"Lack of obstacles" really resonates. If we're talking about software dev, it's fun to get into a flow state and solve problems. Whether you actually get to do that at a BigCo seems like a roll of the dice. For every team that seems happy & effective, there are two encumbered by lack of agency, bureaucracy, pointless meetings, etc. Most people who got into software dev will work hard when there is actually something to do that is fun and engaging.
In a lot of modern corporate jobs, how hard you turn the crank of effort is almost completely disconnected from the outcomes that you see.
Beyond a small minimum requirement, turning the crank more only leads to the expectation that you will continue to turn that crank that much. Rewards for going beyond -- money, security, autonomy -- are rarely present and almost never in proportion to how much you turn the crank. Plus, one day the company will decide it no longer needs you to turn the crank anymore, and without so much as a "thank you" you're on your own.
"In a lot of modern corporate jobs, how hard you turn the crank of effort is almost completely disconnected from the outcomes that you see."
100%
I was a hard worker and a high performer for years and didn't see advancement due to politics. Now I have a bad rating, I'm likely to get PIP'd, but I'm simultaneously on the short list for a double promotion. How schizophrenic does your performance management have to be have someone either getting PIP'd or double promoted?
Exactly. If management communicated clear expectations and measured performance accordingly, this would all be resolved, but they encourage living in fear instead. What do they expect as a result?
In a large corporation, I don't think it's possible.
In a small company, can look at revenues and profits, and maybe breakdown by product line, and then create a bonus pool according to how well the company did and let managers decide how to divvy it up based on their evaluation of their reports.
At a very large corporation, how can you trace back credit for overall corporate performance to individuals? If individual contributors own stock in the company or RSUs, how do they know whether their actions are increasing the corporation's value?
I don't think your individual performance as an IC should be measured in anything related to revenue under normal circumstances. As an IC engineer you aren't in control of product. You can give feedback on product decisions but that gets rarely heard. You mostly have control over deliverables that you are asked to produce and that's what you should be measured by. Empowering others around you is another factor that must be incorporated and arguably this is where things get fuzzy but a good manager should be able to tell. Of course it also matters that the company trusts the manager otherwise you end to in gaming metrics land. If your manager cannot be trusted you are off into shitb politics land. Those are the two major failure modes. Shit metric gaming and shit politics. Preventing those two from happening is hard and must come from the top
<< almost completely disconnected from the outcomes that you see.
I will push it a little further, because I suppose I personally am going through a period of disengagement the article is writing about. In the last major project I was a part of, I actually saw the opposite correlation: the more effort I gave, the more messy things were becoming ( sadly, it makes sense; in that project I was finding issues left and right; if I am going above and beyond, a lot will be discovered as broken ). Eventually, it gets to you.
<< Rewards for going beyond -- money, security, autonomy -- are rarely present and almost never in proportion to how much you turn the crank.
This is the other part. I got very little out of this project for pointing out all the issues and trying to somehow resolve them. If anything, I made myself a fair amount of 'enemies', who did not appreciate me holding up the process. Once you realize what is being rewarded ( and it is not doing things well ), you optimize for it.
And can you guess what is the metric that is being rewarded? Closing projects. Not completing them well. Not making it so that they work. No. Closing a lot of them and on time. So what if is done wrong? Fixing it is another project..
I used to think that approach is an exception, but I am starting to think this it is more of a rule now. That anything gets done is nothing short of a miracle.
> Rewards for going beyond -- money, security, autonomy
Yeah, I agree with this, but really it comes down to money. With enough money, the other two won't matter so much. An MBA that can hold labor costs down one year might get a significant bonus, and get the corporate jet to take on vacation to Hawaii.
On the other hand if you're not management and you save the company $6million per year, well, good luck seeing a bonus from that. I'm sure it will go to the MBA's above you, including the private jet vacation to Hawaii.
"Quiet quitting" as a phrase is just the latest bigcorp propaganda attempt to trick workers into doing more for free, now that previous attempts like "company loyalty" are dead and buried.
Companies need to set the bar and uphold it. Saying people are "quiet quitting" is synonymous with saying, "we don't know how to set and uphold standards". Putting the blame on the employee instead of having clear guidelines (i.e. making it a performance problem) is an unfortunate scapegoat used to shift the blame and accountability. A job is a contract. Ain't just one sided.
Edit: Amending to mention that there are companies that do quite well at upholding standards. To those, thank you for trying.
'We're going to force workers into the office and hope they do some work out of boredom' is taken as a serious strategy because the average manager is mind-bogglingly incompetent. If you know how productive people are (i.e. your managers aren't morons), and you have incentives set-up (e.g. pay, promotions and hiring/firing is dictated by productivity), then there's no problem to solve. Workers who are more productive in the office will be forced into the office to meet standards, you don't need blanket rules.
Oh and the penny pinchers have consistently under-leased space and forced the worst setting imaginable on most of us - open floorpans. So RTO is disruptive, distracting and pointless.
My small team of 3-4 will occasionally go to the office when someone is in town, ask for a room/office get denied and assigned random open floorpan seats.
Usually sat next to the interns or the Helpdesk or some other noisy group we don't interact with at all.
Often they can't even find contiguous seating so we are sat hodgepodge amongst people we don't work with.
Of course after this post, no joke I go into the office last week and the reservable open desks were in the supply closet with broken chairs and monitors. Amazing.
The other day my manager straight up told me he doesn't understand what I am spending time with issue X for and why I even put it in my scrum meeting ( he assigned it me; he really should know what it actually entails, but clearly doesm't know ). I will be honest, I got pissy and simply removed it from my todo list, will let it fail and I will let it be assigned to me again. I am now George Constanza and embrace the sheer corporate managery.
Just like "we're all family here" (until they hear wall street rewarding layoffs). Or "nobody wants to work anymore" which you can find in newspapers all the way back to the 1700s
We’re all family, but the family is undergoing some restructuring. So we’re going to have to let some of our poorest performing sons and daughters go. I’m sure you understand, kiddo. Please leave all family property at security.
Also if you ever come back to the family home, we will be calling the police, as you are no child of mine, not any more. Good luck!
> Not all solutions require monetary compensation. Employers often overlook what employees find rewarding. This is where a culture of curiosity becomes invaluable—simply asking employees what motivates and empowers them can reveal unexpected insights. Acts like acknowledging sacrifices, allowing flexibility for parenting emergencies, or offering an afternoon off after a rough day can build goodwill and strengthen the employer-employee relationship.
This reminds me of that recent SNL skit where Nate Bargatze plays George Washington and when Keenan Thompson asks him about the slaves, he changes the topic hastily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk
What employees want is money. All that extra stuff is nice, in addition to more money for their work.
> All that extra stuff is nice, in addition to more money for their work
Given the choice, plenty of people choose fewer hours for less money. Money is part of it. But people will gladly work for a better company in exchange for less money and no be getting screwed for it.
> Given the choice, plenty of people choose fewer hours for less money.
Provided you are making enough in the first place.
Many people are just living paycheque-to-paycheque, even with good budgeting and no frivolous expenditures, and a lower-paying job for less stress just isn’t possible. In that case, more money is the answer.
Plus, if wages had kept up with productivity, most people currently earning $50k/yr would really be making over $150k/yr for the exact same work and with all the exact same costs and expenses of life.
Where did all this extra money go? Look up. Waaaay up, to the very top.
Yup, current abysmally-low wages are the only reason why billionaires even exist.
> Provided you are making enough in the first place
Fair enough.
> most people currently earning $50k/yr would really be making over $150k/yr for the exact same work
I’m sceptical. You’d automate a lot of jobs before that.
> current abysmally-low wages are the only reason why billionaires even exist
Trivially falsifiable, or tautological enough to be unfalsifiable. Villains are convenient. But fictional villains don’t animate against you. We can fix income inequality a great deal without declaring war on one class or another.
> I’m sceptical. You’d automate a lot of jobs before that.
That could happen. All automation is made by labor. Then the capitalists who by definition own the means of production can fire people since they own the automation that labor created. And why wouldn’t they? It’s in their own rational self-interest.
Maybe you are a billionaire or not paying attention to trends for the average person. Not sure, but Billionaire's are at war with the population, so why shouldn’t the population fight back? By the way, the population fighting back will do the billionaire’s a favor as the current distribution of assets is at unprecedented levels. The backlash is inevitable and let’s hope things turn around quickly before AI advances potentially rip off the cover.
> Trivially falsifiable, or tautological enough to be unfalsifiable. Villains are convenient. But fictional villains don’t animate against you. We can fix income inequality a great deal without declaring war on one class or another.
Tell me you know nothing about economics, capitalism, or financial accounting without saying you know absolutely nothing about economics, capitalism, or financial accounting.
A while ago I quit a job where I made significantly more money to take a different job where I have significantly less stress. It may be true that people only work jobs in exchange for money, but there's a point at which you realize you have enough, and want more time, more freedom, less weight on your shoulders instead.
Being compensated fairly is important. But so is empathy from management. So is being flexible when I have stuff going in my life or need a mental health day.
I think it boils down to quality of life. If you’re payed bank but feel abused you won’t be happy. If every day feels like a weekend with the buds but you can’t put food on the table you won’t be happy.
People want and need: autonomy, purpose, mastery. Many (direct) managers can advocate for a raise but have no direct authority to grant it. All managers can provide employees with quality of life improvements that cost nothing without any approval at all.
It's a balancing act and, once people (hopefully) get to a high salary level many are willing to trade-off money against a lot of things. Maybe not if they're starting out or just scraping by.
* remote work
* no specific expectations of hours (beyond, normally, "a full day's work")
* capable leadership that doesn't throw people under a bus
* work that is non-exploitative and provides real value in the world
Are worth more than top pay, to me.
Edit: *THAT SAID* in most industries that aren't tech, higher pay probably means a lot more than that because they're ridiculously underpaid, in general.
My first job out of grad school (MSW) was as a public policy wonk at a small nonprofit. I ended up being promoted over the years because others were brought in and the board decided to recognize my experience that way. Great.
Throughout my tenure (~8 years), I worked more than 40 hours/week. I loved, loved, loved the work. In the early days, I worked way more than 40 hrs. Then I got married and I worked fewer more hours. The board chair noticed and said something. I agreed with her and told her it was because I got married. She understood.
What she wouldn't acknowledge, though, is that my productivity at 30 hours a week surpassed every other staffer's. That was a problem and management was not gonna address general it. In some ways, I could not have cared less. When first married, my husband had a cancer scare and was in and out of the hospital over a couple of months. After a major surgery, I stayed with him in the hospital. He was so doped up that I got a ton of work done. When he got home, work sent food for a week. I worked from home and still got a ton done.
Colleagues wondered why I got this treatment. Most board members understood what that said about my colleagues; the ED was, again, not gonna do the hard work of managing us.
I really lucked out. But I often wonder what kind of good we could have done for kids and families in DC if we were all functioning at a high level. Such a missed opportunity.
They are just lazy. Quick, lets hire/import people, who have no protections, experience or other obligations, who will feel lucky just for being able to work for us.
> Gallup estimates that disengaged employees cost the global economy $7.8 trillion annually, or 11% of GDP, due to lost productivity, absenteeism, and turnover.
Estimates from consulting companies are worth as much as estimates from LLMs or from rolling a dice: nothing.
Quiet quitting is the intelligent response by employees who don't have effective incentive programs to reward them for more work completed. If there were better incentives, it would be less of a problem.
Yes. No incentives, no excess motivation. However, these companies don’t know how to accurately measure production in jobs other than sales, so there are no incentives for them to offer incentives. Classic chicken or egg problem.
> Quiet quitting might just be more about employees setting healthy boundaries.
I think it'd be dangerous to confuse quiet quitting with setting boundaries. If you want to set boundaries, you have to be proactive about it. Tell people that you won't do something, and why. Don't just silently drag your feet, it doesn't teach anyone the lesson you think it's teaching them, any more than a kid giving you the silent treatment teaches you anything.
Quiet quitting isn't about being passive aggressive. The whole idea is to do as little as possible without being noticed. Being passive aggressive is still being aggressive, that's not a good strategy.
Good luck changing companies as a single regular employee. Likely to backfire unfortunately. A union of employees on the other hand might have some pull.
Is that still a thing? At least from what I can see around me, employers have reigned in employees pretty tightly. Anyone in "quiet quitting" mode has already been laid off like a year ago.
Fair enough. I guess the environment I see around me reflects one of fear, not one where people silently quit into the night. It might just be me though.
An easy formula to decide how hard you should work, is to take your compensation, divide it by the total comp of the CEO then multiply 100% of your effort by the result. For example:
If your total comp is $250k and your CEO's total comp is $25M you should put in 1% of your maximum effort at work.
Where is this advice coming from? 250k is globally a solid wage. If you get fired and don’t have a better option lined up after doing 1 percent effort how does that play out?
If my boss makes 100X I do, I will be doing 100X less work than them. How hard you work doesn't really have anything to do with you being fired or not, just try to be nice to those above you in the org chart and you'll survive as long as anyone else who doesn't make waves.
Ah stop the whining, you're getting paid, do the work as asked by your employer. If you don't like it or think it's unfair, quit. Quiet quitting is stealing in my book. Employers should be free to fire any employee for underperformance.
What these "quiet quitters" don't realise is they're poisoning their own well, if they use in their lives the services directly or indirectly of their employer.
Everyone else suffers too.
Go ahead and downvote, you can't deny the truth.
- Sufficient money so you don't feel ripped off or left behind compared to others in your social class
- Agency over your day - you can take an afternoon off if you're feeling down, your kids are sick, etc
- Enough free time to relax and have an out of work life
- Lack of obstacle/roadblocks to actually doing good work
Most modern companies get all of this wrong. They pay the bare minimum and raises are small and slow, encouraging job hopping. You have to beg for time off like a child. No clearly defined off hours for most employees. The daily job is filled with bureaucracy and excessive micromanagement that slow you down at every turn.
Being disengaged is the logical response to these conditions.