Author Topic: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting  (Read 36466 times)

moof

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Re: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting
« Reply #400 on: October 12, 2022, 05:50:39 PM »
I just fired a guy who was not working last week.  Not sure if it qualifies as quiet quitting, but I'd call it doing the bare minimum.

He would be assigned a task, then get stuck and email someone for a response . . . and then stop working entirely until he got a response back.  I was on vacation for a week, so he emailed me for a response on the Monday and took the rest of the week off while waiting for me to come back and answer his question.  The question could have been answered by any of a dozen other people he works with.
As a counterpoint, I fired a company (i.e. loud quit) because they were causing this behavior.  Second level manager was being a micromanager, but in denial about it.  He would be chronically unavailable (too busy micromanaging his other disasters), so would not come to many of the project meetings he was invited to.  If any real decisions were made in his absence he would make a point of demanding a re-meeting, or just outright “override” the decision with whatever contrarian alternative was in his head to make his point.  It made my technical leadership role (not a people manager) untenable.  The entire team was being trained to ignore any directives that did not come from this guy, as they expected any work they put into decisions I made, or the first level managers made would be thrown out, and they were mostly right.
« Last Edit: October 12, 2022, 05:53:08 PM by moof »

LaineyAZ

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Re: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting
« Reply #401 on: October 13, 2022, 04:44:14 PM »
Came across the opposite phrase today:  "Quiet Promoting"   From a random internet guy who realized he'd been given additional responsibilities without any commensurate raises. 

Sometimes these work responsibilities sneak up on you, or are originally described as temporary, and next thing you know you're now working at a level or two from what your job description and salary are supposed to be.

Gronnie

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Re: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting
« Reply #402 on: October 13, 2022, 06:53:48 PM »
Yup. Usually followed with lots of promises about doing something about it "soon" that never come to fruition. Then they are schocked when you take your new skills elsewhere for 2x the pay.

JLee

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Re: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting
« Reply #403 on: October 13, 2022, 07:09:44 PM »
Yup. Usually followed with lots of promises about doing something about it "soon" that never come to fruition. Then they are schocked when you take your new skills elsewhere for 2x the pay.

Yeah I had that for about three years...with an increasing workload and decreasing staffing.  I left for 44% more pay and a vastly better work/life balance.

mm1970

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Re: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting
« Reply #404 on: October 13, 2022, 07:29:59 PM »
Came across the opposite phrase today:  "Quiet Promoting"   From a random internet guy who realized he'd been given additional responsibilities without any commensurate raises. 

Sometimes these work responsibilities sneak up on you, or are originally described as temporary, and next thing you know you're now working at a level or two from what your job description and salary are supposed to be.
I resemble this.  It's like being the frog in the pot of water that slowly heats up, and the next thing you know it's boiling...

Anyway, it took about...shoot...I dunno, 6 years?  Maybe closer to 10 years...but I finally got that raise.

mspym

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Re: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting
« Reply #405 on: October 13, 2022, 07:59:54 PM »
Yup. Usually followed with lots of promises about doing something about it "soon" that never come to fruition. Then they are schocked when you take your new skills elsewhere for 2x the pay.
That was the root cause of my company hopping. Pay me the money for the value I am delivering, I no longer believe in jam tomorrow.

pdxvandal

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Re: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting
« Reply #406 on: October 13, 2022, 08:59:44 PM »
I've had to hop to better-paying positions all of my working life. I've actually NEVER been promoted in my 25-year career, which is interesting and somewhat disappointing. I don't feel like hopping this time around and actually asked for a promotion last month. Apparently, it had been in the works since summer behind the scenes. (I work it gubmint, so this stuff doesn't happen fast.) We'll see how this shakes out. My base salary is up almost 25% from 3 years ago as they have lost so many people due to retirements, or better-paying gubmint jobs. They've finally woke up from their long slumber and I plan to cash in and take advantage of it to get me to FIRE status faster (no thanks to this stock-market drop!).

Malossi792

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Re: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting
« Reply #407 on: October 14, 2022, 01:09:45 AM »
It's annual review season here and we have quite a few folks that fit in the quiet-quitting mold that are going to be unpleasantly surprised.  When we went full-time WFH, there were a bunch of people that seemed to just fall off the earth. They did OK with the structure of being in the office but without someone passing by their cubes to keep them from watching Wheel of Fortune (or porn) all day they just fell apart - don't answer phone calls, often inactive in chat or active but unresponsive (mouse jiggler).

We've cleaned house and finally replaced a number of the bad personalities so the slackers are the next on the block. HR and the top leaders are on board with getting rid of people that don't seem to want to work here anymore. That said, I have no issue with people setting appropriate work boundaries but people who don't do the agreed-upon job need to be canned and replaced.

We recently did an employee satisfaction survey and my corner of the company got both the greatest improvement and highest score across the organization. Our c-level told the other leaders to enjoy that now and not to expect scores that high again for some time. :)

The manager should be fired too.

If you're managing a team, and your reports are doing literally nothing and still appearing that they are fulfilling their job obligations, doesn't this imply that you – the manager – have not defined their job responsibilities and measured the outcomes?

I've never been a manager, but I would think that the bare minimum would be to tell your workers a) what they're expected to do on a weekly basis, and b) measure their results. Not only does this help to root out any under-performing workers, it also lets you tell if you're understaffed, overstaffed, etc. How else can the company figure out what kind of budget you need to run your team?

I guess a tertiary c) would be to provide coaching for workers to improve their performance if they're struggling in their role, but that's something a "good" manager would do. The first two responsibilities just seem like definitional aspects of being a manager – if you're not doing that, then you might be "quiet quitting."

Corporate hell.

I've worked at a place where few employees did any real work . . . lots of paper shuffling, political power struggles, and similar though.  If my manager didn't like someone's work he would have to raise the issue with his two managers, who would raise it with one of their regional managers who could then escalate it to HR who would arrange for a performance specialist to develop a workplace performance improvement plan for the employee.  This plan of course involved significant work for the employees supervisor with daily, weekly, and monthly reports.  So the upshot was - if someone didn't do anything, they would often be ignored.  Actually trying to fire them was so much work that you had to be actively working to harm the work of others for it to be considered.
I think Price’s law applies here, it says that 50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.
Pretty accurate in my experience.

chemistk

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Re: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting
« Reply #408 on: October 14, 2022, 05:43:29 AM »
It's annual review season here and we have quite a few folks that fit in the quiet-quitting mold that are going to be unpleasantly surprised.  When we went full-time WFH, there were a bunch of people that seemed to just fall off the earth. They did OK with the structure of being in the office but without someone passing by their cubes to keep them from watching Wheel of Fortune (or porn) all day they just fell apart - don't answer phone calls, often inactive in chat or active but unresponsive (mouse jiggler).

We've cleaned house and finally replaced a number of the bad personalities so the slackers are the next on the block. HR and the top leaders are on board with getting rid of people that don't seem to want to work here anymore. That said, I have no issue with people setting appropriate work boundaries but people who don't do the agreed-upon job need to be canned and replaced.

We recently did an employee satisfaction survey and my corner of the company got both the greatest improvement and highest score across the organization. Our c-level told the other leaders to enjoy that now and not to expect scores that high again for some time. :)

The manager should be fired too.

If you're managing a team, and your reports are doing literally nothing and still appearing that they are fulfilling their job obligations, doesn't this imply that you – the manager – have not defined their job responsibilities and measured the outcomes?

I've never been a manager, but I would think that the bare minimum would be to tell your workers a) what they're expected to do on a weekly basis, and b) measure their results. Not only does this help to root out any under-performing workers, it also lets you tell if you're understaffed, overstaffed, etc. How else can the company figure out what kind of budget you need to run your team?

I guess a tertiary c) would be to provide coaching for workers to improve their performance if they're struggling in their role, but that's something a "good" manager would do. The first two responsibilities just seem like definitional aspects of being a manager – if you're not doing that, then you might be "quiet quitting."

Corporate hell.

I've worked at a place where few employees did any real work . . . lots of paper shuffling, political power struggles, and similar though.  If my manager didn't like someone's work he would have to raise the issue with his two managers, who would raise it with one of their regional managers who could then escalate it to HR who would arrange for a performance specialist to develop a workplace performance improvement plan for the employee.  This plan of course involved significant work for the employees supervisor with daily, weekly, and monthly reports.  So the upshot was - if someone didn't do anything, they would often be ignored.  Actually trying to fire them was so much work that you had to be actively working to harm the work of others for it to be considered.
I think Price’s law applies here, it says that 50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.
Pretty accurate in my experience.

What if the total number of people who participate in the work is 1?

neo von retorch

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Re: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting
« Reply #409 on: October 14, 2022, 06:18:17 AM »
I think Price’s law applies here, it says that 50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.
Pretty accurate in my experience.

What if the total number of people who participate in the work is 1?

This seems like an easy (math) question, does it not? ;)

It's much harder if the number of people who participate in the work is -1...

(The other 50% of the work is not done.)

jinga nation

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Re: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting
« Reply #410 on: October 14, 2022, 07:15:23 AM »
I think Price’s law applies here, it says that 50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.
Pretty accurate in my experience.

What if the total number of people who participate in the work is 1?

This seems like an easy (math) question, does it not? ;)

It's much harder if the number of people who participate in the work is -1...

(The other 50% of the work is not done.)

sqrt(-1) = i

which means, everyone is imagining someone else will get the work done.

GuitarStv

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Re: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting
« Reply #411 on: October 14, 2022, 07:20:09 AM »
I think Price’s law applies here, it says that 50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.
Pretty accurate in my experience.

What if the total number of people who participate in the work is 1?

This seems like an easy (math) question, does it not? ;)

It's much harder if the number of people who participate in the work is -1...

(The other 50% of the work is not done.)

sqrt(-1) = i

which means, everyone is imagining someone else will get the work done.

We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.

ATtiny85

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Re: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting
« Reply #412 on: October 14, 2022, 08:58:06 AM »
Reminds me of undergrad when we tried to figure out if someone was part of the square root club. That’s where your GPA increased if you took the square root of it. Dangerous zone to operate in.

neo von retorch

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Re: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting
« Reply #413 on: October 14, 2022, 09:25:03 AM »
Reminds me of undergrad when we tried to figure out if someone was part of the square root club. That’s where your GPA increased if you took the square root of it. Dangerous zone to operate in.

Hey I qualified my final semester before dropping out!

I called that move "Quiet Quitting"

GodlessCommie

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Re: New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting
« Reply #414 on: October 20, 2022, 08:30:49 AM »
With quiet quitting, for the first time in my life, I'm ahead of the trend. Approximately 25 years ahead of the trend, in fact.

All this time I was getting good to glowing performance reviews, and was never fired. There was one manager who told me once "Commie, the work you do is excellent, you don't do enough of it". Then they still put in a good review, and never changed anything in the work arrangements.

I'm not necessarily proud of it. For most of my career I felt quite the opposite of proud. Now I just accept that this is the way I operate, for better or for worse. And if the market rewards me for that, who am I to argue?