New Work Trend - Quiet Quitting

[scottish]

Ah...I found the problem. It's due to my poor reading skills apparently :-). I thought that the employee had scheduled a meeting, time included, themselves, and not paid enough attention to realize what they'd already committed to. You clearly said the manager scheduled the time, not the employee - all the employee had asked for was a meeting sometime. If I had only read more carefully, I would have not been nearly this confused! Sigh....

???

Now I'm confused.

The staff member requested the meeting time and then later asked to change the meeting time. The manager agreed, but called the request "bold."

Ok, then I'm back to thinking it's rude, lol.

Your initial quote was:

"A Gen Z staff member requests a meeting with their elder millenial supervisor. The supervisor agrees and later on sends a meeting invite.

The Gen Z staff member writes back saying that they've re-assessed their schedule and noted that they have a lot of intense back-to-back meetings that day, and would likely not be in optimal shape for the meeting with the supervisor and asks to reschedule it to avoid burnout."

The second time I read it, I thought that the underlined meant the Gen Z staff member said, "Hey boss, I need to meet with you because I need to talk about x, y, z." Boss then says, "Sure I'll schedule a meeting and does so on Friday at 3:00." Gen Z staff member says, "Oh, yeah, I've got two meetings on Friday. I don't think that'll work. I'll be burnt out."

If it's that situation - no problem.

Originally, I thought it was Gen Z staff member said, "Hey boss, I need to meet with you on Friday at 3:00 PM because I need to talk about x, y, z." Boss then says, "Sure I'll schedule a meeting and does so on Friday at 3:00." Gen Z staff member says, "Oh, yeah, I've got two meetings on Friday. I don't think that'll work. I'll be burnt out."

If it's that situation - which is what it now seems like it was - then Gen Z staffer is being at least a little rude. The rudeness comes from not thoroughly checking whether or not you could keep a time commitment before you book someone else's time. Ultimately the manager might not have minded, and that's fine. I probably wouldn't have minded much if it didn't inconvenience me - make scheduling some other meeting harder because I had this one scheduled...or in some way keeping me from making some plan because I thought I had this meeting scheduled. Also, the longer the meeting has stayed on there, the ruder, in my mind, it becomes. If I asked for a Friday, 3:00 meeting on Monday at 3:00 PM and rescheduled it first thing Tuesday morning - not too big of a problem. If I asked on Monday and rescheduled it Thursday at 4:30 PM - more rude. Perhaps it was much closer to the Monday/Tuesday situation and nothing was negatively impacted since the manager thought it wasn't a big deal at all. I dunno.

I think it's pretty straightforward that it's rude to book someone's time up for a Friday at 3:00 meeting when you had a doctor's appointment on Friday at 3:00 already scheduled. You couldn't do it. You should have known you couldn't do it. The situation didn't change - you just didn't take the time to look before you scheduled a meeting. That's not valuing someone else's time. This is the same in both situations.

It always frustrates me when I feel like someone throws out a buzzword as "a trump card," which, I think, is why this one frustrated me. It's rude not to value someone else's time in this way in general, but if you throw out the phrase "burnout" then it becomes something different - not in my mind.

After thinking on it myself, this is why I was frustrated by the situation, I believe.

You only think it's rude because you're thinking about it from a certain perspective.

Now think of it with a different frame.

I request a meeting with you for 3pm, you agree and send a meeting invite. I realize I've made a mistake requesting the meeting at that time and I know I'm not going to be in great shape for the meeting because of the other things I have on my plate.

I can
a) suck it up and go to the meeting anyway because I requested it, and corporate culture rules dictate that it's rude to request a change

b) just be honest with my manager like they're a human being who might be totally okay with moving the meeting, because it might not actually be a big deal, and if it is a big deal to move the meeting, she can just say "no" because she's the one in charge.


Plus I'm just explaining the objective fact that I won't be in great shape for the initial meeting time I requested. As my manager, it's sort of her job to care if I'm overloaded, so if she can easily accommodate it, then there really shouldn't be anything wrong with just being honest and *asking*.

For me as a manager, I would want my staff to feel free to request time with me, and I would want them to feel free to ask for meeting changes even if the reason is just "Ugh, I realized I have XYZ procedures right before and I'm going to be cranky."

It's not rude to me because I'm the one with all of the power to grant or deny their requests. They're just giving me more information to work with to make wise managerial decisions.

As the person in charge of them, I am the custodian of their well being every single day. So yeah, if someone schedules a meeting with me at the end of Thursday and then later on realizes they have 3 patients from hell scheduled right before and volunteers that they made a mistake with their meeting time request, then OF COURSE I want to know that.

At the very least, if I can't move the meeting, I want to be aware that the staff member coming into that meeting is going to be totally fried and not want to be there. That's useful information to me.

If you aren't conditioned to see the scenario through the existing corporate culture lens, then it truly doesn't make sense to call the behaviour bold.

I've quite literally had staff do *exactly* this same thing to me, often for performance reviews. Performance reviews are stressful and I've had staff request to reschedule them just 10 minutes before.

I don't want a miserable, exhausted, burnt out staff member in a performance review! Of course I'll reschedule if there's any way to do so, or I'll let them switch with someone. Caring about their state of being makes a HUGE difference to their experience as my staff member.

I won't always grant requests, but I will always want to hear them, and if I deny them, I will give a reasonable explanation why. From my perspective, if a staff member asks me for something, the onus is on me to justify why I won't give it to them. The onus is on me to make them feel like what they want and need from me matters to me.

So no, I don't find anything about the situation rude at all. You can't impose on someone who has all of the power in the dyad, you can only request and explain your requests and hope that their priorities will align with yours.

I find the original example a little odd.   When I was a manager I had too many real problems to worry about to be concerned about someone rescheduling from Friday to Monday.   If anything I'd be glad to have one less meeting on a Friday afternoon.

As far as that goes, if one of my people needed to talk about something I encouraged them to just come and talk about it.   The bottom line was that my primary job was to make sure they were being productive, so if something was messing with that I wanted to know about it.

[Raenia]

I think it can really go either way depending on the exact situation and the relationship between the two people.  We don't have enough information to say it was disrespectful, and I think we should err on the side of it being fine, since the original manager didn't say anything that changes that.  There are many situations in which it would be no big deal to ask to change the meeting, and be neither bold nor disrespectful.

I've also had meetings where I carefully arranged a time for 4 busy people to get together for a required meeting, sometimes more than a month in advance due to crazy schedules, only to have someone cancel 10 minutes before the meeting time.  That is disrespectful of everyone's time, because they all cleared time in their schedules to be there, some came onsite when they normally work remotely, etc, and that particular meeting could not proceed unless all members were present so the whole thing was wasted.

Now, should that person have sucked it up and come anyway?  Depends on exactly why they cancelled.  Should they have been apologetic about the late notice? Absolutely.  They were not, and that absolutely soured everyone's opinion of that person, permanently.

[GuitarStv]

Ah...I found the problem. It's due to my poor reading skills apparently :-). I thought that the employee had scheduled a meeting, time included, themselves, and not paid enough attention to realize what they'd already committed to. You clearly said the manager scheduled the time, not the employee - all the employee had asked for was a meeting sometime. If I had only read more carefully, I would have not been nearly this confused! Sigh....

???

Now I'm confused.

The staff member requested the meeting time and then later asked to change the meeting time. The manager agreed, but called the request "bold."

Ok, then I'm back to thinking it's rude, lol.

Your initial quote was:

"A Gen Z staff member requests a meeting with their elder millenial supervisor. The supervisor agrees and later on sends a meeting invite.

The Gen Z staff member writes back saying that they've re-assessed their schedule and noted that they have a lot of intense back-to-back meetings that day, and would likely not be in optimal shape for the meeting with the supervisor and asks to reschedule it to avoid burnout."

The second time I read it, I thought that the underlined meant the Gen Z staff member said, "Hey boss, I need to meet with you because I need to talk about x, y, z." Boss then says, "Sure I'll schedule a meeting and does so on Friday at 3:00." Gen Z staff member says, "Oh, yeah, I've got two meetings on Friday. I don't think that'll work. I'll be burnt out."

If it's that situation - no problem.

Originally, I thought it was Gen Z staff member said, "Hey boss, I need to meet with you on Friday at 3:00 PM because I need to talk about x, y, z." Boss then says, "Sure I'll schedule a meeting and does so on Friday at 3:00." Gen Z staff member says, "Oh, yeah, I've got two meetings on Friday. I don't think that'll work. I'll be burnt out."

If it's that situation - which is what it now seems like it was - then Gen Z staffer is being at least a little rude. The rudeness comes from not thoroughly checking whether or not you could keep a time commitment before you book someone else's time. Ultimately the manager might not have minded, and that's fine. I probably wouldn't have minded much if it didn't inconvenience me - make scheduling some other meeting harder because I had this one scheduled...or in some way keeping me from making some plan because I thought I had this meeting scheduled. Also, the longer the meeting has stayed on there, the ruder, in my mind, it becomes. If I asked for a Friday, 3:00 meeting on Monday at 3:00 PM and rescheduled it first thing Tuesday morning - not too big of a problem. If I asked on Monday and rescheduled it Thursday at 4:30 PM - more rude. Perhaps it was much closer to the Monday/Tuesday situation and nothing was negatively impacted since the manager thought it wasn't a big deal at all. I dunno.

I think it's pretty straightforward that it's rude to book someone's time up for a Friday at 3:00 meeting when you had a doctor's appointment on Friday at 3:00 already scheduled. You couldn't do it. You should have known you couldn't do it. The situation didn't change - you just didn't take the time to look before you scheduled a meeting. That's not valuing someone else's time. This is the same in both situations.

It always frustrates me when I feel like someone throws out a buzzword as "a trump card," which, I think, is why this one frustrated me. It's rude not to value someone else's time in this way in general, but if you throw out the phrase "burnout" then it becomes something different - not in my mind.

After thinking on it myself, this is why I was frustrated by the situation, I believe.

You only think it's rude because you're thinking about it from a certain perspective.

Now think of it with a different frame.

I request a meeting with you for 3pm, you agree and send a meeting invite. I realize I've made a mistake requesting the meeting at that time and I know I'm not going to be in great shape for the meeting because of the other things I have on my plate.

I can
a) suck it up and go to the meeting anyway because I requested it, and corporate culture rules dictate that it's rude to request a change

b) just be honest with my manager like they're a human being who might be totally okay with moving the meeting, because it might not actually be a big deal, and if it is a big deal to move the meeting, she can just say "no" because she's the one in charge.


Plus I'm just explaining the objective fact that I won't be in great shape for the initial meeting time I requested. As my manager, it's sort of her job to care if I'm overloaded, so if she can easily accommodate it, then there really shouldn't be anything wrong with just being honest and *asking*.

For me as a manager, I would want my staff to feel free to request time with me, and I would want them to feel free to ask for meeting changes even if the reason is just "Ugh, I realized I have XYZ procedures right before and I'm going to be cranky."

It's not rude to me because I'm the one with all of the power to grant or deny their requests. They're just giving me more information to work with to make wise managerial decisions.

As the person in charge of them, I am the custodian of their well being every single day. So yeah, if someone schedules a meeting with me at the end of Thursday and then later on realizes they have 3 patients from hell scheduled right before and volunteers that they made a mistake with their meeting time request, then OF COURSE I want to know that.

At the very least, if I can't move the meeting, I want to be aware that the staff member coming into that meeting is going to be totally fried and not want to be there. That's useful information to me.

If you aren't conditioned to see the scenario through the existing corporate culture lens, then it truly doesn't make sense to call the behaviour bold.

I've quite literally had staff do *exactly* this same thing to me, often for performance reviews. Performance reviews are stressful and I've had staff request to reschedule them just 10 minutes before.

I don't want a miserable, exhausted, burnt out staff member in a performance review! Of course I'll reschedule if there's any way to do so, or I'll let them switch with someone. Caring about their state of being makes a HUGE difference to their experience as my staff member.

I won't always grant requests, but I will always want to hear them, and if I deny them, I will give a reasonable explanation why. From my perspective, if a staff member asks me for something, the onus is on me to justify why I won't give it to them. The onus is on me to make them feel like what they want and need from me matters to me.

So no, I don't find anything about the situation rude at all. You can't impose on someone who has all of the power in the dyad, you can only request and explain your requests and hope that their priorities will align with yours.

I find the original example a little odd.   When I was a manager I had too many real problems to worry about to be concerned about someone rescheduling from Friday to Monday.   If anything I'd be glad to have one less meeting on a Friday afternoon.

As far as that goes, if one of my people needed to talk about something I encouraged them to just come and talk about it.   The bottom line was that my primary job was to make sure they were being productive, so if something was messing with that I wanted to know about it.

I'm trying to figure out how horrific these meetings are if two meetings in a day gets an employee into total burnout territory.

In a typical day, I host a scrum meeting with the coop students I'm mentoring, attend two other scrum meetings as sqa leader, and will usually end up stuck in a design review, code review, or occasionally have to interview a potential new hire.  And I fucking hate talking to people.  :P

[Metalcat]

I think it can really go either way depending on the exact situation and the relationship between the two people.  We don't have enough information to say it was disrespectful, and I think we should err on the side of it being fine, since the original manager didn't say anything that changes that.  There are many situations in which it would be no big deal to ask to change the meeting, and be neither bold nor disrespectful.

I've also had meetings where I carefully arranged a time for 4 busy people to get together for a required meeting, sometimes more than a month in advance due to crazy schedules, only to have someone cancel 10 minutes before the meeting time.  That is disrespectful of everyone's time, because they all cleared time in their schedules to be there, some came onsite when they normally work remotely, etc, and that particular meeting could not proceed unless all members were present so the whole thing was wasted.

Now, should that person have sucked it up and come anyway?  Depends on exactly why they cancelled.  Should they have been apologetic about the late notice? Absolutely.  They were not, and that absolutely soured everyone's opinion of that person, permanently.

I didn't even share the example to debate the behaviour of the employee.

I shared it to show that the millenial manager said that she respected that the staff member was bold enough, and the Gen Z readers genuinely didn't understand what was bold about that.

That is the point I was making. That there's a fundamental cultural difference, and a lot of managers are just totally I'll equipped to even understand the new incoming staff.

ETA: I literally just watched a video about a mental health professional breaking down how Gen Z is psychologically fundamentally different from previous generations.

People don't get them because they are *fundamentally* psychologically different.

[mistymoney]

Am I the only one who doesn't find identifying people by generation to be a useful strategy in structuring work?

While certain attitudes or viewpoints may be more prominent in certain generations, I haven't seen that as a useful consideration at work. I have a small and diverse team. Age, gender, cultural background. Some are talented, some are hard working, some were lazy and/or entitiled and I effectively managed them out.

There have always been horrible bosses. Hence the movie :P.

The workplace is changing, its been changing for the past few decades. I think the availablity of information on the internet in general, and then the specific class of social media, is a huge factor. One thing I don't think the younger generation can truly understand is knowing nothing about anything! You had only written ads in a paper to apply to jobs to! There was no access to info on company culture, salary, people stayed at jobs longer because you got so few days off (5 days after a year of service, then 10 days after being there a few years, no or very little sick time). Taking a day off to interview somewhere and it turns out not to be anything you want, and now you only have 4 more days that year? That really hurt!

There was no such thing as flex time, coming in late/leaving early for reasons like a kids game or parent teacher conferences, doctor visits or things like that, so very difficult to hide an interview. You could get fired for being pregnant or taking off for being ill more than once or twice. It was very punitive, the job market was tight. I had a fresh master's degree, experience as an office coordinator, and couldn't get an interview for anything, even an admin asst. There didn't seem to be the idea of entry-level positions - or there were so few of them/so many applicants, I sure didn't get anything. Lots of sexism, racism, and paying women less for more work wasn't an issue. i.e. things were pretty horrible!

So I think one thing is that older workers were so widely and wildly abused earlier on that sometimes it might seem a little surprising how younger workers navigating things.

But that doesn't really change what works for work. Some changes are good - more flexibility, time off, focus on professional development and advancement, consideration for work/life balance, DEI - these are all positive changes and all workers benefit - either directly or indirecly.

Some things - like quiet quitting - don't benefit the team, the company, or really anyone. I'd even argue that it doesn't benefit the quiet quitter really. Nothing is more boring, or makes the time drag, than trying not to work! Being adequately engaged in work that is at least occationally interesting and creative but that doesn't put too much pressure, overwork, short deadlines, etc. helps the day fly by.

With the prevalence of WFH, quiet quitting won't be as boring as quiet quitting in the office. But if too many workers do it, the company advantage to bring workers back into the office increases. As more companies move to bringing workers back, then trying to source a job that is WFH becomes a less sure thing.

It's going to be like in grade wchool where the whole class loses a privledge because of a few too many students acting up! 1-2 students, you can discipline them individually. If it is a larger group, it becomes too much to try to discipline those while also providing the privledge to the better behaved students.

managing a quiet quitter sucks, and it is a time and energy suck too. And as a manager, you need to make sure that your great workers are supported, and with a quit quitter on the team everyone else ends up with more on their plate. But it is the same with any low performing team member. Some are quiet quitters, some talked their way into a job they can't perform and other incompetencies that you can't easily train away.

[scottish]

I think it can really go either way depending on the exact situation and the relationship between the two people.  We don't have enough information to say it was disrespectful, and I think we should err on the side of it being fine, since the original manager didn't say anything that changes that.  There are many situations in which it would be no big deal to ask to change the meeting, and be neither bold nor disrespectful.

I've also had meetings where I carefully arranged a time for 4 busy people to get together for a required meeting, sometimes more than a month in advance due to crazy schedules, only to have someone cancel 10 minutes before the meeting time.  That is disrespectful of everyone's time, because they all cleared time in their schedules to be there, some came onsite when they normally work remotely, etc, and that particular meeting could not proceed unless all members were present so the whole thing was wasted.

Now, should that person have sucked it up and come anyway?  Depends on exactly why they cancelled.  Should they have been apologetic about the late notice? Absolutely.  They were not, and that absolutely soured everyone's opinion of that person, permanently.

I didn't even share the example to debate the behaviour of the employee.

I shared it to show that the millenial manager said that she respected that the staff member was bold enough, and the Gen Z readers genuinely didn't understand what was bold about that.

That is the point I was making. That there's a fundamental cultural difference, and a lot of managers are just totally I'll equipped to even understand the new incoming staff.

ETA: I literally just watched a video about a mental health professional breaking down how Gen Z is psychologically fundamentally different from previous generations.

People don't get them because they are *fundamentally* psychologically different.

Is the video publically available?   I'd be interested to know how gen z is different...

[Metalcat]

I think it can really go either way depending on the exact situation and the relationship between the two people.  We don't have enough information to say it was disrespectful, and I think we should err on the side of it being fine, since the original manager didn't say anything that changes that.  There are many situations in which it would be no big deal to ask to change the meeting, and be neither bold nor disrespectful.

I've also had meetings where I carefully arranged a time for 4 busy people to get together for a required meeting, sometimes more than a month in advance due to crazy schedules, only to have someone cancel 10 minutes before the meeting time.  That is disrespectful of everyone's time, because they all cleared time in their schedules to be there, some came onsite when they normally work remotely, etc, and that particular meeting could not proceed unless all members were present so the whole thing was wasted.

Now, should that person have sucked it up and come anyway?  Depends on exactly why they cancelled.  Should they have been apologetic about the late notice? Absolutely.  They were not, and that absolutely soured everyone's opinion of that person, permanently.

I didn't even share the example to debate the behaviour of the employee.

I shared it to show that the millenial manager said that she respected that the staff member was bold enough, and the Gen Z readers genuinely didn't understand what was bold about that.

That is the point I was making. That there's a fundamental cultural difference, and a lot of managers are just totally I'll equipped to even understand the new incoming staff.

ETA: I literally just watched a video about a mental health professional breaking down how Gen Z is psychologically fundamentally different from previous generations.

People don't get them because they are *fundamentally* psychologically different.

Is the video publically available?   I'd be interested to know how gen z is different...

Yeah, I can't remember where it popped up though, so I don't have an easy reference to find it again.

[Metalcat]

Am I the only one who doesn't find identifying people by generation to be a useful strategy in structuring work?

While certain attitudes or viewpoints may be more prominent in certain generations, I haven't seen that as a useful consideration at work. I have a small and diverse team. Age, gender, cultural background. Some are talented, some are hard working, some were lazy and/or entitiled and I effectively managed them out.

There have always been horrible bosses. Hence the movie :P.

The workplace is changing, its been changing for the past few decades. I think the availablity of information on the internet in general, and then the specific class of social media, is a huge factor. One thing I don't think the younger generation can truly understand is knowing nothing about anything! You had only written ads in a paper to apply to jobs to! There was no access to info on company culture, salary, people stayed at jobs longer because you got so few days off (5 days after a year of service, then 10 days after being there a few years, no or very little sick time). Taking a day off to interview somewhere and it turns out not to be anything you want, and now you only have 4 more days that year? That really hurt!

There was no such thing as flex time, coming in late/leaving early for reasons like a kids game or parent teacher conferences, doctor visits or things like that, so very difficult to hide an interview. You could get fired for being pregnant or taking off for being ill more than once or twice. It was very punitive, the job market was tight. I had a fresh master's degree, experience as an office coordinator, and couldn't get an interview for anything, even an admin asst. There didn't seem to be the idea of entry-level positions - or there were so few of them/so many applicants, I sure didn't get anything. Lots of sexism, racism, and paying women less for more work wasn't an issue. i.e. things were pretty horrible!

So I think one thing is that older workers were so widely and wildly abused earlier on that sometimes it might seem a little surprising how younger workers navigating things.

But that doesn't really change what works for work. Some changes are good - more flexibility, time off, focus on professional development and advancement, consideration for work/life balance, DEI - these are all positive changes and all workers benefit - either directly or indirecly.

Some things - like quiet quitting - don't benefit the team, the company, or really anyone. I'd even argue that it doesn't benefit the quiet quitter really. Nothing is more boring, or makes the time drag, than trying not to work! Being adequately engaged in work that is at least occationally interesting and creative but that doesn't put too much pressure, overwork, short deadlines, etc. helps the day fly by.

With the prevalence of WFH, quiet quitting won't be as boring as quiet quitting in the office. But if too many workers do it, the company advantage to bring workers back into the office increases. As more companies move to bringing workers back, then trying to source a job that is WFH becomes a less sure thing.

It's going to be like in grade wchool where the whole class loses a privledge because of a few too many students acting up! 1-2 students, you can discipline them individually. If it is a larger group, it becomes too much to try to discipline those while also providing the privledge to the better behaved students.

managing a quiet quitter sucks, and it is a time and energy suck too. And as a manager, you need to make sure that your great workers are supported, and with a quit quitter on the team everyone else ends up with more on their plate. But it is the same with any low performing team member. Some are quiet quitters, some talked their way into a job they can't perform and other incompetencies that you can't easily train away.

Really?

Because this is the number one complaint and request I get from business owners when they contact me frustrated out of their minds feeling like they have no idea how to handle the incoming generation of employees.

I'm constantly being told things like "I've been running this business for over 30 years and I've never seen anything like it."

I'm not making this shit up for fun.

[TomTX]

"What's the speed of sound?" (this was a software/hardware position, not aerospace)

Mach 1.

Speed of sound varies depending on the medium and temperature. Mach resolves that. :D

[mistymoney]

Am I the only one who doesn't find identifying people by generation to be a useful strategy in structuring work?

While certain attitudes or viewpoints may be more prominent in certain generations, I haven't seen that as a useful consideration at work. I have a small and diverse team. Age, gender, cultural background. Some are talented, some are hard working, some were lazy and/or entitiled and I effectively managed them out.

There have always been horrible bosses. Hence the movie :P.

The workplace is changing, its been changing for the past few decades. I think the availablity of information on the internet in general, and then the specific class of social media, is a huge factor. One thing I don't think the younger generation can truly understand is knowing nothing about anything! You had only written ads in a paper to apply to jobs to! There was no access to info on company culture, salary, people stayed at jobs longer because you got so few days off (5 days after a year of service, then 10 days after being there a few years, no or very little sick time). Taking a day off to interview somewhere and it turns out not to be anything you want, and now you only have 4 more days that year? That really hurt!

There was no such thing as flex time, coming in late/leaving early for reasons like a kids game or parent teacher conferences, doctor visits or things like that, so very difficult to hide an interview. You could get fired for being pregnant or taking off for being ill more than once or twice. It was very punitive, the job market was tight. I had a fresh master's degree, experience as an office coordinator, and couldn't get an interview for anything, even an admin asst. There didn't seem to be the idea of entry-level positions - or there were so few of them/so many applicants, I sure didn't get anything. Lots of sexism, racism, and paying women less for more work wasn't an issue. i.e. things were pretty horrible!

So I think one thing is that older workers were so widely and wildly abused earlier on that sometimes it might seem a little surprising how younger workers navigating things.

But that doesn't really change what works for work. Some changes are good - more flexibility, time off, focus on professional development and advancement, consideration for work/life balance, DEI - these are all positive changes and all workers benefit - either directly or indirecly.

Some things - like quiet quitting - don't benefit the team, the company, or really anyone. I'd even argue that it doesn't benefit the quiet quitter really. Nothing is more boring, or makes the time drag, than trying not to work! Being adequately engaged in work that is at least occationally interesting and creative but that doesn't put too much pressure, overwork, short deadlines, etc. helps the day fly by.

With the prevalence of WFH, quiet quitting won't be as boring as quiet quitting in the office. But if too many workers do it, the company advantage to bring workers back into the office increases. As more companies move to bringing workers back, then trying to source a job that is WFH becomes a less sure thing.

It's going to be like in grade wchool where the whole class loses a privledge because of a few too many students acting up! 1-2 students, you can discipline them individually. If it is a larger group, it becomes too much to try to discipline those while also providing the privledge to the better behaved students.

managing a quiet quitter sucks, and it is a time and energy suck too. And as a manager, you need to make sure that your great workers are supported, and with a quit quitter on the team everyone else ends up with more on their plate. But it is the same with any low performing team member. Some are quiet quitters, some talked their way into a job they can't perform and other incompetencies that you can't easily train away.

Really?

Because this is the number one complaint and request I get from business owners when they contact me frustrated out of their minds feeling like they have no idea how to handle the incoming generation of employees.

I'm constantly being told things like "I've been running this business for over 30 years and I've never seen anything like it."

I'm not making this shit up for fun.

Sounds like you are describing very small businesses. Small businesses are known for having much higher levels of dysfunction generally. In my career, nothing was more miserable than working for small, owner run businesses where every dollar of proposed spending, benefit for employees, or time off was evaluated as a dollar out of the owner's pocket with the owner as the decision maker.

I would also think that if the business is looking at a large proportion of genz as their work force, that means that experienced people don't stay for very long, so the culture is constantly up for grabs.

I work for a smallish company of about 200 ee. While some on the team are young and just starting out professionally if they are strictly genz or very young mellenials, I'm not sure I don't know their exact ages. Larger proportion of the team are across the millenial through older genx ranges. Pretty sure I am the oldest, but not sure! I don't know the ages, someone 1-2 could be "well preserved" as it were and I just assume I'm the oldest.

The team function itself is young, a new division where the company developed an inhouse department that had previously been outsourced, with my team the youngest within the department. I have 2 managers under me with a few direct reports, and I have 3 other reports that I wish I had a 3rd manager to wrangle but so far not!

I should also note that all the younger members are college educated and looking at building careers. So they are very keen on not just slogging away at the lower level responsibilities in their job descriptions, but stepping up to more advanced work when the opportunity is there. As a young team introducing new work to the organization, we are creating a lot of new materials and processes so there is a lot of room to contribute creatively for everyone.  But there is a lot of the bread and butter, keeping somewhat repetitive projects moving through the pipeline as well.

But, the youngest and most inexperienced members of the team are not setting the tone of our work or the culture of the team, although they do contribute to it! The managers and senior staff are older, experienced, and the younger staff appear eager to learn from them. There was a conflict with one of the managers and a younger report regarding taking and incorporating feedback, and I needed to step in and speak with both the manager and the worker. The manager needed to be more specific about what was being impacted and the report need to hear that feedback is a normal part of work, no one expects you to get it all right all the time and getting that feedback from your manager is an expected part of our process.

To me, falling back on generational expectations as causal in this situation was useless. There was a performance issue for both of them, and an attitude issue for one. I coached both of them from the perspective of their own professional growth, and how that relates to our work processes, deliverables, and deadlines.

I enjoy the age diversity of the team and love the mix of experience and energy we have. But I'm not here to cater to any one demographic at the expense of the work that need to get done. And part of getting that work done is having contented workers that enjoy their work, see potential for creative input and advancement possibilities if they want those, and that as a team we guard against any burnout of selves and others.

[Metalcat]

Sounds like you are describing very small businesses. Small businesses are known for having much higher levels of dysfunction generally. In my career, nothing was more miserable than working for small, owner run businesses where every dollar of proposed spending, benefit for employees, or time off was evaluated as a dollar out of the owner's pocket with the owner as the decision maker.

I would also think that if the business is looking at a large proportion of genz as their work force, that means that experienced people don't stay for very long, so the culture is constantly up for grabs.

I work for a smallish company of about 200 ee. While some on the team are young and just starting out professionally if they are strictly genz or very young mellenials, I'm not sure I don't know their exact ages. Larger proportion of the team are across the millenial through older genx ranges. Pretty sure I am the oldest, but not sure! I don't know the ages, someone 1-2 could be "well preserved" as it were and I just assume I'm the oldest.

The team function itself is young, a new division where the company developed an inhouse department that had previously been outsourced, with my team the youngest within the department. I have 2 managers under me with a few direct reports, and I have 3 other reports that I wish I had a 3rd manager to wrangle but so far not!

I should also note that all the younger members are college educated and looking at building careers. So they are very keen on not just slogging away at the lower level responsibilities in their job descriptions, but stepping up to more advanced work when the opportunity is there. As a young team introducing new work to the organization, we are creating a lot of new materials and processes so there is a lot of room to contribute creatively for everyone.  But there is a lot of the bread and butter, keeping somewhat repetitive projects moving through the pipeline as well.

But, the youngest and most inexperienced members of the team are not setting the tone of our work or the culture of the team, although they do contribute to it! The managers and senior staff are older, experienced, and the younger staff appear eager to learn from them. There was a conflict with one of the managers and a younger report regarding taking and incorporating feedback, and I needed to step in and speak with both the manager and the worker. The manager needed to be more specific about what was being impacted and the report need to hear that feedback is a normal part of work, no one expects you to get it all right all the time and getting that feedback from your manager is an expected part of our process.

To me, falling back on generational expectations as causal in this situation was useless. There was a performance issue for both of them, and an attitude issue for one. I coached both of them from the perspective of their own professional growth, and how that relates to our work processes, deliverables, and deadlines.

I enjoy the age diversity of the team and love the mix of experience and energy we have. But I'm not here to cater to any one demographic at the expense of the work that need to get done. And part of getting that work done is having contented workers that enjoy their work, see potential for creative input and advancement possibilities if they want those, and that as a team we guard against any burnout of selves and others.

I'm not sure how you got any of this from my posts.

I've posted A LOT in this thread about how taking the time to understand how Gen Z are motivated differently can empower managers to overcome the very, very well known challenges that employers are increasingly facing.

This is an enormously common topic in publications about management. Also, as much as you don't find generational distinctions useful, research is showing there really is a distinction among the current younger generation. They are behaving substantially differently and there are many, many factors contributing to this, not the least of which them being digital natives, which profoundly shapes their very sense of self and community.

Every point I have made is about figuring out how to get great performance out of younger staff, not compromising anything for them. I honestly don't even know how that interpretation could be gotten from my contributions to this thread.

[Metalcat]

Just FTR

A quick Google scholar search for "generation z" produced pages of articles on how they are different as employees, how companies need to adjust to managing them appropriately or else they will suffer in terms of recruitment, retention, productivity, and innovation.

[mistymoney]

Sounds like you are describing very small businesses. Small businesses are known for having much higher levels of dysfunction generally. In my career, nothing was more miserable than working for small, owner run businesses where every dollar of proposed spending, benefit for employees, or time off was evaluated as a dollar out of the owner's pocket with the owner as the decision maker.

I would also think that if the business is looking at a large proportion of genz as their work force, that means that experienced people don't stay for very long, so the culture is constantly up for grabs.

I work for a smallish company of about 200 ee. While some on the team are young and just starting out professionally if they are strictly genz or very young mellenials, I'm not sure I don't know their exact ages. Larger proportion of the team are across the millenial through older genx ranges. Pretty sure I am the oldest, but not sure! I don't know the ages, someone 1-2 could be "well preserved" as it were and I just assume I'm the oldest.

The team function itself is young, a new division where the company developed an inhouse department that had previously been outsourced, with my team the youngest within the department. I have 2 managers under me with a few direct reports, and I have 3 other reports that I wish I had a 3rd manager to wrangle but so far not!

I should also note that all the younger members are college educated and looking at building careers. So they are very keen on not just slogging away at the lower level responsibilities in their job descriptions, but stepping up to more advanced work when the opportunity is there. As a young team introducing new work to the organization, we are creating a lot of new materials and processes so there is a lot of room to contribute creatively for everyone.  But there is a lot of the bread and butter, keeping somewhat repetitive projects moving through the pipeline as well.

But, the youngest and most inexperienced members of the team are not setting the tone of our work or the culture of the team, although they do contribute to it! The managers and senior staff are older, experienced, and the younger staff appear eager to learn from them. There was a conflict with one of the managers and a younger report regarding taking and incorporating feedback, and I needed to step in and speak with both the manager and the worker. The manager needed to be more specific about what was being impacted and the report need to hear that feedback is a normal part of work, no one expects you to get it all right all the time and getting that feedback from your manager is an expected part of our process.

To me, falling back on generational expectations as causal in this situation was useless. There was a performance issue for both of them, and an attitude issue for one. I coached both of them from the perspective of their own professional growth, and how that relates to our work processes, deliverables, and deadlines.

I enjoy the age diversity of the team and love the mix of experience and energy we have. But I'm not here to cater to any one demographic at the expense of the work that need to get done. And part of getting that work done is having contented workers that enjoy their work, see potential for creative input and advancement possibilities if they want those, and that as a team we guard against any burnout of selves and others.

I'm not sure how you got any of this from my posts.

I've posted A LOT in this thread about how taking the time to understand how Gen Z are motivated differently can empower managers to overcome the very, very well known challenges that employers are increasingly facing.

This is an enormously common topic in publications about management.

Every point I have made is about figuring out how to get great performance out of younger staff, not compromising anything for them. I honestly don't even know how that interpretation could be gotten from my contributions to this thread.

What exactly is it that I am to understand about managing genz staff?

And if I do that, what should I also then understand about managing older millenial staff, younger mellenial staff, genx staff? baby boomer staff?

I work very hard to make the team an open, inclusive one where everyone gets heard, everyone contributes, and everyone has whatever opportunities I can make or push through for them.

so here was a google result on managing genz:


How And Why Managing Gen Z Employees Can Be ... - Forbeshttps://www.forbes.com › edwardsegal › 2022/03/25
Mar 25, 2022 — “I've found that it's important to set clear expectations and goals for them, and then hold them accountable to meeting those expectations."

“In fact, as the most populous generation, with over 60 million members in the United States alone, Gen Z is well on their way to becoming the most influential group in the workplace.’’

This seems just be general good management of newer workers. Because for senior position, I do expect them to do a lot of this themselves.

The report found that:

96% of respondents said it’s important they feel valued, included, and empowered at work.
80% of respondents prefer a job that allows them to explore and grow various skillsets, rather than a job that is focused on a particular set of skills.
79% of respondents value having a manager that cares about their personal development as much as their professional development.

so for 1 and 2 - why would you treat anyone any differently?

Should you value and include and empower genz and NOT the mellenials? I don't get it.

For #3, I'm not sure what they are getting at, I don't intrude on ee personal lives, unless they share it with me. and not sure what personal development means here.

There are certain things that are just good managment, and then something may be individual issues, like the forbes article talks about genz being too outspoken, know it all, and challenging. Overall, I haven't had that experience.

so my three buckets are good management techniques, learning professionals norms, and reading the culture of your company.

I certainly don't think genz should get better, more indulgent management just because older work cohorts were abused and taken advantage of for decades. we should step it up for everyone.

[Metalcat]

Sounds like you are describing very small businesses. Small businesses are known for having much higher levels of dysfunction generally. In my career, nothing was more miserable than working for small, owner run businesses where every dollar of proposed spending, benefit for employees, or time off was evaluated as a dollar out of the owner's pocket with the owner as the decision maker.

I would also think that if the business is looking at a large proportion of genz as their work force, that means that experienced people don't stay for very long, so the culture is constantly up for grabs.

I work for a smallish company of about 200 ee. While some on the team are young and just starting out professionally if they are strictly genz or very young mellenials, I'm not sure I don't know their exact ages. Larger proportion of the team are across the millenial through older genx ranges. Pretty sure I am the oldest, but not sure! I don't know the ages, someone 1-2 could be "well preserved" as it were and I just assume I'm the oldest.

The team function itself is young, a new division where the company developed an inhouse department that had previously been outsourced, with my team the youngest within the department. I have 2 managers under me with a few direct reports, and I have 3 other reports that I wish I had a 3rd manager to wrangle but so far not!

I should also note that all the younger members are college educated and looking at building careers. So they are very keen on not just slogging away at the lower level responsibilities in their job descriptions, but stepping up to more advanced work when the opportunity is there. As a young team introducing new work to the organization, we are creating a lot of new materials and processes so there is a lot of room to contribute creatively for everyone.  But there is a lot of the bread and butter, keeping somewhat repetitive projects moving through the pipeline as well.

But, the youngest and most inexperienced members of the team are not setting the tone of our work or the culture of the team, although they do contribute to it! The managers and senior staff are older, experienced, and the younger staff appear eager to learn from them. There was a conflict with one of the managers and a younger report regarding taking and incorporating feedback, and I needed to step in and speak with both the manager and the worker. The manager needed to be more specific about what was being impacted and the report need to hear that feedback is a normal part of work, no one expects you to get it all right all the time and getting that feedback from your manager is an expected part of our process.

To me, falling back on generational expectations as causal in this situation was useless. There was a performance issue for both of them, and an attitude issue for one. I coached both of them from the perspective of their own professional growth, and how that relates to our work processes, deliverables, and deadlines.

I enjoy the age diversity of the team and love the mix of experience and energy we have. But I'm not here to cater to any one demographic at the expense of the work that need to get done. And part of getting that work done is having contented workers that enjoy their work, see potential for creative input and advancement possibilities if they want those, and that as a team we guard against any burnout of selves and others.

I'm not sure how you got any of this from my posts.

I've posted A LOT in this thread about how taking the time to understand how Gen Z are motivated differently can empower managers to overcome the very, very well known challenges that employers are increasingly facing.

This is an enormously common topic in publications about management.

Every point I have made is about figuring out how to get great performance out of younger staff, not compromising anything for them. I honestly don't even know how that interpretation could be gotten from my contributions to this thread.

What exactly is it that I am to understand about managing genz staff?

And if I do that, what should I also then understand about managing older millenial staff, younger mellenial staff, genx staff? baby boomer staff?

I work very hard to make the team an open, inclusive one where everyone gets heard, everyone contributes, and everyone has whatever opportunities I can make or push through for them.

so here was a google result on managing genz:


How And Why Managing Gen Z Employees Can Be ... - Forbeshttps://www.forbes.com › edwardsegal › 2022/03/25
Mar 25, 2022 — “I've found that it's important to set clear expectations and goals for them, and then hold them accountable to meeting those expectations."

“In fact, as the most populous generation, with over 60 million members in the United States alone, Gen Z is well on their way to becoming the most influential group in the workplace.’’

This seems just be general good management of newer workers. Because for senior position, I do expect them to do a lot of this themselves.

The report found that:

96% of respondents said it’s important they feel valued, included, and empowered at work.
80% of respondents prefer a job that allows them to explore and grow various skillsets, rather than a job that is focused on a particular set of skills.
79% of respondents value having a manager that cares about their personal development as much as their professional development.

so for 1 and 2 - why would you treat anyone any differently?

Should you value and include and empower genz and NOT the mellenials? I don't get it.

For #3, I'm not sure what they are getting at, I don't intrude on ee personal lives, unless they share it with me. and not sure what personal development means here.

There are certain things that are just good managment, and then something may be individual issues, like the forbes article talks about genz being too outspoken, know it all, and challenging. Overall, I haven't had that experience.

so my three buckets are good management techniques, learning professionals norms, and reading the culture of your company.

I certainly don't think genz should get better, more indulgent management just because older work cohorts were abused and taken advantage of for decades. we should step it up for everyone.

Again, I never said any of the above.

I've written a lot in this thread and never once talked about being more lenient.

If you have no problem managing young staff, that's great, but tons of companies do and fail to understand how to adapt to a distinctive incoming workforce.

I find it interesting that you interpret my statement that it's important to understand and adapt to a changing workforce as meaning that companies should compromise somehow.

FTR, I manage everyone the same way, Gen Z to Boomer, and I established it before Gen Z were even working for me. My approach just happens to be infinitely easier to implement with Gen Z.

I honestly do not understand how you are getting what you've been saying from my posts in this thread. I'm super confused.

[mistymoney]

I remain confused. What am I suppose to do differently for genz?

[scottish]

My experiences seem similar to mistymoney's although I haven't really been doing any management - except for a bunch of interns - for the last decade.

The techniques I read about today for managing gen-z workers are techniques that apply to everyone.     The interns I've worked with in the 2010's seem alot like the interns and junior employees I worked with in 1990's and 2000's.    These people are typically professionals or in a professional program - engineers and computer scientists.   They're usually smart, highly motivated and goal oriented.

I'm not sure if your staff are similar, eg white collar workers - or something else, Malcat.   Could this be part of the difference?

[ATtiny85]

I remain confused. What am I suppose to do differently for genz?

Heck, I remain wonderfully ignorant of what gen is what. Two 25 year olds might need completely different leadership. And a 50 year old might need the same as a 21 year old intern. No idea where this ageism comes from, and weird to see so many posters here being openly ageist. But shoot, I get surprised by all sorts of stuff here.

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

Ah...I found the problem. It's due to my poor reading skills apparently :-). I thought that the employee had scheduled a meeting, time included, themselves, and not paid enough attention to realize what they'd already committed to. You clearly said the manager scheduled the time, not the employee - all the employee had asked for was a meeting sometime. If I had only read more carefully, I would have not been nearly this confused! Sigh....

???

Now I'm confused.

The staff member requested the meeting time and then later asked to change the meeting time. The manager agreed, but called the request "bold."

Ok, then I'm back to thinking it's rude, lol.

Your initial quote was:

"A Gen Z staff member requests a meeting with their elder millenial supervisor. The supervisor agrees and later on sends a meeting invite.

The Gen Z staff member writes back saying that they've re-assessed their schedule and noted that they have a lot of intense back-to-back meetings that day, and would likely not be in optimal shape for the meeting with the supervisor and asks to reschedule it to avoid burnout."

The second time I read it, I thought that the underlined meant the Gen Z staff member said, "Hey boss, I need to meet with you because I need to talk about x, y, z." Boss then says, "Sure I'll schedule a meeting and does so on Friday at 3:00." Gen Z staff member says, "Oh, yeah, I've got two meetings on Friday. I don't think that'll work. I'll be burnt out."

If it's that situation - no problem.

Originally, I thought it was Gen Z staff member said, "Hey boss, I need to meet with you on Friday at 3:00 PM because I need to talk about x, y, z." Boss then says, "Sure I'll schedule a meeting and does so on Friday at 3:00." Gen Z staff member says, "Oh, yeah, I've got two meetings on Friday. I don't think that'll work. I'll be burnt out."

If it's that situation - which is what it now seems like it was - then Gen Z staffer is being at least a little rude. The rudeness comes from not thoroughly checking whether or not you could keep a time commitment before you book someone else's time. Ultimately the manager might not have minded, and that's fine. I probably wouldn't have minded much if it didn't inconvenience me - make scheduling some other meeting harder because I had this one scheduled...or in some way keeping me from making some plan because I thought I had this meeting scheduled. Also, the longer the meeting has stayed on there, the ruder, in my mind, it becomes. If I asked for a Friday, 3:00 meeting on Monday at 3:00 PM and rescheduled it first thing Tuesday morning - not too big of a problem. If I asked on Monday and rescheduled it Thursday at 4:30 PM - more rude. Perhaps it was much closer to the Monday/Tuesday situation and nothing was negatively impacted since the manager thought it wasn't a big deal at all. I dunno.

I think it's pretty straightforward that it's rude to book someone's time up for a Friday at 3:00 meeting when you had a doctor's appointment on Friday at 3:00 already scheduled. You couldn't do it. You should have known you couldn't do it. The situation didn't change - you just didn't take the time to look before you scheduled a meeting. That's not valuing someone else's time. This is the same in both situations.

It always frustrates me when I feel like someone throws out a buzzword as "a trump card," which, I think, is why this one frustrated me. It's rude not to value someone else's time in this way in general, but if you throw out the phrase "burnout" then it becomes something different - not in my mind.

After thinking on it myself, this is why I was frustrated by the situation, I believe.

You only think it's rude because you're thinking about it from a certain perspective.

Now think of it with a different frame.

I request a meeting with you for 3pm, you agree and send a meeting invite. I realize I've made a mistake requesting the meeting at that time and I know I'm not going to be in great shape for the meeting because of the other things I have on my plate.

I can
a) suck it up and go to the meeting anyway because I requested it, and corporate culture rules dictate that it's rude to request a change

b) just be honest with my manager like they're a human being who might be totally okay with moving the meeting, because it might not actually be a big deal, and if it is a big deal to move the meeting, she can just say "no" because she's the one in charge.


Plus I'm just explaining the objective fact that I won't be in great shape for the initial meeting time I requested. As my manager, it's sort of her job to care if I'm overloaded, so if she can easily accommodate it, then there really shouldn't be anything wrong with just being honest and *asking*.

For me as a manager, I would want my staff to feel free to request time with me, and I would want them to feel free to ask for meeting changes even if the reason is just "Ugh, I realized I have XYZ procedures right before and I'm going to be cranky."

It's not rude to me because I'm the one with all of the power to grant or deny their requests. They're just giving me more information to work with to make wise managerial decisions.

As the person in charge of them, I am the custodian of their well being every single day. So yeah, if someone schedules a meeting with me at the end of Thursday and then later on realizes they have 3 patients from hell scheduled right before and volunteers that they made a mistake with their meeting time request, then OF COURSE I want to know that.

At the very least, if I can't move the meeting, I want to be aware that the staff member coming into that meeting is going to be totally fried and not want to be there. That's useful information to me.

If you aren't conditioned to see the scenario through the existing corporate culture lens, then it truly doesn't make sense to call the behaviour bold.

I've quite literally had staff do *exactly* this same thing to me, often for performance reviews. Performance reviews are stressful and I've had staff request to reschedule them just 10 minutes before.

I don't want a miserable, exhausted, burnt out staff member in a performance review! Of course I'll reschedule if there's any way to do so, or I'll let them switch with someone. Caring about their state of being makes a HUGE difference to their experience as my staff member.

I won't always grant requests, but I will always want to hear them, and if I deny them, I will give a reasonable explanation why. From my perspective, if a staff member asks me for something, the onus is on me to justify why I won't give it to them. The onus is on me to make them feel like what they want and need from me matters to me.

So no, I don't find anything about the situation rude at all. You can't impose on someone who has all of the power in the dyad, you can only request and explain your requests and hope that their priorities will align with yours.

Interesting perspective. Thanks for reframing it for me.

[dcheesi]

https://www.resumebuilder.com/1-in-3-managers-respond-to-quiet-quitting-with-quiet-firing/

Interesting (but not fascinating) article.  I don't think anyone here will be surprised.....

Key findings include:

98% of managers of ‘quiet quitters’ say it’s important their reports do more than the bare minimum
91% of managers have taken some action against ‘quiet quitters,’ including taking steps to terminate them and denying promotions/raises
1 in 3 managers admit to ‘quiet firing’ reports
64% of managers say ‘quiet quitters’ are unlikely to have a successful career
75% of managers say it’s justifiable to fire someone only doing the bare minimum

I know the "successful career" one is just an opinion, but as a point of discussion: I do think that it depends on how & why the employee is doing it, as well as how you define "successful".

If people are just trying to "downshift", then they may be perfectly happy with getting passed over for promotions etc. As long as it's a tradeoff they're making knowingly, and they do enough to maintain their paycheck, that might be all the "success" they need.

Meanwhile, the ones who are truly "quiet quitting" (i.e. looking to get laid-off etc.) may well be doing it because of one specific job situation, not as an overall career strategy. Just as an example, one friend & former coworker of mine decided to "quiet quit", and did indeed get terminated eventually --only to find a new job that pays better and seems to make him much happier. (Working at a California startup, for California pay, while sitting at home in Indianapolis; sweet!)

[Metalcat]

I remain confused. What am I suppose to do differently for genz?

Maybe *you* don't need to do anything differently. From your own report, *you* sound like you are managing them just fine. So great, don't worry about it.

The countless companies that are stressing over the fact that they can't seem to get reliable productivity out of their young staff need to consider putting in an effort to understand *why* they are struggling to get performance out of staff using the same management techniques that have always worked before instead of just doing the same thing over and over and getting increasingly poor results.

That is literally all I've been saying.

[mistymoney]

My experiences seem similar to mistymoney's although I haven't really been doing any management - except for a bunch of interns - for the last decade.

The techniques I read about today for managing gen-z workers are techniques that apply to everyone.     The interns I've worked with in the 2010's seem alot like the interns and junior employees I worked with in 1990's and 2000's.    These people are typically professionals or in a professional program - engineers and computer scientists.   They're usually smart, highly motivated and goal oriented.

I'm not sure if your staff are similar, eg white collar workers - or something else, Malcat.   Could this be part of the difference?

I am also talking about white collar workers. about 50% BA, 50% MA. Jobs are two tracts - data/analytical or writing/copy editing in nature

[Raenia]

I think it can really go either way depending on the exact situation and the relationship between the two people.  We don't have enough information to say it was disrespectful, and I think we should err on the side of it being fine, since the original manager didn't say anything that changes that.  There are many situations in which it would be no big deal to ask to change the meeting, and be neither bold nor disrespectful.

I've also had meetings where I carefully arranged a time for 4 busy people to get together for a required meeting, sometimes more than a month in advance due to crazy schedules, only to have someone cancel 10 minutes before the meeting time.  That is disrespectful of everyone's time, because they all cleared time in their schedules to be there, some came onsite when they normally work remotely, etc, and that particular meeting could not proceed unless all members were present so the whole thing was wasted.

Now, should that person have sucked it up and come anyway?  Depends on exactly why they cancelled.  Should they have been apologetic about the late notice? Absolutely.  They were not, and that absolutely soured everyone's opinion of that person, permanently.

I didn't even share the example to debate the behaviour of the employee.

I shared it to show that the millenial manager said that she respected that the staff member was bold enough, and the Gen Z readers genuinely didn't understand what was bold about that.

That is the point I was making. That there's a fundamental cultural difference, and a lot of managers are just totally I'll equipped to even understand the new incoming staff.

ETA: I literally just watched a video about a mental health professional breaking down how Gen Z is psychologically fundamentally different from previous generations.

People don't get them because they are *fundamentally* psychologically different.

Not sure why you're responding so vehemently to me when I wasn't responding to you, but to the people saying it is rude to reschedule a meeting.  Whether it's rude or not has nothing to do with that generation you are, and everything to do with how busy the other person is and how far out of their way they went to be able to meet with you. (General you, not you in specific.)

[Metalcat]

I think it can really go either way depending on the exact situation and the relationship between the two people.  We don't have enough information to say it was disrespectful, and I think we should err on the side of it being fine, since the original manager didn't say anything that changes that.  There are many situations in which it would be no big deal to ask to change the meeting, and be neither bold nor disrespectful.

I've also had meetings where I carefully arranged a time for 4 busy people to get together for a required meeting, sometimes more than a month in advance due to crazy schedules, only to have someone cancel 10 minutes before the meeting time.  That is disrespectful of everyone's time, because they all cleared time in their schedules to be there, some came onsite when they normally work remotely, etc, and that particular meeting could not proceed unless all members were present so the whole thing was wasted.

Now, should that person have sucked it up and come anyway?  Depends on exactly why they cancelled.  Should they have been apologetic about the late notice? Absolutely.  They were not, and that absolutely soured everyone's opinion of that person, permanently.

I didn't even share the example to debate the behaviour of the employee.

I shared it to show that the millenial manager said that she respected that the staff member was bold enough, and the Gen Z readers genuinely didn't understand what was bold about that.

That is the point I was making. That there's a fundamental cultural difference, and a lot of managers are just totally I'll equipped to even understand the new incoming staff.

ETA: I literally just watched a video about a mental health professional breaking down how Gen Z is psychologically fundamentally different from previous generations.

People don't get them because they are *fundamentally* psychologically different.

Not sure why you're responding so vehemently to me when I wasn't responding to you, but to the people saying it is rude to reschedule a meeting.  Whether it's rude or not has nothing to do with that generation you are, and everything to do with how busy the other person is and how far out of their way they went to be able to meet with you. (General you, not you in specific.)

I apologize if my tone sounds vehement, it isn't. I was trying to clarify my point. I responded because I was the one who shared the scenario in the first place.

As to whether something is rude or not does depend on the social norms of the group involved. My point was that the younger generation has a different perspective. They wouldn't consider being honest with their manager about their capacity to be rude, especially when the manager can just say "no."

I was also sharing that *I* would not consider someone asking me to move a meeting they asked for to be rude. I might say "no," but I don't consider it rude at all to ask. So there are management approaches where that conduct would not be considered rude, which means the act of requesting to have the meeting moved is not fundamentally rude. It's only rude in a context where managers feel like their own schedules are more important than understanding the state their employees are in.

Which is common, but will increasingly create conflict and poor performance among an incoming population who are not motivated at all by that dynamic.

Social norms change. I remember when it was rude for a woman to wear open toed shoes to the office.

ETA: you can usually tell when I'm vehement because I capitalize things. Otherwise I just unfortunately write that way, lol

[Raenia]

I think it can really go either way depending on the exact situation and the relationship between the two people.  We don't have enough information to say it was disrespectful, and I think we should err on the side of it being fine, since the original manager didn't say anything that changes that.  There are many situations in which it would be no big deal to ask to change the meeting, and be neither bold nor disrespectful.

I've also had meetings where I carefully arranged a time for 4 busy people to get together for a required meeting, sometimes more than a month in advance due to crazy schedules, only to have someone cancel 10 minutes before the meeting time.  That is disrespectful of everyone's time, because they all cleared time in their schedules to be there, some came onsite when they normally work remotely, etc, and that particular meeting could not proceed unless all members were present so the whole thing was wasted.

Now, should that person have sucked it up and come anyway?  Depends on exactly why they cancelled.  Should they have been apologetic about the late notice? Absolutely.  They were not, and that absolutely soured everyone's opinion of that person, permanently.

I didn't even share the example to debate the behaviour of the employee.

I shared it to show that the millenial manager said that she respected that the staff member was bold enough, and the Gen Z readers genuinely didn't understand what was bold about that.

That is the point I was making. That there's a fundamental cultural difference, and a lot of managers are just totally I'll equipped to even understand the new incoming staff.

ETA: I literally just watched a video about a mental health professional breaking down how Gen Z is psychologically fundamentally different from previous generations.

People don't get them because they are *fundamentally* psychologically different.

Not sure why you're responding so vehemently to me when I wasn't responding to you, but to the people saying it is rude to reschedule a meeting.  Whether it's rude or not has nothing to do with that generation you are, and everything to do with how busy the other person is and how far out of their way they went to be able to meet with you. (General you, not you in specific.)

I apologize if my tone sounds vehement, it isn't. I was trying to clarify my point. I responded because I was the one who shared the scenario in the first place.

As to whether something is rude or not does depend on the social norms of the group involved. My point was that the younger generation has a different perspective. They wouldn't consider being honest with their manager about their capacity to be rude, especially when the manager can just say "no."

I was also sharing that *I* would not consider someone asking me to move a meeting they asked for to be rude. I might say "no," but I don't consider it rude at all to ask. So there are management approaches where that conduct would not be considered rude, which means the act of requesting to have the meeting moved is not fundamentally rude. It's only rude in a context where managers feel like their own schedules are more important than understanding the state their employees are in.

Which is common, but will increasingly create conflict and poor performance among an incoming population who are not motivated at all by that dynamic.

Social norms change. I remember when it was rude for a woman to wear open toed shoes to the office.

ETA: you can usually tell when I'm vehement because I capitalize things. Otherwise I just unfortunately write that way, lol

The conversation isn't just about that one example though, it's generalizing to a broader situation.  I agree that in the original example, with the information we know, it shouldn't be viewed as rude or bold.  But there can be other factors that make similar situations feel disrespectful of others' time.

For instance, the example I gave in my original post.  If someone went out of their way or spent social capital to get the meeting scheduled, if people have come in on their day off or when they were scheduled to WFH, cleared time in busy schedules and declined other meetings to make space for you, then calling at the last minute to say "So I misjudged and can't actually make it, can we reschedule?" does very much come across as rude and disrespectful of all the people who went out of their way to make time for them.  It says quite clearly "I think my time and workload are more important than yours."  People remember that sort of thing.

[Metalcat]

The conversation isn't just about that one example though, it's generalizing to a broader situation.  I agree that in the original example, with the information we know, it shouldn't be viewed as rude or bold.  But there can be other factors that make similar situations feel disrespectful of others' time.

For instance, the example I gave in my original post.  If someone went out of their way or spent social capital to get the meeting scheduled, if people have come in on their day off or when they were scheduled to WFH, cleared time in busy schedules and declined other meetings to make space for you, then calling at the last minute to say "So I misjudged and can't actually make it, can we reschedule?" does very much come across as rude and disrespectful of all the people who went out of their way to make time for them.  It says quite clearly "I think my time and workload are more important than yours."  People remember that sort of thing.

Sure, if course, there's always a way to make an exchange rude, even an ostensibly totally polite exchange can be rude if the intentions of the person involved are disrespectful to the other.

The issue is that the current corporate culture/structure is generally quite disrespectful to its workers. The issue that's increasingly coming up is that the incoming staff are intolerant of that culture of disrespect towards them. Whereas previous generations have been culturally conditioned to accept it as "the way it is."

Companies that treat their staff with basic human dignity will fare better adjusting to the turning tide of staff expectations. Companies that don't will struggle.

[Captain FIRE]

The issue is that the current corporate culture/structure is generally quite disrespectful to its workers. The issue that's increasingly coming up is that the incoming staff are intolerant of that culture of disrespect towards them. Whereas previous generations have been culturally conditioned to accept it as "the way it is."

+1
In the most generous way I can phrase this, my boss has been incredibly disrespectful to many of his employees. The people above him looked into it, but over the objections of many, someone decided to reinstate him. Ergo, I'm searching for a new job and I don't think I'm the only one looking.

[Metalcat]

The issue is that the current corporate culture/structure is generally quite disrespectful to its workers. The issue that's increasingly coming up is that the incoming staff are intolerant of that culture of disrespect towards them. Whereas previous generations have been culturally conditioned to accept it as "the way it is."

+1
In the most generous way I can phrase this, my boss has been incredibly disrespectful to many of his employees. The people above him looked into it, but over the objections of many, someone decided to reinstate him. Ergo, I'm searching for a new job and I don't think I'm the only one looking.

I heard the VP of a medium sized company rave about how much they respected their boomer EA because when her kid had cancer, you couldn't even tell anything was bothering her, her work performance never suffered because she knew how to keep personal shit at home.

This was the example the VP was using to explain how young people today just don't have a very good work ethic.

Meanwhile all I was thinking was "what happened to you to turn you into such a soulless ghoul?"

[ChpBstrd]

The issue is that the current corporate culture/structure is generally quite disrespectful to its workers. The issue that's increasingly coming up is that the incoming staff are intolerant of that culture of disrespect towards them. Whereas previous generations have been culturally conditioned to accept it as "the way it is."

+1
In the most generous way I can phrase this, my boss has been incredibly disrespectful to many of his employees. The people above him looked into it, but over the objections of many, someone decided to reinstate him. Ergo, I'm searching for a new job and I don't think I'm the only one looking.

I heard the VP of a medium sized company rave about how much they respected their boomer EA because when her kid had cancer, you couldn't even tell anything was bothering her, her work performance never suffered because she knew how to keep personal shit at home.

This was the example the VP was using to explain how young people today just don't have a very good work ethic.

Meanwhile all I was thinking was "what happened to you to turn you into such a soulless ghoul?"

The older employees have lived through longer and more prolonged periods of high unemployment, and are thus conditioned to accepting whatever working conditions are available. Their operating assumption is that you can't job-hop if it turns out you are working amongst assholes. Older workers also inherited some mental golden handcuffs from the days when companies promoted based on seniority, had pensions, and had a bigger overlap with one's personal life. 

Then there is the obvious thing that makes older workers ripe for abuse in nasty work cultures: They will face age discrimination if they quit and they need to quickly save up some money for retirement. Either factor will constrain people from quitting, and today's young workers will face this same dynamic in their futures.

[Metalcat]

The issue is that the current corporate culture/structure is generally quite disrespectful to its workers. The issue that's increasingly coming up is that the incoming staff are intolerant of that culture of disrespect towards them. Whereas previous generations have been culturally conditioned to accept it as "the way it is."

+1
In the most generous way I can phrase this, my boss has been incredibly disrespectful to many of his employees. The people above him looked into it, but over the objections of many, someone decided to reinstate him. Ergo, I'm searching for a new job and I don't think I'm the only one looking.

I heard the VP of a medium sized company rave about how much they respected their boomer EA because when her kid had cancer, you couldn't even tell anything was bothering her, her work performance never suffered because she knew how to keep personal shit at home.

This was the example the VP was using to explain how young people today just don't have a very good work ethic.

Meanwhile all I was thinking was "what happened to you to turn you into such a soulless ghoul?"

The older employees have lived through longer and more prolonged periods of high unemployment, and are thus conditioned to accepting whatever working conditions are available. Their operating assumption is that you can't job-hop if it turns out you are working amongst assholes. Older workers also inherited some mental golden handcuffs from the days when companies promoted based on seniority, had pensions, and had a bigger overlap with one's personal life. 

Then there is the obvious thing that makes older workers ripe for abuse in nasty work cultures: They will face age discrimination if they quit and they need to quickly save up some money for retirement. Either factor will constrain people from quitting, and today's young workers will face this same dynamic in their futures.

To clarify, the woman whose kid had cancer happened when she was quite young. So this behaviour from her didn't happen because she was old.

The VP was specifically comparing young staff in the past to young staff in the present.

[farmecologist]

The issue is that the current corporate culture/structure is generally quite disrespectful to its workers. The issue that's increasingly coming up is that the incoming staff are intolerant of that culture of disrespect towards them. Whereas previous generations have been culturally conditioned to accept it as "the way it is."

+1
In the most generous way I can phrase this, my boss has been incredibly disrespectful to many of his employees. The people above him looked into it, but over the objections of many, someone decided to reinstate him. Ergo, I'm searching for a new job and I don't think I'm the only one looking.

I heard the VP of a medium sized company rave about how much they respected their boomer EA because when her kid had cancer, you couldn't even tell anything was bothering her, her work performance never suffered because she knew how to keep personal shit at home.

This was the example the VP was using to explain how young people today just don't have a very good work ethic.

Meanwhile all I was thinking was "what happened to you to turn you into such a soulless ghoul?"

Wow...but not surprising.

Frankly, it seems to me that *many* that end up in upper management positions tend to have 'ghoul-like qualities'.  Sure, there are some good ones...but they seem few and far between.

[Metalcat]

The issue is that the current corporate culture/structure is generally quite disrespectful to its workers. The issue that's increasingly coming up is that the incoming staff are intolerant of that culture of disrespect towards them. Whereas previous generations have been culturally conditioned to accept it as "the way it is."

+1
In the most generous way I can phrase this, my boss has been incredibly disrespectful to many of his employees. The people above him looked into it, but over the objections of many, someone decided to reinstate him. Ergo, I'm searching for a new job and I don't think I'm the only one looking.

I heard the VP of a medium sized company rave about how much they respected their boomer EA because when her kid had cancer, you couldn't even tell anything was bothering her, her work performance never suffered because she knew how to keep personal shit at home.

This was the example the VP was using to explain how young people today just don't have a very good work ethic.

Meanwhile all I was thinking was "what happened to you to turn you into such a soulless ghoul?"

Wow...but not surprising.

Frankly, it seems to me that *many* that end up in upper management positions tend to have 'ghoul-like qualities'.  Sure, there are some good ones...but they seem few and far between.

Well, having been an exec myself, it does self select for a certain ruthlessness.

I'm a fucking vicious asshole, and very comfortable with ruthless, aggressive conflict and will rip your throat open with my teeth if you get in my way.

The problem is that kind of driven aggression doesn't usually correlate with also being a warm, caring, emotionally generous person in general.

I'm a weirdo.

If you're subordinate to me or a peer who is aligned with my values, then I'll do whatever it takes to protect your well being. If you're senior to me and compromising the well being of those below you.

Oof...we're gonna fight. And it's going to be very bloody. And I don't care if I lose.

[AlanStache]

I have been trying to read to the end of this thread for about three weeks!!! /s

WRT ratings scaling's from a few pages back; for my employers annual reviews we are scored 1-5 with 3 being "meets expectations", I get mostly 3 and 4's.  In my last review I asked what I would need to do to get a five (just curious have no real interest in putting out that much effort), and my reviewer could not give me any examples of how to do that in any of the ten categories.  It is an engineering company and they say they are trying hard to not have grade inflation so straight 3's are fine, but like if my amp goes up to 11 you had better tell me how much louder it gets per index. 

Recently I asked management if I could change my living situation so I would be slightly out of car commuting range and wfh then come in as only as needed.   I am not really happy with the location of where I live and where I want to be would be ~30-50min drive each way - no thanks (yeah I know lots of people drive longer - but I dont want to be one of them). 
Management approved the request but the last line in the email reply was:
"If this change has you in a better place mentally, then we expect to see improvements in contributions and value to the company."
I sort of wanted to ask if he was joking.  My first thought was "fuck you", in my mind I was not asking if I could relocate, I was asking if I could stay employed with the current company after I moved.  I did not see any benefit to asking for clarification as I got what I asked for.  Be careful what you risk between getting in a position for a near certain win and the final bell. 

I am more or less FI but I dont think management has any clue that I am not living paycheck to paycheck - this has pros and cons.  A con being that they dont see how strong my bargaining position is.  They see my car and know where I live, and are engineers so they can do math but is just a totally different mindset. 

-----------------------------
over heard today
older boss: "you heading out?  did you finish that proposal?"
35yo (male) co worker: "was working on it, nearly done but need to get my kids from school"
boss: "so you are just leaving?"
35yo: "yeah"..." am waiting on inputs from Bill"
boss: "we need to get that out today"
Then it soft of faded away and I could not hear the end of it but 35yo left the building. 
Boss has two(?) kids but I dont think he was the primary care giver. 

There definitely does seem to be more willingness of the younger set to say 'no' to the company.  is a good thing.

[lifeisshort123]

I think the importance of recognizing that the employer no longer “takes care of the employee” is a huge part of this equation.

Why should people sacrifice their time, energy, acumen, etc. when it is not rewarded as overtly.  Yes, it might be praise, it might be a 5% instead of 3% raise, but in some instances, it might be even less than those two things.  The incentive to go “above and beyond” is not what it used to be, especially in most middle-income positions.

On the other hand, anyone interested in gaining responsibilities can’t say “I’ll go above and beyond and care when they pay me more” in my experience, the world doesn’t work like that.

[Metalcat]

I think the importance of recognizing that the employer no longer “takes care of the employee” is a huge part of this equation.

Why should people sacrifice their time, energy, acumen, etc. when it is not rewarded as overtly.  Yes, it might be praise, it might be a 5% instead of 3% raise, but in some instances, it might be even less than those two things.  The incentive to go “above and beyond” is not what it used to be, especially in most middle-income positions.

On the other hand, anyone interested in gaining responsibilities can’t say “I’ll go above and beyond and care when they pay me more” in my experience, the world doesn’t work like that.

In a system that increasingly requires people to jump jobs for raises, why would someone go above and beyond though? Especially as more and more companies refuse to give references.

[neo von retorch]

Article:
Quiet quitting (CERN ombud - ombuds.web.cern.ch)

Hacker News Discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33151830

[Paul der Krake]

Hacker News Discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33151830

As of this writing, 205 comments of Area Man Projects His Personal Situation Onto The System And Draws Conclusions.

[Midwest_Handlebar]

I think that the plethora of side income opportunities that are available, along with the tight job market has contributed to some push back from employees on unreasonable demands. It's not a generational thing, it's that younger folks have more opportunities to make money than ever. From the sharing economy to side gigs to the popularity of FIRE, Millennials have a better grasp on how to make income not tied to their employer, and there is no illusion that some employer is going to take care of them.

Employees have put up with more denigration, condescension and outright hostile behavior from employers since the effective downfall of unions in the 1980's, that I'm personally thrilled with the "quiet quitting" trend. It was a horrible employer, and a feeling of helplessness that drove me to MMM and a 60+% saving rate. If employees can get paid their previously agreed upon salary, without some unspecified expectation to go "above and beyond", I'm all for it. This is just another chapter in the labor movement, and I'm on the side of labor.

[ironuckles]

"Quiet quitting" is a misnomer for employee disengagement. Employees become disengaged after burnout sets in. We all think about burnout as someone being tired from working too much, but it also manifests as cynicism about the job. Imagine you've just started a new job that you were excited to land, and your boss asks you to write up one extra report before the end of the week. You probably chime in, "sure thing, boss!" and happily go about adding that task to your weekly responsibilities.

Now fast forward a year after you've been worked into the ground, with no support, for an annual pay adjustment that doesn't keep up with inflation, and many hundreds of "just one more thing" requests. Your boss makes the same request. Just one extra report before the end of the week. You sure as hell are not going to be excited to fulfill that request. You might do it, just because you have to to keep your job, but it will be low quality, you'll turn it in late, and you will be resigned and unexcited.

Of course, corpos are blaming the employees, rather than looking at WHY burnout might be rampant across all sectors and compensation levels.

[ironuckles]

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.

I'd say that's not evening doing the bare minimum.  I mean, he asked one person for help and skived off for four days?

You gotta ask at least TWO people before you call it a week.  Everyone knows that.

You sound like one of those unreasonable high expectation people that he was complaining about in the exit interview.

You gotta earn the right to be able to QQ - become good enough at your job and difficult enough to replace that you can easily get away with doing the bare min.
Afraid it sounds like this doofus hadn't even made himself useful around the place - good riddance!

I've definitely seen this kind of behavior from senior software engineers in places I worked at in the past. Once you got into the good graces of management, and you were the expert on some critical system that we barely ever needed to change but that would break in unexpected ways once a quarter, you can set your own hours and openly slack off for as long as the company existed. Once a quarter, there's an outage, you repair the database, and the company goes on existing. They can't lay you off. They can't let you quit. As long as you're not a total asshole, you can coast for a while.

Is *that* quiet quitting?

[ironuckles]

Ah...I found the problem. It's due to my poor reading skills apparently :-). I thought that the employee had scheduled a meeting, time included, themselves, and not paid enough attention to realize what they'd already committed to. You clearly said the manager scheduled the time, not the employee - all the employee had asked for was a meeting sometime. If I had only read more carefully, I would have not been nearly this confused! Sigh....

???

Now I'm confused.

The staff member requested the meeting time and then later asked to change the meeting time. The manager agreed, but called the request "bold."

Ok, then I'm back to thinking it's rude, lol.

Your initial quote was:

"A Gen Z staff member requests a meeting with their elder millenial supervisor. The supervisor agrees and later on sends a meeting invite.

The Gen Z staff member writes back saying that they've re-assessed their schedule and noted that they have a lot of intense back-to-back meetings that day, and would likely not be in optimal shape for the meeting with the supervisor and asks to reschedule it to avoid burnout."

The second time I read it, I thought that the underlined meant the Gen Z staff member said, "Hey boss, I need to meet with you because I need to talk about x, y, z." Boss then says, "Sure I'll schedule a meeting and does so on Friday at 3:00." Gen Z staff member says, "Oh, yeah, I've got two meetings on Friday. I don't think that'll work. I'll be burnt out."

If it's that situation - no problem.

Originally, I thought it was Gen Z staff member said, "Hey boss, I need to meet with you on Friday at 3:00 PM because I need to talk about x, y, z." Boss then says, "Sure I'll schedule a meeting and does so on Friday at 3:00." Gen Z staff member says, "Oh, yeah, I've got two meetings on Friday. I don't think that'll work. I'll be burnt out."

If it's that situation - which is what it now seems like it was - then Gen Z staffer is being at least a little rude. The rudeness comes from not thoroughly checking whether or not you could keep a time commitment before you book someone else's time. Ultimately the manager might not have minded, and that's fine. I probably wouldn't have minded much if it didn't inconvenience me - make scheduling some other meeting harder because I had this one scheduled...or in some way keeping me from making some plan because I thought I had this meeting scheduled. Also, the longer the meeting has stayed on there, the ruder, in my mind, it becomes. If I asked for a Friday, 3:00 meeting on Monday at 3:00 PM and rescheduled it first thing Tuesday morning - not too big of a problem. If I asked on Monday and rescheduled it Thursday at 4:30 PM - more rude. Perhaps it was much closer to the Monday/Tuesday situation and nothing was negatively impacted since the manager thought it wasn't a big deal at all. I dunno.

I think it's pretty straightforward that it's rude to book someone's time up for a Friday at 3:00 meeting when you had a doctor's appointment on Friday at 3:00 already scheduled. You couldn't do it. You should have known you couldn't do it. The situation didn't change - you just didn't take the time to look before you scheduled a meeting. That's not valuing someone else's time. This is the same in both situations.

It always frustrates me when I feel like someone throws out a buzzword as "a trump card," which, I think, is why this one frustrated me. It's rude not to value someone else's time in this way in general, but if you throw out the phrase "burnout" then it becomes something different - not in my mind.

After thinking on it myself, this is why I was frustrated by the situation, I believe.

You only think it's rude because you're thinking about it from a certain perspective.

Now think of it with a different frame.

I request a meeting with you for 3pm, you agree and send a meeting invite. I realize I've made a mistake requesting the meeting at that time and I know I'm not going to be in great shape for the meeting because of the other things I have on my plate.

I can
a) suck it up and go to the meeting anyway because I requested it, and corporate culture rules dictate that it's rude to request a change

b) just be honest with my manager like they're a human being who might be totally okay with moving the meeting, because it might not actually be a big deal, and if it is a big deal to move the meeting, she can just say "no" because she's the one in charge.


Plus I'm just explaining the objective fact that I won't be in great shape for the initial meeting time I requested. As my manager, it's sort of her job to care if I'm overloaded, so if she can easily accommodate it, then there really shouldn't be anything wrong with just being honest and *asking*.

For me as a manager, I would want my staff to feel free to request time with me, and I would want them to feel free to ask for meeting changes even if the reason is just "Ugh, I realized I have XYZ procedures right before and I'm going to be cranky."

It's not rude to me because I'm the one with all of the power to grant or deny their requests. They're just giving me more information to work with to make wise managerial decisions.

As the person in charge of them, I am the custodian of their well being every single day. So yeah, if someone schedules a meeting with me at the end of Thursday and then later on realizes they have 3 patients from hell scheduled right before and volunteers that they made a mistake with their meeting time request, then OF COURSE I want to know that.

At the very least, if I can't move the meeting, I want to be aware that the staff member coming into that meeting is going to be totally fried and not want to be there. That's useful information to me.

If you aren't conditioned to see the scenario through the existing corporate culture lens, then it truly doesn't make sense to call the behaviour bold.

I've quite literally had staff do *exactly* this same thing to me, often for performance reviews. Performance reviews are stressful and I've had staff request to reschedule them just 10 minutes before.

I don't want a miserable, exhausted, burnt out staff member in a performance review! Of course I'll reschedule if there's any way to do so, or I'll let them switch with someone. Caring about their state of being makes a HUGE difference to their experience as my staff member.

I won't always grant requests, but I will always want to hear them, and if I deny them, I will give a reasonable explanation why. From my perspective, if a staff member asks me for something, the onus is on me to justify why I won't give it to them. The onus is on me to make them feel like what they want and need from me matters to me.

So no, I don't find anything about the situation rude at all. You can't impose on someone who has all of the power in the dyad, you can only request and explain your requests and hope that their priorities will align with yours.

I find the original example a little odd.   When I was a manager I had too many real problems to worry about to be concerned about someone rescheduling from Friday to Monday.   If anything I'd be glad to have one less meeting on a Friday afternoon.

As far as that goes, if one of my people needed to talk about something I encouraged them to just come and talk about it.   The bottom line was that my primary job was to make sure they were being productive, so if something was messing with that I wanted to know about it.

This whole exchange seems a bit silly to me. Don't we all have magical internet calendars now that allow us to seamlessly reschedule things without emailing back and forth? I have meetings that are rescheduled all the time. It barely even registers to me, because my calendar software updates my schedule automagically.

[ironuckles]

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."

[GuitarStv]

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.

[CoffeeR]

Sounds like you are describing very small businesses. Small businesses are known for having much higher levels of dysfunction generally. In my career, nothing was more miserable than working for small, owner run businesses where every dollar of proposed spending, benefit for employees, or time off was evaluated as a dollar out of the owner's pocket with the owner as the decision maker.

In my career, spending money when working for a large state org was for more painful and difficult than spending the owners money of the small business I currently work at. For the most part, all reasonable spending of the owners money is approved (by me and I am not the owner :-). I am not saying you are wrong, it just depends on the small business... or maybe I have simply not recovered from the bureaucracy involved in spending $$ for a governmental entity.

[Cawl]

Quiet quitter here. Pretty much realized that nothing I did at a particular business concern would make things better. Everything we were working on was for cosmetic or aesthetic things rather than anything for the core of the business.

[JLee]

Sounds like you are describing very small businesses. Small businesses are known for having much higher levels of dysfunction generally. In my career, nothing was more miserable than working for small, owner run businesses where every dollar of proposed spending, benefit for employees, or time off was evaluated as a dollar out of the owner's pocket with the owner as the decision maker.

In my career, spending money when working for a large state org was for more painful and difficult than spending the owners money of the small business I currently work at. For the most part, all reasonable spending of the owners money is approved (by me and I am not the owner :-). I am not saying you are wrong, it just depends on the small business... or maybe I have simply not recovered from the bureaucracy involved in spending $$ for a governmental entity.

I've had the same experience (despite not being the small business owner).  It's much more easy to purchase things / solve problems than it was at a much larger company, which required tons of justification and multiple levels of approval.  Now I just tell the COO "hey we need this" and he goes "cool."

[jinga nation]

Sometimes I think I'm quiet quitting, other times I'm not.

I'm a "professional consultant" per my company's HR dept; just your average engineer in a specific cloud tech stack, with prior experience on the on-premise side of things, thus know how to marry the two, for this particular customer.

The current customer wants to use new tech stack, doesn't have in-house people to do this, contracts it out. But customer wants fine-grained control overall. Which means a lot of new tech stack doesn't work unless changes are made on the on-premise side (these are quite minor).
Since the processes are bogged down by bureaucracy and molasses speed decision-making, actual daily work is less than 3-4 hours. The rest is spent learning new services and features of the tech stack and studying for industry certifications, working out, investing research.

There's little to zero incentive to offer better ways of operating their on-premise or cloud stack, because even though it would mean more work for us, it would result in current tasks being delayed, because same slow decision makers. So do the bare minimum to keep customer happy, which means employer is happy, which means my wallet is happy, and million man green army keeps on gaining squad strength.

[chasingsnow]

I think the importance of recognizing that the employer no longer “takes care of the employee” is a huge part of this equation.

Why should people sacrifice their time, energy, acumen, etc. when it is not rewarded as overtly.  Yes, it might be praise, it might be a 5% instead of 3% raise, but in some instances, it might be even less than those two things.  The incentive to go “above and beyond” is not what it used to be, especially in most middle-income positions.

On the other hand, anyone interested in gaining responsibilities can’t say “I’ll go above and beyond and care when they pay me more” in my experience, the world doesn’t work like that.

In a system that increasingly requires people to jump jobs for raises, why would someone go above and beyond though? Especially as more and more companies refuse to give references.

THIS 110%. The years of folks working at one employer for 30 years and then collecting the gold watch are over. As a millennial, why would I show any loyalty to my employer when it doesn't feel mutual?

[chasingsnow]

I would say I am currently 110% "quiet quitting" I am on a contract and part of the union clause is I am supposed to get full-time permanency after 1 year, but the employer has decided that clause isn't relevant based on my current contract. Im 28 yo and I have probably had 10 + current jobs, even with most of them unionized its ingrained that you need to jump jobs to get substantial raises. In my current situation my contract will be up this coming June, and why on earth would I continue to do more than the bear minimum when on contract.

[GuitarStv]

I would say I am currently 110% "quiet quitting" I am on a contract and part of the union clause is I am supposed to get full-time permanency after 1 year, but the employer has decided that clause isn't relevant based on my current contract. Im 28 yo and I have probably had 10 + current jobs, even with most of them unionized its ingrained that you need to jump jobs to get substantial raises. In my current situation my contract will be up this coming June, and why on earth would I continue to do more than the bear minimum when on contract.

:P

[chasingsnow]

I would say I am currently 110% "quiet quitting" I am on a contract and part of the union clause is I am supposed to get full-time permanency after 1 year, but the employer has decided that clause isn't relevant based on my current contract. Im 28 yo and I have probably had 10 + current jobs, even with most of them unionized its ingrained that you need to jump jobs to get substantial raises. In my current situation my contract will be up this coming June, and why on earth would I continue to do more than the bear minimum when on contract.

:P

Hahaha perhaps the best typo I have made. I certainly stand by doing the bear minimum