Let's talk about Quiet Quitting
We've all had those moments when we dreamed of storming into our boss' office, jumping on their desk, yelling, "Frank, I quit!!!! And your jokes are no not even a little funny. No one wants to wait 6 minutes for the 3 out of 10 punchlines".
That is unambiguously "loud quitting". Quiet Quitting, much to my initial confusion, is not whispering to your boss that you quit.
Defining the phrase Quiet Quitting all comes down to perspective. I, as a rule of thumb, am pro-labor and pro-job seeker.
What is Quiet Quitting?
Here's how I define it:
The truth is, Quiet Quitting is an idea that was fostered and grew on social media (TikTok specifically). How you define the phrase is your entire framing of the concept.
The core principle that proponents of Quiet Quitting (myself included) have is that you should only work how and when you're being compensated to do so. The obligation belongs to employers to define concrete goals and proper incentives.
There are those who disagree with the notion. They're loud. For example, CNBC quotes someone who frames the problem this way:
"An employee that shows up every day, goes through the motions, turns down certain projects due to lack of interest, and has no desire to advance in their current career or develop skills is very different to a case of work-life balance."
This is a common sentiment in the discussion of Quiet Quitting. For the rest of this newsletter, I want to highlight how wrong that definition is.
Stop blaming employees
From the "no one wants to work anymore" camp, the blame for all labor issues falls at the feet of, well, labor. That includes the discussion around Quiet Quitting.
Ed Zitron said it best in his excellent article on this topic:
"And in almost every single case of the Quiet Quitting discussion, the blame is firmly placed at the worker’s feet - this is something that workers are doing to steal from the boss by “not being enthusiastic” about “going above and beyond” at their work."
I'm here to examine the other side of the discussion, how companies are failing their employees.
Wealth creation is not captured by labor
In 1930 a famous economist named John Maynard Keyes predicted that by now due to improvements in productivity we'd all be working 2-day, 15-hour work weeks. Lol.
More output does not result in more wealth for those producing that output. From 1979-2020 in the US, productivity has grown by 62% while the hourly pay of typical workers grew by 18%.
So, for example, if in a business, workers generated $1,000 in revenue in 10 hours of work then their productivity would be $100 per hour.
In that timeframe, the wealth gap between high-income and low & middle-income families has rapidly accelerated.
Improvements in efficiency and output by workers does not lead to higher wages or more wealth for workers.
Zooming in
That was a macroeconomic scale. Let's zoom in. Workers are not the reason Quiet Quitting is growing in popularity. It's a response to crappy employers.
Bad employers and bosses want their workers to go "above and beyond". What that looks like is not defined concretely, and that's the point.
They want to dangle this far-off, barely visible carrot of promotion to get you to keep running.
To keep working more than your agreed upon hours. Always be on-call and responsive to emails. To discourage time off. To burn out.
The problem is that these employers don't create tangible incentives to do that ill-defined work. They want you to work for free.
If you work 50 hours in a week instead of 40 without being compensated for it, well then your hourly rate just dropped 25%. You became a better bargain for your company!
Good employers, on the other hand, set specific goals and reward employees for hitting those goals.
You deserve a choice in the matter of whether you work 10 extra hours in exchange for more work. You deserve to know what "more work" is. And you deserve to know specifically how you'll be compensated for it whether short-term or long-term.
