Quiet quitting is a rational response

and yet, it has its downsides...

The term “quiet quitting” emerged in 2022. The behavior it describes makes perfect sense to me. In case it’s a new term to you, “quiet quitting” refers to when people choose to do the bare minimum to meet their job responsibilities and no longer step up to do extra projects or work “overtime” (which itself is a slippery concept for salaried employees). It also means that people actively diminish their enthusiasm for and investment in their jobs, and pull back emotionally from their roles and workplaces.

Quiet quitting means pulling back functionally and emotionally from work (Image credit: DALL-E, which depicts the central figure as caged inside their workstation)

Quiet quitting is a rational response to the prevalence of hustle culture, to organizations that seem to want their people to take themselves to the edge of burnout (or beyond!) on behalf of the business’s agenda. We’re now many decades deep into business hype across all industries, perhaps most especially tech, urging each of us to give our all to our jobs — and to think of companies like a family. See, here’s a free lunch! (Sorry, friends, this perk usually means workers take a shorter break.)

A business isn’t a family

The problem with that particular line of BS is that a business organization isn’t at all like our family. Businesses don’t have loyalty to or a connection with us as individuals. They’re rarely invested in our success at a fundamental level for the long haul. And for anybody who’s spent more than a couple of years in the workforce, we know that businesses go through cycles. They hire “resources” in up times and “reduce headcount” in down times.

It only takes one personal experience of going through layoffs to wake up to the reality that most businesses can’t have your back when situations get tough. My own first layoff experience was in the dot-com bust of 2002. The consultancy where I worked, Cooper, had had too few clients for too long. I was a Principal Designer there, truly loving my first meaningful, full-time role along my career path. Our president explained that consultancies tend to go boom and bust a bit faster than the businesses on which they depend, whipsawing around at the higher end of the value chain. I was ultimately let go in the third round of layoffs, already traumatized by the loss of valued friends and colleagues, as they reduced what had been 70+ employees down to only about seven. The founders (and for the record, they are truly wonderful people, Alan and Sue Cooper!) and remaining directors were regretful and apologetic when I was laid off, but it was what it was. I was just collateral damage.

So, quiet quitting is a reasonable behavior for thoughtful, caring people who have been burned before, and who perceive the asymmetry of the relationship we have with our employers. What is the benefit of pouring one’s soul into a job, only to potentially have the rug pulled right out from under our feet? What good comes from caring about your job, only to have to work with people who are neither particularly competent nor nice? It might well be best to pull back from caring so much — perhaps it’s safer for our hearts to take the low road and not have our hopes and expectations dashed, again.

Here’s the rub

However, the downside I can see with quiet quitting is that many of us (most of us?) want to care about what we do for work. If we aren’t in a position to literally quit, we simply have to keep working. We’re fundamentally creatures who are built to care — as humans, we’ve evolved over thousands of centuries to be part of a tribe, to work together with others in various ways, and to have a meaningful identification with the groups we choose to be a part of. Our biological reality as mammals with a limbic system means that emotions are a part of our being.

Quiet quitting in practice unfortunately is going to mean we’re suppressing our emotions and that innate drive we have for connection and purpose. Compartmentalization takes a lot of energy and it’s hard to achieve, much less sustain. And taking this approach to our jobs means that we’ll be less likely to experience the positive emotions that can potentially come from engaging in our livelihoods, as we work day in and day out, over years and years….

So what’s a viable alternative?

I’d like to be a part of elevating those tools and values that will allow us to better sustain our souls at work. Let’s lean into defining and practicing more sustainable ways of working — more sustainable expressions of creativity — more sustainable teams and working relationships.

Sustainable tools and approaches include: how to best manage effort when working with cross-disciplinary teams; how to co-create objective decision frameworks; how to effectively convey the opportunities that drive us and “sell” the solutions we envision for those opportunities; and how to measure alignment to more quickly identify misalignment.

Sustainable values and heartsets (what I’m calling emotional states of being) include: being authentic; accepting the reality of situations as they stand; expressing compassion; being courageous; undertaking difficult conversations with respect; and being willing to forgive.

There may or may not be a very simple recipe for sustaining ourselves at work. I tend to believe the antidotes to what’s wrong with business culture today are going to involve applying a variety of recipes that we prepare using a range of techniques. However, the ingredients aren’t exotic or hard to acquire, and the techniques can be taught and learned. So, I’m cooking away in this proverbial test kitchen, tasting ingredients and developing recipes with gusto. If this endeavor resonates, please join me on this journey — and don’t hesitate to share your own sustainable tools and approaches with me.