Quiet Quitting - the new “great resignation”

Often you have to force a system to failure before steps will taken to correct it.

You often find a bad process or system is propped up by people working for free and doing insane hours. Remove that person or people and it fails and/or becomes unviable.

People are asked to come in and work unreasonable hours or work weekends or do absurd extras. This has been happening since the year dot. It's not something "new". People deal with it by leaving the job, or (over time) the industry gets more regulated, or work practices change, etc, depends on the region, field and many factors.

It's not a "system'. One job can have good conditions, another can have terrible conditions. One company producing a product can be an awful place to work for, another company producing the same product can be a great place to work.

Likewise longer hours can be related to economic factors, e.g. the average Chinese person works much longer hours than the average Irish person. It can be a cultural thing, in e.g. Japan and the US, people generally work longer hours than other countries. Cultural and economic aspects can take a long time to change.

But just finishing your job on the dot of 5 every single day is not something I would recommend people do for very obvious reasons. I don't do it because I work with a team and I would never let them down by having a nonsensical attitude like that. However if my job was systematically forcing me to work extra hours, without recognising it, that's something very different, however again I certainly wouldn't handle that situation by logging out on the dot of 5 every day.

It's a dumb solution that's my point.

Yes, they do when they’re calling it free out of hours labour. If anyone feels they are being exploited, pull up your pants, have a chat with your boss, and if you’re still getting nowhere, seek alternative employment. If there isn’t alternative employment in the same or similar field - retrain, upskill, take some time out to assess what you actually want, whatever, but don’t sit stewing expecting anyone to give a shìt that you’re going to be obstinate in protest at your feeling undervalued and underpaid.

ps: Learn to use focus mode on all communication devices - absolute Godsend! 😂

Quiet quitting is a reflection on poor practices in business really. Anyone can say what they want, but expecting people to work any amount of hours for free is wrong.

One of the really strange things is people who are employees themselves arguing against so called quiet quitting. That makes no sense to me, it’s clearly justified and in the interests of all employees. Don’t believe otherwise, your employer knows it as well.

I think what’s interesting is what happens next. If employees get unionised there could be a big push back. Companies are probably going to have to be more flexible, even though they’re used to the opposite being the case.

For someone who ran businesses years ago it’s crazy what has happened. If I had been told in 1990 that in the future I’d get hundreds of workers to accept a situation where they got no extra payment for extra hours, instead of double time, I’d have been more disbelieving than if I’d been told about electronic banking or email.

But it may have been too good (or too bad!) to last indefinitely. There’s a savage frustration with the way things have been going, not just here but in the UK and especially America too. In essence it’s the white working classes who had to deal with worsening conditions who elected Trump. Like SF, he talked about things people cared about from a perspective like his audiences, even though he is a mad fcker.

At the moment it's an employee market. Those employers who are dinosaurs are going to be left struggling to retain staff and get staff. People are not going to work for someone is a wanna be slave driver and all that is stopping them is the employment law.

Games industry and IT the same. All night and weekends to get a build in by the deadline. After a summer of this, its gets old. Product is also still nowhere near finished.

The idea (I assume) is you start earning big later on in your career. Unless your career stalls then its all for nothing.

No paid overtime, build up toil which you then use to take 3 months off to study for the final accounting exams.

You'll see the Big4 in the news every year announcing 300+ jobs. That's to replace the 300 who left the same year because the majority don't stay long term. There is a career path but it's very much pyramid shaped, and only a few will make it to partner level.

The trainee salaries are awful (or were 10 years anyway). A lot will leave after they get the professional qualification and go take a job in industry for better pay and hours.

That’s not the point though, because it’s not just a question of measuring productivity, there are dozens of metrics which apply depending upon the industry and the nature of employment. Productivity and efficiency aren’t the only measures which matter, especially in Corporate US of A where they’re very concerned with Corporate Social Responsibility. This isn’t a deflection from productivity measures, it’s pointing out that productivity is just one measure, efficiency is just as important, CSR is just as important again.

It wasn’t a fringe example, it’s just that Martin made the comparison between myself and himself, and I was making the point that you can’t do hypothetical idealistic comparisons like that. I just didn’t need to use a tape recorder any more when I could record meetings with Sound Recorder on the phone, and now Teams does live, in-line transcriptions, it’s great 😁

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Far from the “fringe” that you’ve so casually dismissed as though it shouldn’t warrant consideration.

That’s not what’s being referred to here though as “quietly quitting”. Those who are “quietly quitting” are staying in their employment, but looking to be congratulated and praised on social media for doing the bare minimum to maintain their employment. It’s a shìtty way of going on, whereas at least the people in the article above left that employment and moved onto something better or something new which was more suited to them.

These were the specifics I was referring to -

Say it takes a year to gain the necessary new or upskill to allow someone to change job what do you think they should do in the meantime?

Actually the course doesn't start until spring so realistically itl be at least 18 months before they are ready to search for the dream job they have unskilled to get. 

In the mealtime the bills need to be paid though don't they so you go burst your bollox for nothing and il tip away at the minimum while planning something bigger and better and getting paid all along.

That’s why I suggested taking stock of where you are now, and comparing it with where you were five years ago.

Security staff are employed to do lockup Tom, it’s quite literally in their job description.

I know that Tom, it’s just when you said you’d be heading on at 5, leaving me to lock up. My employers aren’t that tight-arsed just yet that they’ve got me doing security too.

(I probably wouldn’t be very good tbf 😂)