Soaring costs, inflation nurturing generation of 'quiet quitters' among under-30s Young professionals are railing against drops in living standards and stagnant wages by becoming "quiet quitters" unless a pay rise or promotion is possible. Research by global recruitment consultancy Robert Walters has found that almost half of workers under the age of 30 say they intend to do the "bare minimum" for their …
,,,that they are meaningless in the face of the 50-plus percent increase in household bills and a further 80 percent next month in the UK.
That is simply wrong; the only unknown is whether its wrongness is accidental or wilful. The House of Commons Library document linked within the above makes it clear that it refers to household energy bills, not "household bills".
The situation is bad enough without avoidable misleading statements adding to the misery.
If you're in your 40s with three kids then the impact is probably harder than being in your 20s living at home. Unless you're in your 40s and have inherited a nice big house with good insulation and no mortgage...
I don't think it's helpful to try and say the impact is only bad for one specific group, the reality is it depends on a lot of factors. As mentioned above heating has gone up a lot but of course food prices have also gone up faster than my pay.
And, as mentioned in the article doing the minimum because you're pissed off is hardly something new.
And it applies to the top of the age range as well. Both of my sisters have taken early retirement. Partly due to increased demands with insultingly small (below inflation) pay rises and partly due to back to the office mandates (so that's another effective pay cut due to commuting costs).
'insultingly small (below inflation) pay rises'?? Pay rises routinely do not match inflation, otherwise inflation would just keep on rising. It is the word 'insultingly' that is the giveaway to your expectatiions. How about: times are hard, suck it up, work hard so your employer can afford the next pay rise and if you are actually getting less than the market rate, you should be able to move on to something better - but of course if you are quiet quitting you will very soon find yourself unemployable - quite a risk to take.
> if you are actually getting less than the market rate, you should be able to move on to something better
Except if you're early retirement age, like the ladies in question, then you're likely to run into ageism. Even if it doesn't prevent you getting a job it is likely to reduce the types of job you can find and therefore your potential wage.
Pay increase, 1%.
Inflation, about 7% (and increasing).
Increase in turnover due to unexpected sales in the last quarter, about 30%.
I'm sorry, but you can stick your "times are hard" excuse right where the sun doesn't shine, because when times are good, where's the bonus? Oh, yeah, in the pockets of upper manglement. What trickles down to us is exactly bugger all. We're paid an hourly rate. If we do great work or if we do the barest minimum, it's the same.
So, remind me again, where's this magical motivation coming from? Because the way I see it, the rich keep getting richer and the ones at the bottom of the ladder keep getting screwed over and over and over over and over (who do you imagine is ultimately going to have to pay for this misguided government spending spree?).
I would love to say "fuck that shit" but sadly I'm all out of fucks. I don't have any left to give, not a one. All that remains is disillusionment and apathy.
This article is nothing but spin, and the spin-doctors are trying to reframe the current labor squeeze to please management.
When the pandemic hit we all, as a whole, sucked it up and rolled up out sleeves. Most of us didn't see a huge bonus for all that hard work since 2019. Most of us saw our base pay stagnate for two years, then backslide with inflation and cost of living.
Yeah, management patted themselves on the back and gave each other bonuses, the shareholders logged record profits. We got the other end of the stick.
Three years of this has left us overworked, understaffed and burned out. Instead of re-calibrating with any kind of expectations that were based on reality.
They are trotting out new buzzwords like "Quiet Quitting" and old ones "If they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work" to try to put this on us. They posted record profits, but want to squeeze the labor market(thats us ladies and gents) to keep those pockets flowing into their pockets. Inflation was under control for most of the pandemic, despite tight labor, almost full employment, and higher wages. It then shot out of control when the pissing contest with Russia started, and in the "nearly post-pandemic" the big players in the market got greedy. A 1% increase in fuel and material costs spawned a 2% rise in prices, and a 3% rise in profits. That looked great on paper, so they tried a 3% price rise. Then 5%.
Labor costs were nearly flat for that period of a couple of months. But suddenly inflation game roaring in after it's long and surprising absence. The difference? There was a flutter of greed based price gouging at the beginning of the pandemic, but the world collectively gave it the evil eye, and it stayed in check for fear of the toilet paper riots turning ugly.
This latest round of price gouging didn't have the same stakes, or the same blowback from the public. Then after inflation hit the 7-9% trajectory, the government slammed on the brakes, making it clear their plan to calm inflation was by choking the economy and crushing the labor market(again, thats us kids).
Companies either planned layoffs, or a hiring stoppage, expecting the remaining employees to either quit or do the work of everyone else till the Fed waves it magic wand and brings rates back down. That's the plan in a nutshell. Choke us out till the unemployment numbers change the balance of power in the hiring market, and whine that the employees that stayed on aren't "taking up the slack" for the people that quit because they were already burned out from working at unsustainable levels for the last couple of years.
So yeah. I do the work I'm paid to do, to the best of my ability to do so, in the time I am allotted. That's just called working. Hearing "Quiet Quitting" is a red flag you are dealing with someone who is trying to exploit and manipulate you. Smile at them, take a little time if you need to, and find work at a better company as soon as you can.
Exactly. Aside from the fact it's a banal, irritating and misleading attempt to make it seem like a new phenomenon, "quiet quitting" plays into the idea that people are protesting by not doing the job they're paid to do.
When in fact they're doing *exactly* what they're paid to do and just not putting in the extra effort that's been taken for granted- and came to be relied upon- by their employers with no acknowledgement, let alone reward except that they're further exploited.
Even comparing it to a more deliberate "work to rule" makes "quiet quitting" sound more extreme than it is.
Quiet Quitting: I quit doing the work of the two people management laid off.
I'm still doing my job, but if The Bosses want the other work to be done they can hire somebody for it. It's not my fault that the company has decided that one person should do the work of three on the pay of one-half.
That's exactly what it is. It's not a complaint that employees aren't doing their contracted jobs, which would be fair enough. Everyone I've seen talking about "quiet quitting" is complaining that their employees aren't going above and beyond, happily working overtime - often unpaid - and taking on additional duties. They can all fuck off, continue fucking off until they reach the coast, then keep fucking off forever.
@zack mollusc,
This is so very true. I recall some earlier years I my career where we received 1 percent if we were lucky. By the time I quit some years later, I was making less than when I first started when cost of living / inflation factored in. This is the world we live in when we slog in the trenches.
He does have a point, but it only applies to those able to work from home. It's not extra pay as such, but it's less outgoings in the cost of travelling to work. But it's not as much as some think. Extra heating at home. Extra trips out for stuff or to places you'd previously have done on the way to or from work. And, I repeat, it only applies to those who CAN work from home. It's a point that has been raised many times in support of WFH and flexible working in these very forums.
back to the office mandates (so that's another effective pay cut due to commuting costs).
While not disagreeing with the rest of your post, the above is simply not correct - long term.
Being allowed to work from home and thereby save commuting costs was an effective - and very large for some people - pay rise. Back-to-office mandates, many of which do not mandate 100% WftO anyway, is merely putting effective pay back to what it was before the WfH mandates. Working against that there is also the small - but not necessarily insignificant - increase in home bills as a result of WfH which WftO removes.
Some of us didn't get a choice. If I could have worked from home over the last two years I would probably have saved over £3,500 in Diesel, tyres, shorter time between servicing, parking, other wear-and-tear, but the nature of my job requires me to be on site, so I had none of the savings that desk-based colleagues did*.
M.
*not strictly 100% true as, because the building was essentially closed, we were on reduced shifts, so I wasn't commuting quite as often as "normal", but I was still commuting a lot more than others
One should not mention words 'pay rise' (not even 'effective') when the money, i.e. money saved, doesn't come from one's company. In my books this kind of talk adds to corporate propaganda. I'm sure you mean to make a relevant point and I don't wan't put you down, but please don't spread this kind of talk.
Sinxe I started working from home, the cost of commuting has more than doubled where I am. I don't see The Boss coughing up the difference. Besides, my metrics look much better working from home than they did when I was in the distraction... I mean office. I guarandamntee that my performance will fall if I'm made to return, because I plan to do something I've never done in 30+ years at the cliff face - gonna join the gossip brigade, start taking smoke breaks, and spend twice as long in the restroom than is necessary. And, I will half-ass the bare minimum necessary to retain my job.
Or, I can keep working from home and doing a great job that goes above and beyond. Up to The Boss on what kind of employee he wants.
You also had none of the additional expenses that your desk-based colleagues incurred when they started having to run their work PCs from home and heat their houses during the day. I'm not going to say that I've not found WFH cheaper, but it's mostly from making my own lunch rather than buying from the canteen. And if I had the time, I could do that when I was in the office as well. Time is money, of course, but it's time I'm saving.
Increased household bills as a result of WfH, I mean, what?
Yes, there are some increased costs particularly during winter when you might keep the heating on (though a modern thermostat has a very different concept of "off" and "on" than an older one does), but unless your commute is £2 each day on the bus I would humbly suggest that the money saved on the commute far outweighs the extra spent on electricity and gas when you WfH (a laptop plugged in and running at a constant 75W (which it probably won't be) uses 0.6kWh in an 8 hour day which even at today's inflated prices is less than 25p).
We shouldn't ignore the intangibles which can make for a much healthier lifestyle; the time savings as you say such as the ability to put the washing machine on during your lunchbreak, not wasting 45 minutes in the car at each end of the day (75 in my case), just "being there" so that when a child is off sick, it's no problem, and when the healthy kids get home from school they don't have to let themselves in to an empty house, if they need a shuttle down to Scouts or football you can "just do it" without having to leave work early and race home, and without having to catch-up next day in the office, because once you've dropped the sprog off at ballet you can go home and finish the day's work (the ultimate in flexitime), put the tea on, hang the washing out, etc.
(breathless)
As I said, I really, really don't begrudge those who can WfH. I'd hate it myself (though some of the above benefits would be nice) because I quite like the team of people I work with and I like my (partly) physical hands-on job. I just don't appreciate the moaning about returning to the office being a financial burden. So (cost of living increases aside) how did you manage before?
M.
The costs of working from home are not always enormous, but they can be significant. Budget conscious office workers will probably have there home central heating on from 6 - 8 am (ish) and from 5 - 10pm (ish). That's 7 hours per day; working from home adds another 9 hours and therefore probably doubles heating costs overall.
Of course there are ways to reduce this extra cost, by heating less of the house, and the effect is much less for the sort of idiots (or "Daily Mail reader" as they are known) who claim a God-given right to keep their entire house, including bedrooms, at 24C 24/7.
Well, I don't drive, so my commute is actually £4.50 a day on the bus unless I get a lift in and walk home. (Just walking home would not be a saving - I need two buses to get to work, so I'd have to buy a day ticket anyway - and I can't really walk both ways as it's two miles and all uphill to get there.) I've also at no point said that I wasn't saving money through WFH so we're not actually arguing here.
You're also overlooking some of the negative effects of WFH, although you do touch on them. It's nice to have a six foot commute from my bed to my desk, but it means I'm spending 16 hours a day in the same room - even more, if I want to use my own PC in the evening, as it and my work PC are hooked up to the same displays and peripherals. I don't have a wife or kids so I'm spending much less time around other people, and I know it's affecting me negatively.
How did I manage before? Carefully. I don't have a car to operate or maintain, I don't drink or smoke, I don't go to restaurants, I spend minimally on clothes, and barring my annual trip to a trade fair in Germany I don't go on holiday. Before WFH I was able to set aside a little each month; with it I'm able to save more, but I expect the cost of living crisis is going to put me back to where I was before long. If I had to start paying to commute as well I don't think I'd be underwater straight away, but I'd have to make cutbacks to what is already a fairly spartan lifestyle.
And, as mentioned in the article doing the minimum because you're pissed off is hardly something new.
I'm fairly sure that we used to call it "Working to Rule". As in, doing what is in your job description and not taking on additional work over and above this, which seems to be pretty much what "quiet quitting" is advocating.
"Quiet quitting" is absolutely "work to rule" and is a reaction to the unwillingness of employers to engage properly when it is time for pay negotiations.
The fact The Register is publishing nonsense phrases like "Employers will be unable to increase pay at the same rate of inflation – that's a fact, tells me that I might need to start looking for a new place for my daily dose of tech news.
The whole article is just an anti-worker rant really and not a very convincing one.
I firmly disagree. The article is accurately reflecting reality - for employers and for employees.
People doing 'the bare minimum' is not 'work to rule' - you can bet their bare minimum includes any overtime they can get hold of, no doubt to cover for the work they should have been doing. It also shows that they have no personal integrity or pride in their work.
Something these 'quiet quitters' haven't factored in is the long term impact of their refusal to do their job well. It means they're not gaining skills as fast as their colleagues, they're not getting the pay rises, they're not getting the promotions. Good luck getting high pay rises by being demonstrably less productive than their colleagues. That leaves their career trajectory well down.
They're not measured against their job spec, they're measured against other people in their role, or at their level of seniority. Companies put a lot of time and effort into identifying under-performers and addressing that. Paying them more is seldom the answer - why pay an under-performer more?
I've worked for several companies and every single one has something they call performance management. Every single one does annual reviews. Every single one except the 7 person startup has had a PIP process, a way of managing under performers out, an expectation that people will meet expectations.
That includes the US companies and the US based teams of non-US companies.
I'm fascinated that you haven't encountered this.
Why not just look at the academic research on the matter, people have already explored this in great depth over many decades.
It works just as well as software development - lots of people doing it badly, disagreement on the best approach, questionable levels of success.
But it does happen, and just as software does eventually get delivered, so do bonuses and promotions.
Is the process optimal, is it fair, does it properly reward contribution and capability? Not relevant to whether it exists. It exist.
People doing 'the bare minimum' is not 'work to rule' - you can bet their bare minimum includes any overtime they can get hold of, no doubt to cover for the work they should have been doing. It also shows that they have no personal integrity or pride in their work.
Doing what your just is described as in your job description, and then getting paid extra for doing additional work is how it should work. I have done additional work unpaid in the (correct) expectation that it would lead to a pay rise or promotion in the future.
If an employer does not give a pay rise or a promotion for going above and beyond, then the natural result is that people will stop doing it.
"Companies put a lot of time and effort into identifying under-performers and addressing that."
But, but, but...the article states that they couldn't do that!
"39 percent of managers said that hybrid and remote working makes it difficult to measure their team's output."
WAAAHHHH!!!
Something these 'quiet quitters' haven't factored in is the long term impact of their refusal to do their job well.
Quiet quitters are not refusing to do their job well. They are simply doing what they are paid do do; (quite literally) no more and no less. That has absolutely nothing to do with their quality of work. I have worked with people who do superb stuff and go home on the dot and I have worked with people who stay till all hours doing a half-arsed job.
In fact I would say that one the whole, people who need to spend some of their own time to get a job done which others can manage wholly in their employers' time are the ones to keep an eye on, and not in a good way.
Doing the "bare minimum" for their role is not doing their job well. It's barely doing their job at all.
Someone could do their job to a high quality level but if they're only doing half the work of someone else that's also doing their job at that quality level then they're not doing their job well. They're doing half the work. That's going to hurt their career, and as a result their long term earning potential.
> I might need to start looking for a new place for my daily dose of tech news.
This. El Reg seems to have changed to paying their writers by "engagement" or some such because there has been a noticeable uptick recently in the number of articles that seem designed to generate comments — not productive comments, just comments.
Time to leave, methinks.
Thank you. I measured my actual inflation level of 6% last year measured up to last month. I expect around 10% this year. It is not great by any means, but it is hardly 80% of my pay disappearing.
The biggest risk is a recession might make it harder to negotiate any raise to cover this. I'm very glad I managed to get a substantial raise earlier this year - I doubt it would be possible right now to negotiate the same despite a shortage of skilled engineers in my field.
I’m on id mobile and just upped my 30 contract from 15GB to 20GB for the same £8.
They’ve retained a customer and I still don’t use anywhere near that amount of data.
Bonus’s for me is that I get to roam in EU for no additional cost.
That £8 I think is well spent and I’ve been paying that for 3 years now.
They're not getting experience either, at least not in IT. The new workplace is an agile sweatshop run on a magic beans theory that tnsane amounts of single-issue work is what makes people productive. It might be short-term productive, but it does not spark joy. The grinding unhappiness of being a cog in a production line is killing the last remaining solace of programming - making a piece of code that does something. A piece large enough and complex enough that it takes some thought and some trial and error. A piece that is not a demoable story in an time-boxed horizon to the same poxy cadence as every other production-line worker in the sweat-shop.
That's possibly true. Those with a sense of "entitlement" are probably more likely to "quiet quit" than those who are "achievers" with a strong work ethic.
It's a turning point in your career when you suddenly realize that you are a VENDOR and the company you do work for is YOUR CUSTOMER, rather than "a job" being somewhat entitled to you, justifying a LOT of blame and complaints and the willingness to stir up trouble because "wrong pronoun" or "boss yelled at you".
And pay scales are based on how profitable YOUR job is compared to how much it costs to have you in that position, If you make what YOU do more valuable, by hard work, experience, or efficiency, then promotions and raises SHOULD follow... and if not, keep your resume/CV up to date and spread it around.
"Quit Quit" is likely to follow you around. It can NOT be good for your career,. Co-workers are often good sources for new positions (especially if you are a contractor),. But if they know that you get lazy to protest things, they may not recommend you so readily...
Yep, glad it's you who concentrates so much on their career. Because it is / should be the center of your life!
Who cares if, deep inside, you are miserable and unhappy? All that matters is what society *tells* you to care about, that being how much money you make and how many things you own.
...
Sorry, I dropped out of society decades ago when I burned out on the so-called "important" things they told me that my life should be measured by. I live modestly and am damn happy, been working 4-day workweeks for over the past decade. It only took me a complete emotional breakdown for me to realize that "happiness" does not really have a synonym when it comes to allowing others to tell you what your life should be.
In other words, I couldn't care less about what my "career" might, or might not, be. And these younger people are only realizing this at a much younger age than I did (and saving themselves the terrifying emotional devastation that looking in the mirror and, one day, realizing that all you are is a paycheck and a "work ethic").
To be fair to part of bombastic bob's post, I do somewhat view myself as a "vendor" and any employer as my "customer" in day-to-day operations (even if I view the interview process as effectively the opposite, where I'm choosing who to give my time and effort to).
However leaning too far into that vendor/customer analogy would eventually make one a contractor, and contractors as far as I can tell tend to work to their contracts and nothing more — understandable given the lack of employee benefits etc., but also pretty much the definition of this new BS "quiet quitting" buzzword, so I'm not exactly sure where bob was going with that one.
It may be unrelated — I couldn't possibly comment — but I will say that every single contractor I've (knowingly) come across in ~16 years of working in IT has been utterly, shockingly bad at their job or working in the modern tech world, their knowledge apparently firmly rooted in whichever year they went solo.
Edit: Reg ate my edit, CBA retyping it all but was a small defense of contractors despite the chaos they cause that I'm often cleaning up and a firm finger-point at the employers/companies as the root cause of it all.
sadly that reply post got that many up-votes.
You should pick a career where you WANT to go to work every day, AND get paid well for doing it. Otherwise, 40 something upvotes for being so dissatisfied in the chosen career path, and all of those downvotes for what should be considered "good career advice". Sad.
probably nobody will see this 17 days out. had to say it anyway.
When you sign the FRONT of the checks, you learn and understand a lot about how the business world works.
And "*FEEL*" becomes IRRELEVANT. As it SHOULD be.
"get on with some work"
That's not what this is. Despite the constant attempts to sell this as people standing around doing nothing, they are just trying to turn employees against each other. They are trying to get us to do their dirty work for them, but leaning on people who are doing the job their paid for. Not more.
A "Strong work ethic" isn't killing yourself for no pay to make up the difference between what they pay you to do and what they want you to do. That's something else. It called being a grade A sucker. It's also a self punishing crime, because few of those suckers will be rewarded by management, other than in empty gestures that don't cost them anything.
On the flip side it's very hard to punish someone for doing the job they are paid for, and it's clear the plan is to run up interest rates, cap wages, create an artificial recession to "control inflation" using only the tools that come out of our pockets. So by doing the extra work you are allowing the company to profit off deferring hiring to match the workforce to the work expected.
They know the central banks will keep strangling the economy until demand shrinks, so they are preemptively cutting labor and trying to keep production up to maximize profit in a falling market. That only works if they can maintain shortfalls and uncertainty in "the supply chain" to justify keeping prices high in a shrinking economy with significant wage stagnation. Otherwise our corporate overlords might have to share in a little of the pain the rest of the world has been suffering.
I lean conservative, but this is one time I am standing with the rest of labor over party. Expect that if you pay below market rate, you will get what you pay for.
On the flip side it's very hard to punish someone for doing the job they are paid for ...
A few years ago the university faculty I was working for sent round an all-staff email telling us that we might be penalized if we worked exactly to our contracts as part of a UCU (Universities and Colleges Union) dispute. I therefore replied, also all-staff, asking precisely what grounds they would have for withholding wages if I fulfilled my contractual duties. Management went very quiet.
The idea of 'quiet quitting' presented as moral quandary for the worker and not so much business management. As though the worker should be happy to eat shit and it is not a moral quandary for the company to only give the worker shit to eat. They demand a laissez-faire system but the moment the worker starts using the system to push back in the few ways they can (unions, 'quiet quitting', public opinion), suddenly it is a big fucking deal and they 'should be happy they have a job'.
I will definite go above-and-beyond when I am working, especially when it benefits me: when I want a promotion, pay increase, want to explorer career paths, prove myself to my team. But to do 15% more work, just because it is needed to keep the business running and I don't get more pay? Forget it. You'll get what you pay for.
I like project management. I have taken on a couple lead roles on some small projects because they needed it and I would like to explore it as a career path. The company is happy, I am happy, even if they don't offer me it as a position I can go elsewhere with it. However, I won't become the overflow project manager on a regular basis unless I get something more out of it. It is just how it works, I don't know why so many CEOs and business leaders need to have macroeconomics explained to them. Like 'other duties as assigned' is a blank check and will allows them to ignore how the labour economy operates.
But I also take care of my organization's mobile device fleet. I hate it and don't care about mobile devices, I am not going to work overtime on that project on a regular basis. I will do the bare minimum to maintain that mess and if you want more you need to pay more.
"The idea of 'quiet quitting' presented as moral quandary for the worker and not so much business management. As though the worker should be happy to eat shit and it is not a moral quandary for the company to only give the worker shit to eat. They demand a laissez-faire system but the moment the worker starts using the system to push back in the few ways they can (unions, 'quiet quitting', public opinion), suddenly it is a big fucking deal and they 'should be happy they have a job'."
This. Oh dog, this. Like the Wisconsin hospital (a "right to work" state) that sued the "right to work" employees for actually leaving for better pay. The nerve! It is *supposed* to only work for employers!!!
The bigger issue is that stressed people work less effectively.
If people are stressed about day to day living costs because they don't know if they'll even be able to get by, then that will be on their minds at all times.
Giving these people an extra few days off a year (or more WfH) doesn't fix this - although it works well for people who are not under costs pressure at other times, if you can't afford to give a pay rise.
That's ~what ruined the USSR. Their citizens first believed the Communist party's lies: "The future is ours if you just work hard, blah blah. So far so god, they did surprisingly good until the 70s. Then they saw that they are being fed BS. Next step was that the ordinary people gave up and did their bare minimum. Or not even that. The rest is history.
A comparable progress is happening here in the West now. People, especially the bourgeoisie, are realising that they are being buggered big time, that there is no better future for them. Currently in progress, lots of stress. Next step, many people giving up.
"Quiet quitting", also known as "doing what you agreed to in your contract".
Business leaders like to pretend that "going above and beyond" is a moral and right and virtuous thing for employees to do, but all it really is is unpaid work - either in terms of hours or responsibilities. If businesses really want employees to provide such contributions, then the businesses should reward that work with the only thing businesses actually value - money.
Though if a business "needs" employees to consistently exceed the requirements of their contracts, then that business is either:
1. Not investing enough in hiring; or
2. Has unreaslistic expectations given their budget
So companies should either invest more money in their workforce, or make a more realistic business plan.
To anyone who thinks "if we can get people to work 10% harder, we can sack 10% of the workforce", I recommend an industry standard such as "The Mythical Man Hour". Then again, people who think this probably have no time for common sense because "This Time Its Difference".
In some situations people can raise their game for a limited period of time. However, study after study have shown that working longer than normal quickly has a lasting effect on quality and subsquently on morale. Also, it's not just about money but "Pay People Peanuts and You Will Get Monkeys".
In some situations people can raise their game for a limited period of time. However, study after study have shown that working longer than normal quickly has a lasting effect on quality and subsquently on morale. Also, it's not just about money but "Pay People Peanuts and You Will Get Monkeys".
THIS. ALL OF THIS.
One of the biggest complaints that I heard at [RedactedCo] was the lack of a cost of living adjustment (COLA), which had the effect of people jumping ship at the drop of a hat if something that paid better presented itself AND being unable to hire replacements, because no one wanted to work for the wages they were paying.
And that was LONG before COVID reared it's ugly head. They've finally fixed it (in fact, they are now doing either annual or semi-annual 'market rate' adjustments to make sure pay is in line with the rest of the industry), but the damage to morale and knowledge drain had already been done.
(I have a seperate rant about their employee review system, but that's outside scope.)
Not the downvoter, but it could be said that responsibilty flows upward:
The executive suite, for ignoring or enabling an ineffient management and work culture.
The company board, for hiring an executive suite which ignores or enables inefficient management and work culture.
The voting shareholders, for electing a board that hires an executive suite which ignores or enables inefficient management and work culture.
Alternatively, if you're so inclined, corporate law - which does not make it a legal requirement to explicitly address inefficient management and work culture.
We have supply driven inflation as people were paid to do nothing or not produce as much. People doing the bare minimum are going to be producing less. This isnt to take a shot at the people concerned about inflation and finances, this is the outcome from bad policies pointed out yet ignored for ideological reasons.
We have supply driven inflation as people were paid to do nothing or not produce as much.
We have supply driven inflation because people are buying things. It comes from a number of factors. There are still COVID initiated supply side problems. Just ask Ford about their Blue Oval badge shortage. There is also still pent-up demand from the serious supply side shortages over the last couple years.
And from a US perspective, we have been at full employment for quite a while and that is creating supply side inflation in the labor market. You may not get a raise from your current employer, but if you change jobs you likely will see a considerable increase.
Then of course, there is the steep increase in energy costs. Gasoline costs may have come down, but the diesel that gets all the goods to market is still very high.
The way the Fed 'cools off the economy' is by making things more expensive. They just want to choose where those more expensive items are. Here are two ways how it works: higher mortgages reduces the demand for new houses. Fewer new houses get built, fewer salaries required to build them. Labor market softens and consumer purchasing power starts to drop. Trickle down starts with the durable goods and goes from there. This ripples through the economy and the Fed hopes for a 'soft landing' when equilibrium shifts to less demand.
Then comes the second part, higher capital costs make it less profitable for businesses to expand. That softens labor demand. If product demand stays high they can raise prices to increase profits. But also costs increase the closer a business gets to maximum capacity with their current equipment.
So with fighting inflation its; be careful what you wish for. All paths leading to less inflation mean people are going to lose their jobs. Those who keep their jobs will be better off. Those who don't, well, it sucks to be you.
The Fed has few levers to steer the economy, but the way they are tackling this has a long record of undesirable side effects.
While your answers follow the Feds traditional thinking and economic playbook, it's a shit solution that screws most of us over, and the only one the Fed has because it's arm's perennially tied behind it's back. The scenario you describe takes months or years to correct and stabilize, if the intervention doesn't fail, or overshoot.
The system is built to maximize losses to the majority of Americans and small business owners, and those losses are quite unbalanced. The Fed has spoken repeatedly about how the current attempt by workers to keep their wages in line with the cost of living is a key driver of inflation, while turning a blind eye to profiteering that triggered the recent spike in inflation.
In a simpler world we would pin wages to cost of living and pay everyone a living wage. Because math is a real thing you can't just pass that sentence as a literal law without risking hyperinflation because it leaves the rest of the economic equation out.
So what we need is more tools for the Fed to target interventions, and laws that say they have to kill corporate profits and executive pay at any time that working Americans real wages are under negative pressure. That way everyone has skin in the game, and management won't constantly expect to be able to balance the book on the back of the working stiffs. That should include tools for forcing the giant loan companies to temporarily extend payments, including interest. That should include tools to pressure commercial and residential rents and land lords in a crisis where businesses are forced to close through no fault of their own. That way when the crisis passes, the same employees can go back to the same jobs, at the same companies, in the same buildings.
The lack of those tools means perverse outcomes, like giant loan companies taking immediate profits of loans on empty buildings, even though the paper they hold has terms of decades, driven by landlords that expected payment from companies that were forced to close, and employees that through no fault of their own couldn't work but still needed a place to live.
Since those changes will take time, I am all for those of us who still earn most of our income from a paycheck to lean hard on those that lean on us. Management may try to make this last as long as possible if we stay quiet. So stay loud, and make sure your work reflects their actions. If they share your pain, and they step up, step up too. If they bought themselves a sports car and a boat, but whine about how half their employees quit and expect you to cover their shifts, do exactly the same amount of work you did before, adjusted for relative pay and inflation.
Look, be reasonable. In these difficult times executives have to work harder and are more stressed. So they deserve bigger bonuses. Not to mention the spiraling champers prices. Should they have to gargle with tap water?
My GF has something like 250 employees ranging from early 20s to early 60s and they all work like buggery. I wouldnt get out of bed for the wages they're on, but from the warehouse people to the devs they're all motivated. I think management style has a lot to do with "this". She keeps an open door where everyone's views are listened to and she loves listening to people's hopes and desires for the future and so they all feel worth something.
This post has been deleted by its author
Does your GF come home really tired every night yet surprisingly clean and freshly showered after a hard time on the job? Maybe the phrase should be "at buggery" instead of "like buggery". Maybe your GF is giving them special motivation and you're getting sloppy 52nds. A good hooker's about £200 a throw, and £200 into 40 is £5, and with tax that would be about an £8 rise.
39 percent of managers said that hybrid and remote working makes it difficult to measure their team's output.
To put it another way, 39% of managers admitted they have very little idea of what their staff are supposed to be doing and so find it difficult to tell the difference between seat warming and useful work.
Which does raise questions about how effective a manager they are.
Pretty dumb to blame hybrid and remote working for making it difficult to measure the team's output. It's pretty difficult anyway, but that's why we have these super spangly middle managers isn't it? That's literally the main part of their job. It's difficult, but it's not impossible.
It doesn't make any difference if you are in the office or remote, as they aren't going to be looking over your shoulder for the whole 8 hours or so, and even if they are you might spend a couple of hours goofing around and reading The Reg (like I'm doing now), but still manage to get more work done (the output part) than someone else. Because you are just, you know, quicker. But perhaps you work in small bursts of brilliant inspiration?
Watch the work, not the workers.
And that's exactly the mentality that "quiet quitters" are quitting.
I've done it both ways. I've done enthusiastic and more productive than any other three team members put together, and I've done watching the clock and putting in the bare minimum of hours and work. And I'm here to tell you, from personal experience, [I]it makes no difference[/I]. None. Nobody cares.
In the end you'll get promoted, or fired, depending on whether your managers see you as One Of Them, or as One Of [I]Them[/I]. That's why disproportionate numbers of managers are tall men with good hair who either play golf or own a boat.
But everyone if everyone works really hard, they won't all get pay rises and promotions will they?
So what do companies get? Free overtime.
We could fix this, say, someone works extra, doesn't get the promotion, the company has to pay out the unpaid hours.
Although that would make it obvious that they're already breaking employer contracts for not paying them in the first place.
Basically what they are doing is not taking on responsibilities which are not in their employment contract. They contract being the *maximum* the *company* negotiated. they are not shirking duties or quitting, they are in fact meeting their responsibilities. If the company wants more than that they should either pay more or staff up.
They are not slackers or evil. The people who go "above and beyond" are suckers.
Employment contracts have an implicit and an explicit element to them.
The explicit element I've seen everywhere is 'and any other duties as may be required'. "That's not my job" is almost never supported by the contract.
The implicit element varies but gets far more prominent as you get more senior. Any 'knowledge worker' type role just isn't based on hours worked, it's based on contribution made. There's an implicit level of contribution that's expected, and it's based on multiple factors, including corporate culture, company norms and salary.
Even the people thinking they're being badly paid will be measured against expectations, not against their contract, and that includes the expectations that came with the salary they agreed to when they took the job. That this salary hasn't kept up with inflation doesn't reduce the expectations. I'm not worth the salary I receive if I 'only' do what's in the job spec.
So no, the contract is not the maximum the company negotiated. Just as the salary is not the maximum that the employee negotiated. Implicit in my contract is a sizeable level of autonomy, assumptions around expenses, a hefty chunk of corporate culture (which I validated before joining) and expectations around career progression.
I'm not a slave. They're not a social service. 'Above and beyond' isn't even being asked for, just meeting expectations. On both sides.
...as I thought about it, the more pissed I got. Inflation is real, and it is higher than is reported. That sucks - for all of us. It is forcing a downward class migration which is hardest on those just starting their careers.
Get over it. Deal with it, and get to work. Right now employers are screaming for help. History tells us that will change. Guess what dead weight will be cut first. I'll give you a clue, it won't be the team players who are going above & beyond.
Then what? The slackers who just did the minimum will be on unemployment. They will squander that time away playing on government money. That will last a while and then it will run out. The government will probably toss out some sort of extension as emergency relief or something like that. That is just deficit spending which will make inflation worse - for everyone.
Stop being entitled little brats. They should go earn whatever position they want in life, just like the rest of us did. They just got their student loans "forgiven" (ie: paid for by the rest of us). When are they going to become useful contributors to society and 'pay back' what they have received???
Flaming, steaming icon because I am ranting....
Right now employers are screaming for help.
They really aren't, they're firing people, not taking new people on, and expecting those that remain to do more work in the same time so they're run round silly every day or do more overtime.
I presume not falling into the trap is called "quiet quitting", as it sounds worse.
--They really aren't, they're firing people, not taking new people on, and expecting those that remain to do more work in the same time so they're run round silly every day or do more overtime.--
Here's an alternative view: companies are waking up to the fact that a lot of the stuff they did when times were good contributed not one sausage to profitability and they're getting rid of it.
Saw the same sort of thing during the Credit Crunch.
Then why is knowledge and experience being lost?
Let's put aside office work for one moment. You can see it everywhere in service industries - bars/restaurants/cafes, hotels, airports, airlines. Reduced hours, slower service, issues going unresolved.
Presumably the calculation by management is that the profitability is the same nonetheless.
"Stop being entitled little brats. They should go earn whatever position they want in life, just like the rest of us did."
The whole point of the "quiet quitting" idea (although, as The Atlantic points out, it is a fake trend: https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/09/quiet-quitting-trend-employee-disengagement/671436/ ) is that this is often not possible any more.
Lots of people like you write incensed comments like this because you're thinking of this bargain:
"You work hard, beyond the amount you're actually required to work, and you'll be noticed and rewarded for it."
The whole *point* of this little possibly-fake kerfuffle is that a lot of younger employees are noticing that this bargain does not work any more. They are expected to work hard and put in extra hours...for no reward except keeping their jobs. In a lot of industries, career progression has been cut off at the ankles. It's much harder than it used to be to go from, for instance, being a cashier to being a junior manager; these days a lot of companies seem to believe there are Workers and Managers and a great big moat in the middle that you can never cross.
This doesn't even begin to consider the epidemic of casualization, outsourcing and "gig labour" which means that people doing lower-level jobs may not even be employed by the companies they're working for. How are you supposed to climb a ladder then? What's the career progression for someone working in an outsourced call center or delivering Amazon packages as an "independent contractor"?
The old bargain was all well and good, to a point, so long as it was honored. So long as you could actually climb the greasy pole if you put the hours in. Insofar as there really is a significant increase in "quiet quitting", which is up for debate, those talking about it are arguing precisely that this bargain is *no longer* being honored.
--you'll be noticed--
This is the bit that's wrong. I came to this conclusion after I joined a management consultancy. It wasn't the people who were good and worked hard that got promoted it was the people who kept on telling the partner's how brilliant they were (them not the partners)
Couldn't agree more with that. We see this in action every day where I am. They brag brazenly about the fantastic things they have have done, but if you scratch the surface it is a dog turd under the crust. They outright lie. And if there IS anything of value they have claimed someone else's work as their own, without ever attributing anything to those that did something useful. Management love it. Makes me puke.
I have commented before that the great resignation is not that people are quitting, but that organisations are not willing to do anything about retention.
Inflation and lack of opportunity to move up within an org actively motivate people to move.
Consequently we don’t hold onto employees as long; and you forever fight the tide of training new folks up and/or losing staff to better paying competition.
Training new folks is ultimately more expensive as you get less useful output per head.
Wow. Read the room. Look at the economy. Learn to see what graphs are telling you.
And as for student loans, you must have got your tuition free, because surely no-one who paid good money to learn would think that people who have paid back their entire tutoring bill twice over, yet somehow still owe more than the principle, is fair!
Whatever your age or your job you eventually realize that your employer doesn't care about you, just your job, regardless of who does it.
Similarly, you decide you have (or want to have) a life outside work.
Call it what you will, but quiet quitting is nothing new. People who are treated like serfs will act just like serfs did back when.
The fact that "only" meeting your quota is considered "quitting" is a problem. When two parties on equal footing in a deal obtain what they bargain for, it is a fair deal. When one receives more value than the other, it is unfair. When the parties are on unequal footing . . . Do I really have to spell it out for you? Somebody is getting screwed and not in a pleasurable way.
Workers have been conditioned for decades to accept that they need to give over 100% effort. Anything less is immoral, unethical, just wrong. Reality sets in hard when cost of living goes up, but wages barely keep up or stagnate.
"Employers will be unable to increase pay at the same rate of inflation – that's a fact, so this is where softer perks and benefits really do have a chance to make a difference. Increasingly we are seeing utility vouchers, travel cards, and streaming subscriptions all being offered to prospective employees."
This statement is either pure bullshit or an indication of a deep systemic problem. Follow the money.
The statement about employers not being able to pay in line with inflation isn't always wrong. Yes, there are many large companies who have a lot of profit and could afford a lot of things. It's easy to consider those alone because they're run by wealthy people and could easily sustain a drop in profitability without too many consequences, with the bonus that they're often unsympathetic. The world of employment is not only made of those things. There are a lot of small employers who don't make a massive profit already, whose owners are not very wealthy, and whose costs have been rising already. They can only raise the wages they pay so far before they'll have to raise prices as well, which will in turn increase the cost of living, requiring another pay rise. There are also large companies like that, so depending on the industry, just avoiding working for a small business is no guarantee of having someone who could theoretically afford a full raise.
When wealthy people pretend they couldn't possibly give people a raise to help with rising prices, it's troubling and obviously false. There are similar risks in assuming that, whenever there is economic suffering, there's someone available who could provide that and is only not doing so out of greed. When we have both of these arguments, we turn a situation where there is a potential for a lot of harm into a fight where managers complain about the "greedy, lazy workers" who complain about the "greedy managers", but nothing else happens.
Look at the positives that came from COVID, the gift to labor.
In the 90s, "telecommuting" was the buzzword, along with "staggered hours." No more commuter traffic jams! Reality? Control freaks in the C-suite made sure that few workers ever got that "privilege."
Laptops matured, replacing desktops. "Work alongside your pool...or at the beach!", ads told us. Reality? Ditto the above.
IT became much more cloudy. The percentage of WFH/remote increased slightly, mostly in IT. Reality? Ditto the above.
Fast-forward to 2020: The pandemic FORCED C-suite @ssholes to relent. No WFH meant no work from anywhere!
Labor must seize this once-in-a-lifetime change to working conditions and never let go!
So, reject for positions that obviously do not require it:
• On-site daily attendance
• "Hybrid" bullsh!tLet those worker-mistrusting jobs rot on the vine!
The obstacle for many new WFH workers to overcome is C-suite home invasion: Video meetings (no, I do not need to see my coworkers...let them dress in pajamas...audio is fine), corporate-laptop spyware, etc.
Pro-labor legislators in progressive States, get to work on WFH privacy!
It is unlikely that the next bio-weapon virus that China test-releases will free us a second time.
No, you don't need to see your colleagues. Unless you want to benefit from the richer communication that video offers above purely sound. It's still a massive step down from face to face interactions.
Communications bandwidth has nothing to do with bytes.
A fair article.
Certain authorisations and qualifications are needed in my organisation to occupy certain levels of post: however obtaining one is no guarantee you will be promoted. There has to also be a vacancy to go to.
Implementation of performance based pay is also a problem. Where previously it took about 5 years within a level to reach the top of it; it now takes about 15 years.
It wasn’t so long ago we had competency based pay, so the disparity between those that happened to join a few years ago and those more recently is massive.
Against this backdrop of course people are going to quit. Funnily enough, I have a paper going to our exec later this week on the subject. Although how thick do you have to be to not see that this is a cost controlling measure they have implemented that is backfiring.
Stolen from Twater:
Boss made a dollar
Grandad made a dime
But that was a poem
From a simpler time
Boss made a thousand
Gave my pa a cent
But that penny bought a mortgage
Or at least it paid the rent
Now boss makes a million
And gives us jack
Smugly blames his workers
For the labor that he lacks
"The "quiet quitting" phenomenon also means as younger workers perform the basics of their job description, it all but ensures they will never see the improvements they hope for."
What a load of old bollocks.
The only improvement that comes from this is that middle management accept the increased output as the norm, which makes them look good. And keeping that worker in a lower paid position while their input has increased doesn't incentivize management to promote them. It encourages them to keep them doing it while keeping the wage bill low.
They can't call it "work to rule" because that might give workers the idea that they have any kind of power to influence management and make them reconsider the pay and conditions.
Call it "quiet quitting" instead and make it sound like the workers are just too lazy to even help themselves, there is just nothing that management could do.
Quiet quitting as a phrase can die.
It's just doing your job, based on the situation, the thing people on the production line have been doing forever.
When I had casual factory jobs, the experienced workers would tell you what speed you should go - not based on the posted targets and ignoring the extra pay you got for hitting certain rates - as the miniscule rewards were not worth the drawbacks such as getting excessively tired, no time to nip off for a toilet break etc. Certainly not sustainable long term.
So people would miss the over the top targets, losing a tiny amount of cash, but would not be mentally & physically burnt out.
Its all about balance
“Quiet quitting as a phrase can die.”
Agreed.
As someone who is towards the latter end of a career, I have tended to go with the following maxim.
Do the best that you can to fulfil the agreed role within the agreed hours. If you can’t do that, then move on because either you are not up to the role or (more likely) it’s a BS role profile. But don’t join the “jacket on the back of the chair” brigade. They are just t****ers of the first order.
It's a simple as this.
Go on Linkedin. Look at the (literally thousands of) posts where people have said something along the lines of "I got a 30% raise by switching employers vs. a 3% raise for staying put". Of course that won't go on forever. But if you're in a job where you're saying "I don't get paid what I'm worth" then whose fault is that really?
Quiet Quitting means "I can't be arsed to change jobs but simultaneously want to moan about the one I'm in on the basis I feel I'm worth more". These are the people who we'd be better off without!
Are you one who believes that "burger flippers don't deserve a livable wage"?
Are you one who complains that there are not enough employees at retail or fast food locations and service suffers?
The Venn diagram of people saying "If you don't like what you're paid, go elsewhere" and the people complaining that all of the retail staff have buggered off (for better paying jobs) is nearly circular.
I'm not quite sure why the focus on younger employees in the story. People of any age and feel under-appreciated and partially disengage from work because of this. It could be a someone in their first job who's wondering if this is all there is to life after uni, or a jaded career veteran who's counting off the days till they retire. I've never been able to discern much difference, and it's always annoyed me that younger people are paid less. It annoyed me 30 years ago and still does - if they do the same job they deserve the same pay. They may have less experience, but they do have more energy and recent education to compensate.
'Quiet Quitting' means doing the job that you are paid to do and nothing more.
What's wrong with that?
I don't see why it should assigned such a derogatory name.
Or is it expected, especially in America, that someone hired to work 42 hours ought to work 60 and anything less is regarded as theft from the company?
If I hire a painter to come and paint my outside walls, I don't expect him/her to also do my fence, windows and doors.
Am I missing something with the concept of 'quiet quitting'?
p.s. When Donald J. Trump spent a good chunk of his time in Florida playing golf, was he the role-model for the 'quiet quitters'?
'Quiet Quitting' means doing the job that you are paid to do and nothing more.
What's wrong with that?
Nothing. If you're happy with your job and have no interest in promotions, bonuses or pay rises (and we all know people like that) then there's no reason not to do the strict minimum as defined in your contract. Just don't expect your boss to go above and beyond for you either, should you need it.
Employers like to talk about their employees as if they were family.....but.....
"If you work hard and do your best you'll get the sack like all the rest,
But, If you laze and mess about you'll live to see the job right out,
The work is hard, the pay is small, so take your time and sod 'em all,
And on your grave stone neatly lacquered, These three words............
JUST BLEEDIN' KNACKERED"
Set against this is a feeling of entitlement, the idea that you've worked through school, worked through college and so on so you're entitled to a certain standard of living. Unfortunately that's not the case......it never was and it never will be. You exist to create wealth for your employer; if you fail to competitively create enough wealth you will be replaced, its just a matter of time since nothing can happen overnight.
Is a particularly Tory idea:
Tarquin: We can't let the proles know they have workers rights and allow them to use them
Buffy: <Snort /> What, What, precisely better get old Trusty Trussey to change the law and have at those Peon Rights Act as well while we're at it...
Rolly: Quite so, Quite so...
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
