Work, work, work

It's time to loudly quit these bad workplace trends

Me giving side-eye to the term ‘quiet quitting.’ | Photo by Orkun Azap on Unsplash

Welcome back to Discovery—the Celebration link roundup—where we celebrate great writing, explore new ideas, keep abreast of newsy items, continuously reframe our understanding of the world, and also (ahem) laugh at memes.

As part of my day job as Director of Content at ConantLeadership, I write a newsletter on leadership, a topic which inevitably intersects with trends in work, wellness, mental health, psychology, and, well, pretty much everything else that shapes daily life.

Some trends have greater virality than others so I thought I’d dedicate this edition of the link roundup to two of the more corrosive fads being propagated by corporate leaders and the “thought leadership” industrial complex.

‘Quiet Quitting’

When “quiet quitting,” the buzzy misnomer for setting work-life boundaries, broke the internet last summer, I hoped it would fizzle by winter. But alas, it has alarming staying power in the business-meets-pop-psyche corner of the internet, a corner I hang out in quite a bit by virtue of my work in the leadership space.

Last August, I wrote this about it in our newsletter:

By now, you’ve likely been exposed to frenzied coverage of the phenomenon called “quiet quitting,” a phrase that began on Tik Tok and quickly spread throughout the media this month. The term has a negative connotation and conjures images of loafers lazily idling away their work hours. But a closer look reveals that the term is a misnomer: It doesn’t mean giving up on your duties or shirking your responsibilities, it doesn’t mean “quitting” at all—it simply means delivering a satisfactory performance while exercising boundaries around going above and beyond the agreed upon scope of your job description. Because the term is deceptive and confusing, a backlash to its use has sprung up online.

Jo Constanz from Bloomberg News writes in this recent coverage, “Pushback against the latest workplace buzzword is mounting, and not just on Reddit. Commentary on Twitter has pointed out how quiet quitting is a confused, flawed expression.” Rahaf Harfoush, an anthropologist who studies work-life culture and is quoted in Constanz’s piece explains, “the ideals of sacrifice, giving it your all and exceeding expectations,” while they are widely accepted elements to hustle culture, “can result in illness, exhaustion and burnout.” So a rejection of these values is not surprising even as the misleading phraseology, “quiet quitting,” which is intended to describe a cultural recalibration, “exposes the internal conflict people face when it comes to setting work-life boundaries.”

Essentially, we’ve been so conditioned by “hustle culture” to give more than we get from work, that disingenuous ghouls on the internet started labeling meeting expectations and delivering on your job requirements as quitting. Bonkers.

Here was some of the early coverage I shared last August, in addition to the Bloomberg piece above—

At a baseline: “Some experts suggest it’s just a controversial name for doing your job with healthy work-life boundaries,” said The National Post.

This NPR piece quotes Ed Zitron, who writes

Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At

as saying, "The term 'quiet quitting' is so offensive, because it suggests that people who do their work have somehow quit their job, framing workers as some sort of villain in an equation where they're doing exactly what they were told," and he continues, "It's part of an overwhelming trend of pro-boss propaganda, trying to frame workers that don't do free work for their bosses as somehow stealing from the company." (Can I get an AMEN.)

And this Forbes interview with the professor who coined the concept of “employee engagement,” encapsulates why employees rejecting tacit mandates to “go above and beyond” is so threatening to hierarchies: “I see it not unlike a different version of workers taking back their own sense of autonomy and control over their work lives.”

Well, we can’t have that, can we? And here we begin to understand the breathless, ongoing media tantrum. ‘Quiet Quitting’ came on the heels of The Great Resignation and a seismic upheaval in employees’ relationship to work. For the first time in a long time, it seemed workers had some leverage. And the internet lost its mind.

I won’t be sharing any recent coverage that uncritically parrots the term “quiet quitting,” but fast forward to 2023 and we’re still using this term against the backdrop of wave after wave of high-profile layoffs.

To put it all to rest, everyone should read this recent article by Jim Detert, in MITSloan Management Review, “Let’s Call Quiet Quitting What It Often Is: Calibrated Contributing.”

Here’s how I summarized Detert’s piece in January’s newsletter:

After an impassioned plea to stop using the term ‘quiet quitting’ in a previous edition of this newsletter, hopes that the phrase would fade from the lexicon have been in vain. For better or for worse, the terminology has persistent staying power, and continues to spark conversation in the leadership space.

One thoughtful addition to the conversation is this post by Jim Detert in MITSloan Management Review. Detert observes that, in the pandemic era, millions discovered “that what they were getting out of work—be it their financial compensation or a sense of control or respect—didn’t match what they were putting in.” In short, some employees realized they were “giving more than they were getting,” and may have scaled back their efforts commensurate to expectations and rewards. He argues “quitting” is a “derogatory, adversarial” way to describe the behavior of what he calls “calibrated contributors—employees who are rationally matching their effort to what they get in return.” The reframe doesn’t deride or imply a moral failing, but rather acknowledges “calibrated contributors” as people “trying to enact their views of fairness,” while continuing to perform their jobs.

OK? So, let’s stop it with the “quiet quitting,” an expression that punches down by scolding employees for meeting expectations while powerful higher-ups are barely scrutinized for demanding work output that far exceeds the scope or compensation of people’s job titles. Next.

Layoffs

Am I really going to frame layoffs as a “trend?” Yes, and I’m not alone, as you’ll see with the forthcoming links. Trend implies frivolity and the casual, morally bankrupt attitude some corporate leaders are bringing to mass firings that devastate families and cause ruinous financial stress are, dare I say, frivolous.

Take the following two paragraphs from this Wired piece, “Big Tech Is Really Bad at Firing People.”

Tech companies have laid off tens of thousands of workers over the past few months in an industry-wide downsizing that executives have blamed on over-hiring during the pandemic. Almost without fail, they’ve handled it horribly, with casual brutality and tone-deaf displays—such as at Microsoft, which hosted a private Sting concert at Davos the night before firing 10,000 people.

The disparity between Big Tech’s high spending and the callous way in which they have let go of their staff has tarnished their reputation as good employers and reminded staff that their needs are subordinate to those of shareholders. 

The mood is very, “Friday, layoffs. Sunday, brunch. La dee dah.”

I pair the trend of layoffs with the preamble of ‘quiet quitting’ because it makes sense to contextualize one as a backlash to the other. The rabid reaction to ‘quiet quitting’ was really a frenzy around workers naming and claiming their humanity and autonomy—and shock at people having the audacity to expect a more equitable employee/employer relationship.

Today, it’s hard not to view some large organizations’ rampant layoffs as a pendulum swing—the powerful wielding a cudgel to frighten worker bees and put them back in their place. It’s easy to perceive an implicit threat: “Submit to providing extra labor and don’t make waves—or pay the price.”

The resulting low hum of uncertainty amongst the still-employed is what Anne Helen Peterson aptly calls “layoff brain” in this post from her newsletter,

Culture Study

:

Layoffs are the worst for the people who lose their job, but there’s a ripple effect on those who keep them—particularly if they keep them over the course of multiple layoffs. It’s a curious mix of guilt, relief, trepidation, and anger. Are you supposed to be grateful to the company whose primary leadership strategy seems to be keeping its workers trapped in fear?

The point of layoffs at the widespread scale we’re witnessing isn’t necessarily to be fiscally responsible or to benefit the company but rather to recalibrate the scales of power. Peterson continues, talking about the bogeyman of supposedly impeding recession:

In case you haven’t heard, we’re in a recession. Actually we’re not, but we’ve spent the last year talking about how we will be, which has the effect of altering behavior as if we were. Even if you’ve come to terms with the fundamental irrationality of the stock market, it’s still difficult to fight the feeling that CEOs are willing this recession into existence to create a justifying narrative for layoffs. Not because they necessarily want to save money, or even redirect the company, but to press reset on what they view as out-of-control compensation packages and worker demands.

Bingo. It’s important to look critically at the reason behind the current spate of layoffs which are sweeping through corporate America with the same virality that think-pieces about ‘quiet quitting’ were last summer.

Jeffery Pfeffer, a Business Professor at Stanford, explains in this piece that layoffs are an ill-advised fad which usually don’t even help the bottom line and mortally wound workplace trust—leaving remaining staff bewildered, demoralized, and less engaged than ever before. I covered his piece this way in a recent newsletter:

Why have there been so many layoffs recently despite a strong job market and a growing economy? In this Stanford Graduate School of Business piece, Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer says the layoffs are “copycat behavior,” that amounts to a “social contagion,” wherein “behavior spreads through a network,” whether or not it is wise or beneficial: “Layoffs are the result of imitative behavior and are not particularly evidence-based.”

The trend of layoffs worries Pfeffer who says, “layoffs don’t work to improve company performance,” and academic studies show that “workplace reductions don’t do much for paring costs.” In fact, larger companies participating in the social contagion of layoffs may actually be incurring added costs, rather than accruing savings: “Severance packages cost money, layoffs increase unemployment insurance rates, and cuts reduce workplace morale and productivity as remaining employees are left wondering, ‘Could I be fired too?'”

Ultimately, while there are exceptions, Pfeffer says that usually, “layoffs are basically a bad decision,” and “do not solve what is often the underlying problem, which is an ineffective strategy, a loss of market share, or too little revenue.” And, he warns, “layoffs increase mortality by 15-20% over the following 20 years,” and “increase the odds of suicide by two and a half times.” In the wake of the pandemic, he says, “we ought to place a higher priority on human life.”

Annie Lowrey’s recent piece in The Atlantic (in which she also interviews Pfeffer) backs this up:

Reflexively laying off employees when every other company is doing so makes bad business sense. Downsizing is horrible for morale. It hinders the performance of retained workers. It is expensive, as many firms pay severance to departing employees. And layoffs do not tend to improve a given company’s profit margins, boost its valuation, or lead it to perform better than its peers either—in part because of the effect on surviving employees and the loss of institutional knowledge, and in part because layoffs tend to be a sign of mismanagement in the first place.

So let’s quit it (see what I did there?) with the “social contagion” of rampant layoffs. Companies cannot run without people. Denying people’s humanity and treating everyone as disposable is not tenable in the long-term and it’s not even beneficial in the short-term; it serves only as a mode of intimidation: “Obey or else.” And it won’t end well.

—

Some self-promotion: Did you miss my most recent post about my noisy inner monologue, Rothko, and the power of accessing a place beyond words? Read it at the link below and let me know in the comments if you hear an inner monologue in words or if you’re one of the lucky folks with a quieter interior.

More than words

And finally, as always (at least while twitter is still a thing), some tweets!

laurel @pigeoncowboys

life can be pretty cool because you can get a bagel. but there’s also the horrors

morgan sung @morgan_sung

sometimes i'm like why am i irrationally angry and then i'm like oh there's an overhead light on

Oliver Willis @owillis

jonathan chait's anti-trans rants in @NYMag are like a dumber version of my ranting about the dallas cowboys. "i dont need any facts, they just suck, ok?"