We’ve written before about “Quiet Quitting,” a new name for an old phenomenon that started making the rounds in 2022, where employees commit to just doing their jobs (or as little work as they can get away with), and nothing else. No staying late. No working weekends. No going the extra mile.

Does it sound like a bad idea to you? Well, it turns out the young fellow who popularized the idea with a viral Tik Tok video last year, concurs.

As a recent New York Post article reports, he now thinks that quiet quitting wasn't the answer.

“... quiet quitting or “jobless employment” leads to the ‘looming fear that you’re gonna get ‘found out’ and fired’ and a ‘broader existential dread of ‘What am I actually doing with my life?’ The former quiet quitter noted that for many people work consumes a good portion of their waking hours, and that for him, not caring about what he spent so much time doing made him feel like a ‘bad person’ for not delivering.”

Anyone with even a little bit of experience could’ve told him the same thing, but sometimes we simply have to learn things the hard way in order for it to stick. Education is expensive.

The other thing that he may have not known is, well, if you’re quit-quitting, there’s a high probability that your boss already knows. Even without computerized performance tracking software, slackers are easy to spot. So are top performers.
That’s why, while many are busy quiet-quitting, a lot of managers are fighting back by “Quiet Hiring.” 

One of the latest buzz words, quiet hiring is when bosses start noting top performers and expand their role and duties rather than bringing in new team members. Taking advantage of the fact that their performance is often double, triple, even quadruples the performance of the left-behinds.

There's an old saying, “The best jobs are never advertised.” Similarly, the best jobs are never static. A good manager will want you where you’re going to create the most value for the business, which may include more than one role in the company. While this can be good for someone’s career, it can also lead to burn out. 

The truth is, both quiet quitting and quiet hiring are a bit of a red flag. Good company cultures generally don’t have much of either, because as coping mechanisms, they aren’t needed.

When you get the culture right, people WANT to go the extra mile where they can. They want to be rock stars. They DON’T want to spend our lives hiding in a corner, watching the clock.

The better the culture, the truer this is.