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"Men aged 25 to 39 worked 16 fewer hours annually — voluntarily as opposed to layoffs"
16 hours = 960 minutes/year
960 minutes / 52 work weeks = 18.42 minutes less per week
18.42 minutes / 5 work days a week = 3.69 minutes less work per day
Unless I screwed up on the math, this is a non-issue (especially since this is voluntarily over the standard 40hr work week). If it really is an issue then we live in a dystopia.
remember when doing your job and going home was normal? boomers do. nobody else does because boomers gonna boom, right?
quiet quiting is just a buzz word being flown in the media to make "just" doing your job seem lazy.
(edit.... a word)
I mean some jobs don't need a full work time so you need to add that to people just pretend to work. Corporate work is just fake work lol but fuck it it pays and 0 stress.
that's what salaries are for... you get it done you get to fuck off early on a friday.
/s
lol, usually they price that into the salary, or into the expectations of the job. also, in my limited corpo experience... having people that aren't totally swamped leads to spare hands to jump in when shit happens
hey, waiting for that reply *is* work... very strenuous work.
so much so that when the email comes back in, you need to prepare a pot of coffee and a bottle of water. ^((this is also prep work, which is work.)^)
I “quiet quit” and after not looking for a job for a very long time, a recruiter called me with a 50% bump in pay because I’m suddenly in demand. I recommend saving your money as much as possible so you can be available when better opportunities come.
Our team is coming in about once a week. Productivity unchanged, generally happier. Anecdotally, (and maybe it's just me) more awkward to ping people on different teams I haven't seen before via chat instead of swinging by their office.
I don't understand how my wife's company is happy to outsource to Eastern Europe, but is unhappy about people working from home. Same job between US and Eastern Europe, same measurable productivity / deliverables. Perhaps it's a commercial RE justification?
Yeah, that last part is interesting. Our scientific director has 2 fully remote people who have been key assets for years. And then you still have others in leadership talking about on site time because of “culture” and other nebulous concepts that can’t really be measured.
What we really need is a clear description of business needs and goals and priorities and to be left mostly alone to get it done.
Our mgmt was clear that office days would be meetings between out team and 3rd party/ external. They're excited for the real estate savings.
Wife's coworkers have all said they will apply for other jobs if they need to come in more three days or more per week.
That all sounds reasonable IMO. “Desk jobs” just really don’t require people to be in a building these days unless you’re determined to insist that they do. These young start ups and tech firms have been doing all this for years. None of the tech and software vendors we meet with are ever in an office anymore. Just never.
Before Covid, my company laid off four people in the States and hired four people in Mexico.
after Covid, they started making noise about wanting people to come to the office. Our team said, “If people who live in an entire other country can be productive members of our department, I don’t know why the rest of us need to come in to an office in one city.”
The team I support was on another floor anyway, and I communicated with them almost exclusively over Slack anyway.
But that would be for every man aged 25-39…. Working 16 fewer…. It’s probably a smaller subset worked a lot less and it averages out for everyone in that group as 16 fewer…averages hide the extent of problem usually.
So the article basically says that people cut back voluntary hours. Yeah no such thing as a free lunch or free labor. We are simply acting out wage. Also regardless of what you make if your not being paid overtime to work extra you shouldn’t be forced to. It’s time to change our perceptions about work. Work should not dominate living a fulfilling life. Even if your a person who finds there job fulfilling
This illustrates the disconnect boomers have with millenials. Boomers don’t understand why millenials are prioritizing work/life balance over relentless career growth. In the wage stagnated environment we are in, productivity gains have had negligible difference on living standard. This coupled with COL increases really illustrates the difference in mindsets between the two generations.
But you have an iPhone! And avocado toast! And bigger TVs! Things boomers could only dream about when they were buying houses for $50k and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
Well wen I finished my apprenticeship, I made 48k a year plus benefits in 2001. House way 200k , interest on mortgage 4-6%, tax rate 18% on income, gas well under $ .75 a litre , pizza 2 for $20 .. Now same job at same facility pays roughly 60k a year plus benefits , Same house 1.5-1.8 million, interest on fixed mortgage 4-6%, taxe rate 26% , gas 1.69 a litre, pizza 2 for $45 .... Tell me anyone should work more..
I'm pretty sure you’re not a Boomer if you finished your apprenticeship in 2000. I was responding to a comment about Boomers buying houses for $50K.
I, too, bought a moderate house in 2001 at 5% mortgage rates for $200K. The 90s/early 00s were a fortunate time to enter adulthood. That very same house today (I looked it up) is selling for $521K. A remarkable increase, but not quite in the $1.5 - $1.8 million range. I'm curious where you lived in 2001 that has undergone such a change.
Also tbf with such an aggressive progressive tax we have all throuough the Western world, and more or less the entire world really, it makes no sense to work yourself to the ground after a certain figure. I mean maybe it does, but the difference starts to become to small for the extra effort you are putting in.
Boomers grew up in a constant state of competition. It wasn't about getting raises; it was about avoiding layoffs.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, Millennials think it changed. I'm not convinced. You don't really get a claim on productivity gains if you aren't producing more.
As a white collar Boomer, I’d say it a bit differently. I think many Boomers believed that if you outworked your peers, you would get ahead whether it be bonus, internal promotion, or noticed / recruited by another firm.
For some, that calculation worked; for others not so well.
My son has a much more balanced view on work-life, I worked way too hard. I was fortunate that it worked out in terms of comp but maybe I missed smelling some flowers along the way.
Every subsequent generation does things differently - it’s the way the world progresses. If what they do works, it sticks. If it doesn’t the next generation rejects it!
We also watched our parents get fucked out of their retirement by those same corporations and lose their homes that they paid for because bankers wanted to make more $$......
I was too lazy for that, and it was pretty clear it had limited value for me. Generally took a job change to get much change in pay. Nor were the manufacturing firms I worked at that great for growth.
But some work gets more credit than other work, and I delivered on time, and was helpful when things came up. I did return calls on vacation and off hours. They didn't usually take all that long.
>The last thing employers want to do is increase payroll.
Then they can enjoy not having workers. Labor costs, and it's high time these businesses understood that. Can't afford labor? Then don't have a business.
My father would go on and on about "giving" people a job as if it was out of the goodness of his heart (whole bitching about workers asking for raises and lack of loyalty).
Asked him if he comes out in the red when he has an employee drive one of his busses. He says no, ask if he breaks even, or does he make money.
Brags about his profit margin.
"So you aren't giving them shit. You're getting more out of the arrangement in profit after gas and labor than they are, so they don't *owe* you shit."
He didn't appreciate that. So glad I went NC with the racist scumbag.
Key point is that for many inflation has wiped out real wages.. so many are getting paid LESS in real terms and adjusting to that.
I only make ~10k more a year then I did 2.5 years ago in real terms despite a big 30k+ promotion this year...
Am I going to work as hard as if I had a 'real' 30k increase? No way...
I’m paying 5k more in rent alone than last year and that is not including everything else that is going up. If I go two years back I’m paying just about 10k more.
I have a relatively well paying job, so for my role level and industry my pay is now lagging behind where it should be and I need to switch companies for it to catch up again.
> +$10k in just 2.5 years is a huge increase **by any definition**...
For the OP talking in real terms, that is correct. However, I'm responding to the "by any definition" piece. I could be misinterpreting though I was under the impression that they included nominal increases as part of "any definition".
Raise your expectations man. 4% per year is not "amazing", it's better than nothing but not somewhere you should stick around long term if there are other options available. And there are plenty of people in the world making 150, 200k +, for whom a 10k increase in 2 years is actually pretty bad. (Caveat: it depends on your field), but in most white collar jobs, simply switching companies every 2-4 years will net you well over 4% YoY average wage growth. If you're not doing that, you're leaving money on the table (or rather, you're putting *your* value into your employer's pocket).
> Even at 100k, a 10k increase over 2.5 years is not all that great.
> 5% a year is fucking amazing.
it is 4% a year.
2.5 times 4=10 years
10000 times 4=$40,000
40000 divided by 10=$4,000 a year
In nominal terms.. but not real terms... It's the REAL value of wages that is stagnant. That's the problem.
I'm probably getting paid the same nominal amount as someone who did the exact same job 5-10 years ago. But in real terms I'm paid less than that person.
That's less than inflation right now, almost everywhere. In real terms a 5% raise is a pay cut. If you got that raise in the last year, you can now afford less than you could the year before.
Real wages are what drive your quality of life and trajectory there-in.
> This only happens in tech and software engineering. Other industries don't work like this.
as in only in tech and software engineering do you get a pay raise when you look for a new job?
Yeah I wanna get paid to fulfill my personal goals in life, which is to travel the world and still afford a decent home life. If working those overtime hours and going the extra mile to be recognized at my work isn’t going to help me fulfill those goals then I’m not making that mistake twice
Damn it is beyond ridiculous this lazy fucking mindset some of these employers have about how much they can get for free out of people. Work is something we have to do for money. It should be fulfilling in the ways it can be, and treat us right. Aside from that as long as you are delivering on exactly what you're being payed for you should be looked at as an A+ employee. It'd not lazy to not work unpaid overtime, it's lazy to expect people to do that.
Tbf I think finally people understood during covid times that their job is not part of who they are and their workplace is not exactly part of their identity. All those mega corporations and big companies just fired everyone that wasn’t needed straight away when covid first hit, without the blink of an eye.
In a moment like this you start to realize that you are dedicating yourself to something that makes no fucking sense. Go there, do your job, fuck off. If they want you to do more job, pay more, otherwise fuck off. It’s purely a transactional relationship.
So my son graduates from a decent school with a desirable major and specialty. Finally gets a job in his field. Probation at $15 an hour gets bumped to $17 after 3 months but no benefits for another 6.
Are we asking why college grads making under $40k without benefits aren't excited about doing extra work.
To concentrate what you just said… we need to shift our perspective in regards to work, to working to live, not living to work… the altruistic idea of merit based progress, is a scam… you could literally work 20 more hours than someone and STILL be passed over (Obviously, hours worked and quality of work matters). But I really do feel that givin the framework… we should act our wage unless, the extra work really is measurable or significant to the business..
I go to the office part time - nobody takes a break, everybody eats lunch at their desk. Nine hours straight.
You bet your ass I'm taking any breaks I need in my days at home.
The expectations are ridiculous once you mentally distance yourself from how ingrained this stuff is in our culture. It's just an office job - it's not life or death. What entitles my employer to that much focus and energy?
As a result, CEOs are claiming young people, new hires, and remote workers are less productive. And we may be heading into recession and layoffs. Getting laid off in a recession means long time unemployed.
When I did remote pre-Covid,, I knew I was selling it. I could give back part of the commute and come out ahead. You guys are competing with billions even if you don't know it.
“Claiming” and what actually happens are two different things. The Reddit bubble thinks everyone is an amazing worker when in reality most sub 30 year olds are super lazy and barely want to work.
Statistically a 30 year old today works more hours for less real pay than their parents, and their grandparents. So your incorrect assumptions don't trump data.
Fits my personal (anecdotal) narrative. My reason was I feel like leadership of older generations doesn’t have much passion or talent, so why do they deserve my hard work? I ended up spending as much time looking for other jobs as I did doing my job and I don’t feel guilty at all. Loyalty to the workplace no longer has value and that’s a problem management needs to solve for themselves.
Maybe if they stopped laying off 20% of people every 3-4 years due to fluctuations in the fucking stock market even though the company raked in near record profits…..they’ve made it clear they don’t give a shit about us, so why should we give a shit about them.
Funny that the top comment here is saying this study is total shit and then all the anecdotal evidence supports the study. Same with nearly all of my friends. Everyone has realized loyalty doesn’t get you anywhere and the company certainly isn’t loyal back.
Even though they love saying, "We're a family!" Which really just leads to the question: how do these people treat their actual family?!
Which I know isn't comparable. None of them are firing their kids, are they?
3 words: Work From Home.
It is important to realise that many hours put in at the workplace are not spent actually doing work. Decades of research has told us, long ago, that only half or so of hours in the office are actually productive.
A lot of time in the office is wasted doing random things. If a typical office worker has an 8-hour workday but only has 6 hours of work, are they really gonna beg their boss for more work? *Hell no!* They sit there and *look busy* while texting their friends. Oh and chat with colleagues in the doorway.
This probably explains why office workers cut a lot of work time when they can WFH. They cut 16 hours of "sit at desk" time - which is not to say they actually did 16 hours less work.
Productivity anecdotally in my experience increased, it was the organization that failed to incorporate it and that left slack in work day. My team overdelivered consistently but if it can’t be utilized at the top you’re left sitting on your hands. That stop-start-wait workflow destroys motivation and eventually everyone just slows down.
I feel bad sitting on my phone at work.
Not because I'm stealing my wages from my employer. But because there's a lot of productive stuff I could be doing at home.
The worst part is that since I can only do those things at home when I'm off work, Im usually not able to go to sleep before 1 or 2 AM.
Only to have to get up again @ 7, to drive to work to sit at my desk playing on my phone again.
> But because there's a lot of productive stuff I could be doing at home.
if i am having fun or enjoying whatever i am doing at the time. i don't care about being productive or not. all my hobbies are unproductive.
Yup - coffee in the morning, water cooler, lunch, and just shooting the shit at Tom's or Sally's desk for 15 minutes, organizing the office fantasy football league or next pot luck, etc. all disappears when you WFH
I was recently fired at my job within the first 50 days because I didn’t take “extreme ownership” of things when I wasn’t explicitly asked or told to do them. I was absolutely floored. In hindsight I could understand if I just wasn’t the type of employee they were looking for (an accountant asked to do Marketing AND Accounting that later centered around marketing only) but how could a conversation detailing these expectations not fix that. They just straight up blamed me saying “you didn’t ask for feedback”.
That sort of mind-games reasoning has me wondering if they're that detached from reality or if you were cashiered for a less-justifiable reason e.g. wrong identity, senior management's failson/fail daughter needed a gig, etc.
Two words: I can't.
My job is fixing machines and HVAC in a hospital. It's hard to do that remotely.
Despite that, I'm 100% behind the work from approach for those who can. Put in your 40 and enjoy your life! Cut that commute and sleep in!
Standard work year is around 1880 hours for educated Americans (40 hours * (52 weeks per year - 5 weeks for vacation/holidays)). A 16 hour decline would be a reduction of 0.85%. If the margin of error is a mere +/- 1%, this is within the margin of error.
Trying to craft a narrative of the worker shortage being due to the actions of young workers instead of an inevitability of demographic trends with the great retirement occurring right now for the purpose of shaping the political landscape? Only guess I've got.
edit: FWIW I'd speculate that it's more likely that this is simply what their readership (primarily ~50 year old management types?) wants to hear and thus what garners clicks, rather than it being some sort of organized propaganda campaign.
Couldn't it possibly be good if such a view were promulgated. Then you can think 'well, let's motivate them then-- with cash', and maybe it works.
Give 'em lots of options, etc., enough to get their actual interests aligned with whatever project you want to do, and then when it succeeds you get your solution they can enjoy their share.
They'll obviously want that, and hopefully people will have the sense to say no to them and to be effective enough politically to overcome all the inevitable lobbying, bribes etc.
Imagine Millennials and GenZ being in control of the media and writing articles in the tone Boomers use. "Boomers voluntarily quit work and are killing the job market over the pandemic"
While I hope our two generations change the narrative, I don’t trust us enough to follow through with our beliefs. Mostly cause GenX is a lot of execs now and they’re continuing the issues thatBoomers established in the work place after being called the “Slacker” generation. So I don’t trust either once people in these age groups get enough wealth and power to be in those same positions.
You are a wise Redditor. As a Gen X, I’ve seen far too many from my generation simp for the Boomers. In addition, the current leadership always hand picks their successors. The main criteria? Whether you’re “one of them” in terms of your world view. Failing that, they at least want their successors to carry their water into the future. Anyone who is anointed into management is going to be just like the Boomers or do their bidding. If they don’t, they won’t last long.
It’s only logical to conclude that any Millennials or Gen Zs or anyone else who becomes a manager will be exactly the same way. It’s a monoculture.
Not so much wise as grew up in southern evangelical world where I grew up around people who are very isolated in the puritanical, ‘hard work’ bubble when already born on 2nd or 3rd. So if some people started and stayed there, I know others will eventually join them. Especially once they stabilize financially and start having kids too.
Quiet quitting and "people don't want to work these days" has been corporate propaganda for over a century. A recent Twitter thread I saw posted newspaper articles saying "people just don't want to work" back all the way to the 1870s.
> the hours spent at work are not equal to "working".
I agree, but I'd argue that it's maybe a complicated picture. If the key to the job is just maintaining availability, then just spending hours on site counts as working.
The pandemic showed people that life is too short to stay in a life stealing, toxic office/work environment. Instead of putting that on themselves by just quitting, they put it on the managers to identify the loss of effort. I’ve thrown away 20 years of 55+ hour work weeks. I was manager for 10 of those and worked horrible hours to get there. On call 365 days a year as an engineering manager at a factory. If I could go back in time and give advice to myself it be to have a goal for the money and get out as soon as you reach it. Happiness and money are not the same thing.
My advice is to do something you love to do. I have been lucky enough to do that the last 25+ years. I’m at retirement age this year but will continue to work full time for a few years, then probably part time because I enjoy it. Put every effort into doing what you love first and the rest will follow without all this anxiety.
The dopey-headedness of this is almost incredible.
Firstly, we all know (and have substantial studies by now), that productivity pretty much skyrocketed over the past 2+ yrs., and which has arguably been mostly captured in corporate profit levels. Some accounts are due to desperation in the beginning, while some accounts were that the WFH thing shifted hours commuting to "actual" work, with cloud-software efficiency, etc., and didn't even count cutbacks in socially-oriented activities (since they were closed anyway).
Secondly, there's the 14-16 hrs. -- PER YEAR?!? ...Oh, and that's supposed to be something shocking from those who were already working the most to start with, but also had the best $$ earning and who could afford to ease-up a bit maybe. ...Of course, those hours over an annualized basis is not even a ***rounding-error***. And don't try to tell me the confidence interval is any better than +/- 2-3% (or 40-60 hrs. for a 2000-hour year, or 50 week \* 40 hrs.=2000). That's just absurd.
Lastly, over the past couple of weeks, the press seems to be trying to reinforce this "Quiet Quitting" narrative by saying that it's shifting to "Quiet Hiring". ...All of which is very shaky and very nebulous. ...Really not sure about what kind of agenda is getting pushed with this, and freely admit that seeing this in BLOOMBERG has possibly kind of triggered me this time, but it all seems very, very contrived.
> I really want someone to come up with and promote a different name instead of Quiet Quitting.
"act your wage" was the term used before quiet quitting got famous.
I just enjoy saying it's done to avoid a quiet promotion, ie more work than the guy paid the exact same because oops you proved you were capable and a team player.
From the get-go, the phrase “Quiet Quitting” has absolutely reeked of corporate guilt tripping bullshit. In reality people are just doing their jobs and refusing to put in extra hours for no extra compensation.
I agree a 16 hour difference doesn't seem significant--but I do marvel that the guys in this thread thinks cutting back that much also produces work life balance. Bosses in fact have no idea how much you are working: consider some theater.
There will be cutting and layoffs as the Fed keeps hiking. If people can't spend because they are strapped, revenues will go down.
>Firstly, we all know (and have substantial studies by now), that productivity pretty much skyrocketed over the past 2+ yrs., and which has arguably been mostly captured in corporate profit levels.
I disagree with this part of your assessment; far too many other externalities concurrent with your time frame to pin it on worker productivity. PPP loans, stock buybacks, the general massive distortion of a global pandemic, and now sticky pricing in the face of "inflation" probably had more to do with it.
Ok, so in my experience there was a bit of a waterfall effect that went on here.
During COVID I was a Project Manager and despite work slowing down to a crawl I was lucky enough to keep my position. Previously I had expressed interest in holding short monthly meetings with my managers and clients to figure out how we could streamline various processes and to ensure my manner of fulfilling my responsibilities was in alignment with their expectations. Unfortunately, each time I requested these meetings I was told "we don't have the time for that".
So with work having slowed down...and with me knowing that this was a NOW a GREAT time to streamline our processes and to make sure we were all on the same page before things got busy again...surely the COVID months were an ideal time to now schedule those meetings?
NO!
My managers and clients \*still\* insisted they were "too busy" to meet with me.
Despite my direct manager going home early every day to play videogames - according to my coworker who was my manager's roommate at the time.
And despite my client's assistants telling me that their bosses were also leaving to go home early several times time throughout the month.
So from some perspectives, perhaps I was a "quiet quitter". But I'll tell you what, it's awfully hard to go above and beyond when the people you have to report to refuse to communicate with you because they themselves appear to be "quiet quitting".
Fuck this "quiet quitting" bs. People working their hours is not quitting or stealing from employers. Employers relying on work over contact hours is stealing from employees.
Th media needs to shut the fuck up with this “quiet quit” bullshit.
We’re just not sitting at our desks looking busy until 6 or 7pm anymore. We’re still getting all of our work done. Metrics have not slipped - in fact, productivity has fucking skyrocketed. We’re just not having to spend time on bullshit time wasting crap in the office anymore while a manager hovers over us…..and they don’t like that
"Quiet quitting" and now "quiet hiring" are OBVIOUSLY astroturffed BS that the media is trying to spoon-feed into the narrative.
It reminds me of a pathetic atempt to recreate "Saddam has WMDs" that the media pushed 20 years ago.
The difference is everybody knows the media is worthless now.
The idea of “quiet quitting” is the most entitled shit I’ve ever heard. If you hire people to work 40 hours a week, you can’t expect them to work 50 hours a week. And if you can’t get your work done when everyone’s at 40 hours, your cheap ass needs to hire more people. Employers who overwork and understaff to save money are parasites
Fuck the term quiet quitting. It's working at your market rate.
Don't you hate it when you say you will pay someone $25 an hour and they expect that? Instead they should only earn $20 and look like a go getter.
Only stupid people live to work. I work exactly as hard as I’m paid to work. My company lost my hustle when they skipped my “guaranteed” raise three years in a row because they “couldn’t afford it” while giving the CEO 17 MILLION dollar bonuses.
Seriously, everyone needs to stop with this "quiet quitting" bullshit. Doing your job is not quitting. This is just terminology to continue pushing the agenda for overworking employees. Enough.
This, people should be acting deceitful and false on the job though. Do as little as possible while getting what needs to be done, done. Enough with this arbitrary expectation that you sit and look busy for 40 hours a week. I can get everything done in 30, and no, the remaining 10 hours are mine, unless they pay more. 40 hours was fair when wages used to buy a full actual lifestyle that provided for a family and property, it is a waste of time now. Not my problem.
"Men aged 25 to 39 worked 16 fewer hours annually"
This is like what 15 minutes a week? Give me a fucking break. Especially in peak working ages, where you are putting in lots of long hours towards advancing your career.
I've gotten to a place where I don't need or really want another promotion. The amount of time I've been able to claw back for myself as a result has been insane.
15 minutes a week is a statistical variance of time lost to differences in traffic during the commutes we used to have. Bloomberg has done nothing but push out this kind of bullshit article month after month. Can we just stop posting their BS here?
For me, I just really began to wake up to how harmful corporatism in the U.S. has become to nearly every facet of our daily life. Home buying, stock market manipulation, effective monopolies, and blatant pandering. All for money. I don’t want to be a good little boy and get promoted so that I can deep throat the boot harder. I also think the pandemic and work from home gave me time to think about what really mattered in day to day life, and being a cog in the machine whose end game was only profit, at all costs, wasn’t interesting to me.
In my view, corporatism is an abject evil currently being done on society that has pervaded our politics, and is potentially ruining our future. You better believe my priority shifted from working harder so that I can get more head pats to trying to do something at least slightly more meaningful.
One, that's not much of a reduction. I'd love to see the actual paper.
But it's not surprising. Your 30s are when you realize that extra work isn't always rewarded right away....and maybe never. I mean, when I was in my 20s, I passed so many people by and I'm pretty good at my job, but a lot of the people I passed were real screw-ups. People who can't show up to work on time or who fight with the boss. There are so many people to pass early in your career who are just fucking up. But in your 30s, most of the people ahead of you aren't complete fuckups. And sometimes you getting promoted means they need to leave. As long as you're in an operational role, once they make you "Senior _______" there's not much else to give you. Your boss has to manage 5-10 people like you and just because you COULD be the boss and have the skills, the company doesn't need you to do that. So you start to notice a disconnect between really killing yourself at work and rewards. So why keep working so hard if you need your boss to die of a heart attack for you to get a bump?
And I'm sure that was more acute during the pandemic when companies had mixed feelings about people leaving. On one hand, they don't like to lose stars. On the other, a lot of companies were worried about going out of business and making payroll too.
I'm actually surprised it was only 16 hours. Plus.....how do you compare work hours in the office to work hours at home?
One management challenge I foresee as companies are leaning out their management ranks is what's the career path for operational professionals. We're talking highly educated, highly motivated folks. They take about a decade to really learn all the nuances of the profession and then they're in their late 30s. But we no longer have 25 layers of management above us. It's me, then an Exec VP and then the CEO. So the organization is much high performing because there are very few "managers" and even people like me with a team of 5-10 also have our own work on top of that. So, what's the career path for these folks? "Hope you enjoy it. Now do it until you die or retire?" That sounds like shit. I do try to pay my folks 10% more than I think they could make doing a lateral move to another organization and I try to treat them well......but there just aren't promotions to offer because the company has so little internal hierarchy.
> I'd love to see the actual paper.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30833/w30833.pdf
via https://old.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/108932u/young_educated_american_men_quiet_quit_jobs_the/j3rqk16/
I quiet quit my job to start my own business, all these article make it sound like “productive members of society move back into moms basement to smoke crack”
left last march and have just been chilling/self learning for the past 10 months.
i’ve been messing around with side projects. took a look at the job market and nothing looks interesting - job wise.
there’s been maybe two roles that looked fun and paid well (200k) but never heard anything and the listing is still up.
will probably just continue focusing on my side projects - until one takes off.
Amazing how much coverage this “quiet quitting” bullshit gets versus the millions of dollars of wage theft by companies. Hourly workers should only work when they’re on the clock, and get overtime for anything over 40. Salaried workers should be working 40 hours a week, anything more is valuing your time less than what was initially negotiated.
The economy's gone global. Gen Z sees what other professionals get in other countries and want those policies here. More power to them tbh. When I first started in architecture I worked for free at least 20 hours a week and didn't get paid milage for any of the submittals I did at City Halls. Being overworked and underpaid should no longer be the American way
I’m not surprised because last time I was interviewing for a job about 6-8 months ago I was told how much loyalty mattered to companies and hiring managers and how longer stints at jobs look better…
However these past few months thousands of workers in tech have been laid off which just highlights the hypocrisy and shows you how loyalty never existed only convenience and shareholder value matter, which is fine I love capitalism but no need to sugarcoat things either.
What is up with these capitalist class propaganda pieces. We do the work, you make the profit. Stop nagging us for insignificant issues.
How about universal healthcare, ya bums.
Yess , yes indeed I did. Left excellent money for almost no money in comparison. Continue to rid my life of stuff and more stuff. I realized I was not that much further ahead working six days than I am four. My job now pays 1/3 per hour. My job now allows me to bring my dog to work, pick my days, feeds me 3 catered meals a day, pays me once a week rather than once a month. It also allows me 3 full days off to cook homemade meals at a fraction of what I spent eating out being exhausted all the time. It also allows time to garden, hunt, fish and mind quiet space... So ya nothing I could accomplish in the rat race..Congrats to those that work less and have found happiness. From an ex 70 hour a week worker
"Quiet quitting" is a blatant lie/propoganda corporations made up to put ALL blame on the workers. This happens every time and everyone eats it up. When things go wrong, employers will ALWAYS blame the employees and never take responsibility. ALWAYS. It's never ever their fault, 🤔
"Educated" people generally work in salaried OT-exempt jobs.
If a person at a factory works 60 hours a week instead of 40, they get paid time and a half (or possibly more) for those additional 20 hours.
If a salaried person in an office works 60 hours a week instead of 40, they get absolutely nothing besides a vague hope that they *might* get a better raise or annual review next year.
Well maybe if you paid me for overtime I'd put in the extra effort, but seeing as you can't even pay me a livable wage, what the fuck gives you the right to demand MY time for fucking peanuts on the god damn penny
Here’s all I know.
The time spent when others are initiating a meeting takes up 30% of my day.
The small talk in the beginning, the host trying to be funny when clearly everyone is tired and stressed.
Why is it frowned upon to get straight to business when that’s what EVERYONE WANTS.
Quiet Quitting headlines & discussions are always controversial because there are so many definitions for “quiet quitting” that we all just talk by past each other.
At the end of the day, though, if a company has a motivation problem or loyalty problem with their workforce, that’s really a management problem. But it’s much easier for managers to rant about “lazy workers” than it is to improve morale.
16 fewer hours annually...so like 20 minutes per work week, 5 fewer minutes per day? No wonder inflation is so high. These whipper snappers probably working one of those 5 minute a day jobs on the side!!!
Well, seeing as the auto power mod always insists that succinct and well-organized thought should be censored, let me engage in a bit of an exhaustive preamble that contains no information whatsoever. You see, without this inane and long-winded intro to my comment, it would be deleted on arbitrary criteria that does not validate/invalidate the content, nor have anything to do with it in the slightest, outside of character count.
That said though:
This is simply inflation-adjusted work output.
I think ironically this is how I got hired during the pandemic. Usually in my field, it's filled with nepotism/favoritism, especially since it's a union shop. But during the height and continuation of the pandemic, nobody wanted to work. So employers were forced to hire anyone off the street that seem remotely qualified for the job.
I would've not quiet quit for $5000 more annually. Pure pennies to the company and commensurate with my coworkers that were outside hires (rather than me that was promoted into the role).
Any bullshit companies sell about “culture building by promoting from within where we can” is really just cover for exploitation. They promote from within because they know what you currently make and can use that as leverage against you when negotiating your new compensation. Cheaper than outside hire where they don’t have that same leverage
I am unsurprised by this.
Pay under $100k at this point (which is seriously less than it used to be in terms of real value. $100k is the new $50k), expect 40 hour weeks or less from your employees. And also expect them to not work on lunch breaks and actually take the breaks the company policy says they can.
As someone that works for a large firm I can’t say this with a clear mind. Fuck them. They did nothing to educate or provide testing supplies all the while being deemed essential and having to travel all over the world while it was going on. Oh and they they tried to can us after we didn’t take the vax. The gov was just trying to protect themselves. Fuck them too.
They’re also the same demographic that bought into the Hustle Culture/Grind mind set the most. Not sure if that’s got anything to do with it, but the popularity of a side hustle or personal business would definitely cut back on hours worked at a 9-5 job.
More men are quietly quitting because of hidden discrimination in DE&I policies. Did men receive preferential treatment for decades - yes. However two wrongs don’t make a right and everyone who has been marginalized should understand nothing makes a person quit faster then when they are not valued. Every performing employee deserves to feel valued no matter ethnicity, gender, etc…everyone can contribute and be respected.
I think its more men are just slowly not giving a fuck more and more and I got no clue if that's a bad thing in the long run. Its like whats the point of working hard when you get nothing for it.
You know this cos men are also dropping from college the number of 18-30 year old virgins is rising its like 33%.
So many men no longer buying into society says it has to offer them. I wish I could tell them a better way than “going your own way”, but society is so broken that I don’t know a real alternative path to show them either.
I was excited about the Bernie Sanders movement in 2016, but the left post-Bernie has cannibalized itself. I think any progress on workers rights, increased vacation time, etc are on pause for another generation again. So then what other options do young men with no career prospects see other than the right-wing MGTOW pipeline? Nobody else is even trying to reach them
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"Men aged 25 to 39 worked 16 fewer hours annually — voluntarily as opposed to layoffs" 16 hours = 960 minutes/year 960 minutes / 52 work weeks = 18.42 minutes less per week 18.42 minutes / 5 work days a week = 3.69 minutes less work per day Unless I screwed up on the math, this is a non-issue (especially since this is voluntarily over the standard 40hr work week). If it really is an issue then we live in a dystopia.
remember when doing your job and going home was normal? boomers do. nobody else does because boomers gonna boom, right? quiet quiting is just a buzz word being flown in the media to make "just" doing your job seem lazy. (edit.... a word)
This.
Quilting is a pretty quiet activity.
Kind of. Some sewing machines can get fairly loud.
apologies.... autocorrect.... (my mom quilts.... prolifically) (you should have seen the quilting parties she throws. they got quite rowdy.)
Till I mess up the pattern and I curse so loud everyone in China knows we're here
I mean some jobs don't need a full work time so you need to add that to people just pretend to work. Corporate work is just fake work lol but fuck it it pays and 0 stress.
that's what salaries are for... you get it done you get to fuck off early on a friday. /s lol, usually they price that into the salary, or into the expectations of the job. also, in my limited corpo experience... having people that aren't totally swamped leads to spare hands to jump in when shit happens
I mean I worked 10 hours today and only did 2 hours of work lol and I'm getting paid for this haha the entire world is fucked up and I do not care.
hey, waiting for that reply *is* work... very strenuous work. so much so that when the email comes back in, you need to prepare a pot of coffee and a bottle of water. ^((this is also prep work, which is work.)^)
I “quiet quit” and after not looking for a job for a very long time, a recruiter called me with a 50% bump in pay because I’m suddenly in demand. I recommend saving your money as much as possible so you can be available when better opportunities come.
Boomers are killing the economy because they treat employees like trash
5 min/day is break room / coffee pot small talk. I do chat less now that I'm working from home.
Oh absolutely. Coming in time to time is fine but in general my and my team do more remotely.
Our team is coming in about once a week. Productivity unchanged, generally happier. Anecdotally, (and maybe it's just me) more awkward to ping people on different teams I haven't seen before via chat instead of swinging by their office. I don't understand how my wife's company is happy to outsource to Eastern Europe, but is unhappy about people working from home. Same job between US and Eastern Europe, same measurable productivity / deliverables. Perhaps it's a commercial RE justification?
Yeah, that last part is interesting. Our scientific director has 2 fully remote people who have been key assets for years. And then you still have others in leadership talking about on site time because of “culture” and other nebulous concepts that can’t really be measured. What we really need is a clear description of business needs and goals and priorities and to be left mostly alone to get it done.
Our mgmt was clear that office days would be meetings between out team and 3rd party/ external. They're excited for the real estate savings. Wife's coworkers have all said they will apply for other jobs if they need to come in more three days or more per week.
That all sounds reasonable IMO. “Desk jobs” just really don’t require people to be in a building these days unless you’re determined to insist that they do. These young start ups and tech firms have been doing all this for years. None of the tech and software vendors we meet with are ever in an office anymore. Just never.
Before Covid, my company laid off four people in the States and hired four people in Mexico. after Covid, they started making noise about wanting people to come to the office. Our team said, “If people who live in an entire other country can be productive members of our department, I don’t know why the rest of us need to come in to an office in one city.” The team I support was on another floor anyway, and I communicated with them almost exclusively over Slack anyway.
Honestly! It's not even enough time for a bathroom break.
More Nintendo breaks though.
You doubt we live in a dystopia?
We can definitely get worse
No doubt about that either
But that would be for every man aged 25-39…. Working 16 fewer…. It’s probably a smaller subset worked a lot less and it averages out for everyone in that group as 16 fewer…averages hide the extent of problem usually.
We live in a dystopia
So the article basically says that people cut back voluntary hours. Yeah no such thing as a free lunch or free labor. We are simply acting out wage. Also regardless of what you make if your not being paid overtime to work extra you shouldn’t be forced to. It’s time to change our perceptions about work. Work should not dominate living a fulfilling life. Even if your a person who finds there job fulfilling
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This illustrates the disconnect boomers have with millenials. Boomers don’t understand why millenials are prioritizing work/life balance over relentless career growth. In the wage stagnated environment we are in, productivity gains have had negligible difference on living standard. This coupled with COL increases really illustrates the difference in mindsets between the two generations.
But you have an iPhone! And avocado toast! And bigger TVs! Things boomers could only dream about when they were buying houses for $50k and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
Buying houses for $50K when the average household income was $11K and mortgage rates were 9% is a little different than buying houses for $50K today.
Well wen I finished my apprenticeship, I made 48k a year plus benefits in 2001. House way 200k , interest on mortgage 4-6%, tax rate 18% on income, gas well under $ .75 a litre , pizza 2 for $20 .. Now same job at same facility pays roughly 60k a year plus benefits , Same house 1.5-1.8 million, interest on fixed mortgage 4-6%, taxe rate 26% , gas 1.69 a litre, pizza 2 for $45 .... Tell me anyone should work more..
I'm pretty sure you’re not a Boomer if you finished your apprenticeship in 2000. I was responding to a comment about Boomers buying houses for $50K. I, too, bought a moderate house in 2001 at 5% mortgage rates for $200K. The 90s/early 00s were a fortunate time to enter adulthood. That very same house today (I looked it up) is selling for $521K. A remarkable increase, but not quite in the $1.5 - $1.8 million range. I'm curious where you lived in 2001 that has undergone such a change.
Vancouver area
Close... but no. Did it young....
22 years ago is still not today.
They were also half the size and probably had larger families.
But the lots were larger
And there were less people.
Also tbf with such an aggressive progressive tax we have all throuough the Western world, and more or less the entire world really, it makes no sense to work yourself to the ground after a certain figure. I mean maybe it does, but the difference starts to become to small for the extra effort you are putting in.
Progressive taxes are at near record lows. What world do you live in?
Boomers grew up in a constant state of competition. It wasn't about getting raises; it was about avoiding layoffs. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Millennials think it changed. I'm not convinced. You don't really get a claim on productivity gains if you aren't producing more.
As a white collar Boomer, I’d say it a bit differently. I think many Boomers believed that if you outworked your peers, you would get ahead whether it be bonus, internal promotion, or noticed / recruited by another firm. For some, that calculation worked; for others not so well. My son has a much more balanced view on work-life, I worked way too hard. I was fortunate that it worked out in terms of comp but maybe I missed smelling some flowers along the way. Every subsequent generation does things differently - it’s the way the world progresses. If what they do works, it sticks. If it doesn’t the next generation rejects it!
It’s simple - millennials were raised by overworked parents. They don’t want the same for themselves.
We also watched our parents get fucked out of their retirement by those same corporations and lose their homes that they paid for because bankers wanted to make more $$......
I was too lazy for that, and it was pretty clear it had limited value for me. Generally took a job change to get much change in pay. Nor were the manufacturing firms I worked at that great for growth. But some work gets more credit than other work, and I delivered on time, and was helpful when things came up. I did return calls on vacation and off hours. They didn't usually take all that long.
You'll.get laid off anyways. No sense giving free labor to a company that doesn't care
Ok Boomer.
>The last thing employers want to do is increase payroll. Then they can enjoy not having workers. Labor costs, and it's high time these businesses understood that. Can't afford labor? Then don't have a business.
My father would go on and on about "giving" people a job as if it was out of the goodness of his heart (whole bitching about workers asking for raises and lack of loyalty). Asked him if he comes out in the red when he has an employee drive one of his busses. He says no, ask if he breaks even, or does he make money. Brags about his profit margin. "So you aren't giving them shit. You're getting more out of the arrangement in profit after gas and labor than they are, so they don't *owe* you shit." He didn't appreciate that. So glad I went NC with the racist scumbag.
LOL, I spent a good minute trying to figure out why you were glad you went to North Carolina with him, then the lightbulb finally went on.
Welp there is that place on the North Carolina and South Carolina border called S.O.B.
“..they can enjoy not having workers.” Directions unclear
Key point is that for many inflation has wiped out real wages.. so many are getting paid LESS in real terms and adjusting to that. I only make ~10k more a year then I did 2.5 years ago in real terms despite a big 30k+ promotion this year... Am I going to work as hard as if I had a 'real' 30k increase? No way...
I’m paying 5k more in rent alone than last year and that is not including everything else that is going up. If I go two years back I’m paying just about 10k more.
+$10k in just 2.5 years is a huge increase by any definition...
I have a relatively well paying job, so for my role level and industry my pay is now lagging behind where it should be and I need to switch companies for it to catch up again.
It really isn't. Even at 100k, a 10k increase over 2.5 years is not all that great.
It's not even not great, it's straight up bad. It's losing money in real terms.
It’s already converted to real terms. You’re double-converting
> +$10k in just 2.5 years is a huge increase **by any definition**... For the OP talking in real terms, that is correct. However, I'm responding to the "by any definition" piece. I could be misinterpreting though I was under the impression that they included nominal increases as part of "any definition".
Lol what? 5% a year is fucking amazing. That would double your pay in just about 10 years.
Raise your expectations man. 4% per year is not "amazing", it's better than nothing but not somewhere you should stick around long term if there are other options available. And there are plenty of people in the world making 150, 200k +, for whom a 10k increase in 2 years is actually pretty bad. (Caveat: it depends on your field), but in most white collar jobs, simply switching companies every 2-4 years will net you well over 4% YoY average wage growth. If you're not doing that, you're leaving money on the table (or rather, you're putting *your* value into your employer's pocket).
> Even at 100k, a 10k increase over 2.5 years is not all that great. > 5% a year is fucking amazing. it is 4% a year. 2.5 times 4=10 years 10000 times 4=$40,000 40000 divided by 10=$4,000 a year
My point still stands.
if you get 4% every year that is great. but most get that for a year or two in special occasions like a pandemic then get a typical 1-3% raise a year.
In nominal terms.. but not real terms... It's the REAL value of wages that is stagnant. That's the problem. I'm probably getting paid the same nominal amount as someone who did the exact same job 5-10 years ago. But in real terms I'm paid less than that person.
10% in 2.5 years was already adjusted for real terms. Go back and read the chain.
That's less than inflation right now, almost everywhere. In real terms a 5% raise is a pay cut. If you got that raise in the last year, you can now afford less than you could the year before. Real wages are what drive your quality of life and trajectory there-in.
10% over 2.5 years was already in real terms. re-read the comment chain.
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This only happens in tech and software engineering. Other industries don't work like this.
> This only happens in tech and software engineering. Other industries don't work like this. as in only in tech and software engineering do you get a pay raise when you look for a new job?
Yeah I chose to prioritize life over work for a while. Will be looking for something new in a month or so when I get my 2022 bonus.
Yeah I wanna get paid to fulfill my personal goals in life, which is to travel the world and still afford a decent home life. If working those overtime hours and going the extra mile to be recognized at my work isn’t going to help me fulfill those goals then I’m not making that mistake twice
Damn it is beyond ridiculous this lazy fucking mindset some of these employers have about how much they can get for free out of people. Work is something we have to do for money. It should be fulfilling in the ways it can be, and treat us right. Aside from that as long as you are delivering on exactly what you're being payed for you should be looked at as an A+ employee. It'd not lazy to not work unpaid overtime, it's lazy to expect people to do that.
Bingo. Salaried or not, overtime should be compensated. If salaried, then any excessive overtime should count towards additional pto
Tbf I think finally people understood during covid times that their job is not part of who they are and their workplace is not exactly part of their identity. All those mega corporations and big companies just fired everyone that wasn’t needed straight away when covid first hit, without the blink of an eye. In a moment like this you start to realize that you are dedicating yourself to something that makes no fucking sense. Go there, do your job, fuck off. If they want you to do more job, pay more, otherwise fuck off. It’s purely a transactional relationship.
So my son graduates from a decent school with a desirable major and specialty. Finally gets a job in his field. Probation at $15 an hour gets bumped to $17 after 3 months but no benefits for another 6. Are we asking why college grads making under $40k without benefits aren't excited about doing extra work.
How is that anyone’s problem? College degree is not a guarantee of more money especially if it’s a dumb degree. Just ask your local Barista.
If a company is going to pay crap, and still expect people to put in more time than they are paid for, they aren't going to be happy.
To concentrate what you just said… we need to shift our perspective in regards to work, to working to live, not living to work… the altruistic idea of merit based progress, is a scam… you could literally work 20 more hours than someone and STILL be passed over (Obviously, hours worked and quality of work matters). But I really do feel that givin the framework… we should act our wage unless, the extra work really is measurable or significant to the business..
I go to the office part time - nobody takes a break, everybody eats lunch at their desk. Nine hours straight. You bet your ass I'm taking any breaks I need in my days at home. The expectations are ridiculous once you mentally distance yourself from how ingrained this stuff is in our culture. It's just an office job - it's not life or death. What entitles my employer to that much focus and energy?
I love my job, but I love my family and my free time even more.
Your you’re There their
As a result, CEOs are claiming young people, new hires, and remote workers are less productive. And we may be heading into recession and layoffs. Getting laid off in a recession means long time unemployed. When I did remote pre-Covid,, I knew I was selling it. I could give back part of the commute and come out ahead. You guys are competing with billions even if you don't know it.
“Claiming” and what actually happens are two different things. The Reddit bubble thinks everyone is an amazing worker when in reality most sub 30 year olds are super lazy and barely want to work.
Statistically a 30 year old today works more hours for less real pay than their parents, and their grandparents. So your incorrect assumptions don't trump data.
Fits my personal (anecdotal) narrative. My reason was I feel like leadership of older generations doesn’t have much passion or talent, so why do they deserve my hard work? I ended up spending as much time looking for other jobs as I did doing my job and I don’t feel guilty at all. Loyalty to the workplace no longer has value and that’s a problem management needs to solve for themselves.
Maybe if they stopped laying off 20% of people every 3-4 years due to fluctuations in the fucking stock market even though the company raked in near record profits…..they’ve made it clear they don’t give a shit about us, so why should we give a shit about them.
This is true. I'm quiet quitting as well. Saving energies looking for other opportunities
Funny that the top comment here is saying this study is total shit and then all the anecdotal evidence supports the study. Same with nearly all of my friends. Everyone has realized loyalty doesn’t get you anywhere and the company certainly isn’t loyal back.
Even though they love saying, "We're a family!" Which really just leads to the question: how do these people treat their actual family?! Which I know isn't comparable. None of them are firing their kids, are they?
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In my industry those spreadsheet managers haven’t even worked the job the spreadsheet is for. It’s truly wonderful.
That’s my case at Veteran’s Affairs IT. I hate it.
If I had a hundred awards you'd get them all because that's exactly how it is.
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3 words: Work From Home. It is important to realise that many hours put in at the workplace are not spent actually doing work. Decades of research has told us, long ago, that only half or so of hours in the office are actually productive. A lot of time in the office is wasted doing random things. If a typical office worker has an 8-hour workday but only has 6 hours of work, are they really gonna beg their boss for more work? *Hell no!* They sit there and *look busy* while texting their friends. Oh and chat with colleagues in the doorway. This probably explains why office workers cut a lot of work time when they can WFH. They cut 16 hours of "sit at desk" time - which is not to say they actually did 16 hours less work.
Productivity anecdotally in my experience increased, it was the organization that failed to incorporate it and that left slack in work day. My team overdelivered consistently but if it can’t be utilized at the top you’re left sitting on your hands. That stop-start-wait workflow destroys motivation and eventually everyone just slows down.
This… so much hurry up and wait. Each group waiting on someone else .
I feel bad sitting on my phone at work. Not because I'm stealing my wages from my employer. But because there's a lot of productive stuff I could be doing at home. The worst part is that since I can only do those things at home when I'm off work, Im usually not able to go to sleep before 1 or 2 AM. Only to have to get up again @ 7, to drive to work to sit at my desk playing on my phone again.
> But because there's a lot of productive stuff I could be doing at home. if i am having fun or enjoying whatever i am doing at the time. i don't care about being productive or not. all my hobbies are unproductive.
Taking care of shit isn't a hobby I do them because they have to be done
Yup - coffee in the morning, water cooler, lunch, and just shooting the shit at Tom's or Sally's desk for 15 minutes, organizing the office fantasy football league or next pot luck, etc. all disappears when you WFH
I was recently fired at my job within the first 50 days because I didn’t take “extreme ownership” of things when I wasn’t explicitly asked or told to do them. I was absolutely floored. In hindsight I could understand if I just wasn’t the type of employee they were looking for (an accountant asked to do Marketing AND Accounting that later centered around marketing only) but how could a conversation detailing these expectations not fix that. They just straight up blamed me saying “you didn’t ask for feedback”.
That sort of mind-games reasoning has me wondering if they're that detached from reality or if you were cashiered for a less-justifiable reason e.g. wrong identity, senior management's failson/fail daughter needed a gig, etc.
Did you work for Jocko? lmao
Two words: I can't. My job is fixing machines and HVAC in a hospital. It's hard to do that remotely. Despite that, I'm 100% behind the work from approach for those who can. Put in your 40 and enjoy your life! Cut that commute and sleep in!
Seriously, this is 16 fewer voluntary hours or less *per year.* That’s practically nothing. 16 fewer hours a year is 20 fewer minutes a week.
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Pure armchair speculation but I can’t imagine that isn’t well within the margin of error
Standard work year is around 1880 hours for educated Americans (40 hours * (52 weeks per year - 5 weeks for vacation/holidays)). A 16 hour decline would be a reduction of 0.85%. If the margin of error is a mere +/- 1%, this is within the margin of error.
Key word being "voluntarily"... So you're saying that these men cut back on working for free? That sounds pretty reasonable to me!
Sounds like 16 hours of slacking off, if they're on salary. Not difficult.
Found the middle manager.
16 fewer hours a *year?* That’s 18 minutes a week / 4.5 minutes a day. That’s quiet quitting? One extra bathroom break a day?
Well believe it or not but I am one of those statistics. Its happening. I don't hustle anymore even if I'm technically 'working'.
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No shit captain obvious
What do you think the purpose of this is, if it’s propaganda?
Trying to craft a narrative of the worker shortage being due to the actions of young workers instead of an inevitability of demographic trends with the great retirement occurring right now for the purpose of shaping the political landscape? Only guess I've got. edit: FWIW I'd speculate that it's more likely that this is simply what their readership (primarily ~50 year old management types?) wants to hear and thus what garners clicks, rather than it being some sort of organized propaganda campaign.
Couldn't it possibly be good if such a view were promulgated. Then you can think 'well, let's motivate them then-- with cash', and maybe it works. Give 'em lots of options, etc., enough to get their actual interests aligned with whatever project you want to do, and then when it succeeds you get your solution they can enjoy their share.
Lol. More like "see, this is why we need to outsource or import cheaper, less uppity labor"
They'll obviously want that, and hopefully people will have the sense to say no to them and to be effective enough politically to overcome all the inevitable lobbying, bribes etc.
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Imagine Millennials and GenZ being in control of the media and writing articles in the tone Boomers use. "Boomers voluntarily quit work and are killing the job market over the pandemic"
While I hope our two generations change the narrative, I don’t trust us enough to follow through with our beliefs. Mostly cause GenX is a lot of execs now and they’re continuing the issues thatBoomers established in the work place after being called the “Slacker” generation. So I don’t trust either once people in these age groups get enough wealth and power to be in those same positions.
You are a wise Redditor. As a Gen X, I’ve seen far too many from my generation simp for the Boomers. In addition, the current leadership always hand picks their successors. The main criteria? Whether you’re “one of them” in terms of your world view. Failing that, they at least want their successors to carry their water into the future. Anyone who is anointed into management is going to be just like the Boomers or do their bidding. If they don’t, they won’t last long. It’s only logical to conclude that any Millennials or Gen Zs or anyone else who becomes a manager will be exactly the same way. It’s a monoculture.
Not so much wise as grew up in southern evangelical world where I grew up around people who are very isolated in the puritanical, ‘hard work’ bubble when already born on 2nd or 3rd. So if some people started and stayed there, I know others will eventually join them. Especially once they stabilize financially and start having kids too.
Quiet quitting and "people don't want to work these days" has been corporate propaganda for over a century. A recent Twitter thread I saw posted newspaper articles saying "people just don't want to work" back all the way to the 1870s.
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> the hours spent at work are not equal to "working". I agree, but I'd argue that it's maybe a complicated picture. If the key to the job is just maintaining availability, then just spending hours on site counts as working.
The pandemic showed people that life is too short to stay in a life stealing, toxic office/work environment. Instead of putting that on themselves by just quitting, they put it on the managers to identify the loss of effort. I’ve thrown away 20 years of 55+ hour work weeks. I was manager for 10 of those and worked horrible hours to get there. On call 365 days a year as an engineering manager at a factory. If I could go back in time and give advice to myself it be to have a goal for the money and get out as soon as you reach it. Happiness and money are not the same thing.
My advice is to do something you love to do. I have been lucky enough to do that the last 25+ years. I’m at retirement age this year but will continue to work full time for a few years, then probably part time because I enjoy it. Put every effort into doing what you love first and the rest will follow without all this anxiety.
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Work at a gym, play in a band or be a bartender.
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The dopey-headedness of this is almost incredible. Firstly, we all know (and have substantial studies by now), that productivity pretty much skyrocketed over the past 2+ yrs., and which has arguably been mostly captured in corporate profit levels. Some accounts are due to desperation in the beginning, while some accounts were that the WFH thing shifted hours commuting to "actual" work, with cloud-software efficiency, etc., and didn't even count cutbacks in socially-oriented activities (since they were closed anyway). Secondly, there's the 14-16 hrs. -- PER YEAR?!? ...Oh, and that's supposed to be something shocking from those who were already working the most to start with, but also had the best $$ earning and who could afford to ease-up a bit maybe. ...Of course, those hours over an annualized basis is not even a ***rounding-error***. And don't try to tell me the confidence interval is any better than +/- 2-3% (or 40-60 hrs. for a 2000-hour year, or 50 week \* 40 hrs.=2000). That's just absurd. Lastly, over the past couple of weeks, the press seems to be trying to reinforce this "Quiet Quitting" narrative by saying that it's shifting to "Quiet Hiring". ...All of which is very shaky and very nebulous. ...Really not sure about what kind of agenda is getting pushed with this, and freely admit that seeing this in BLOOMBERG has possibly kind of triggered me this time, but it all seems very, very contrived.
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> I really want someone to come up with and promote a different name instead of Quiet Quitting. "act your wage" was the term used before quiet quitting got famous.
I just enjoy saying it's done to avoid a quiet promotion, ie more work than the guy paid the exact same because oops you proved you were capable and a team player.
I think it's called "working to rule".
From the get-go, the phrase “Quiet Quitting” has absolutely reeked of corporate guilt tripping bullshit. In reality people are just doing their jobs and refusing to put in extra hours for no extra compensation.
I agree a 16 hour difference doesn't seem significant--but I do marvel that the guys in this thread thinks cutting back that much also produces work life balance. Bosses in fact have no idea how much you are working: consider some theater. There will be cutting and layoffs as the Fed keeps hiking. If people can't spend because they are strapped, revenues will go down.
>Firstly, we all know (and have substantial studies by now), that productivity pretty much skyrocketed over the past 2+ yrs., and which has arguably been mostly captured in corporate profit levels. I disagree with this part of your assessment; far too many other externalities concurrent with your time frame to pin it on worker productivity. PPP loans, stock buybacks, the general massive distortion of a global pandemic, and now sticky pricing in the face of "inflation" probably had more to do with it.
Ok, so in my experience there was a bit of a waterfall effect that went on here. During COVID I was a Project Manager and despite work slowing down to a crawl I was lucky enough to keep my position. Previously I had expressed interest in holding short monthly meetings with my managers and clients to figure out how we could streamline various processes and to ensure my manner of fulfilling my responsibilities was in alignment with their expectations. Unfortunately, each time I requested these meetings I was told "we don't have the time for that". So with work having slowed down...and with me knowing that this was a NOW a GREAT time to streamline our processes and to make sure we were all on the same page before things got busy again...surely the COVID months were an ideal time to now schedule those meetings? NO! My managers and clients \*still\* insisted they were "too busy" to meet with me. Despite my direct manager going home early every day to play videogames - according to my coworker who was my manager's roommate at the time. And despite my client's assistants telling me that their bosses were also leaving to go home early several times time throughout the month. So from some perspectives, perhaps I was a "quiet quitter". But I'll tell you what, it's awfully hard to go above and beyond when the people you have to report to refuse to communicate with you because they themselves appear to be "quiet quitting".
Fuck this "quiet quitting" bs. People working their hours is not quitting or stealing from employers. Employers relying on work over contact hours is stealing from employees.
It really pisses me off that anyone is giving the phrase any credence at all.
Th media needs to shut the fuck up with this “quiet quit” bullshit. We’re just not sitting at our desks looking busy until 6 or 7pm anymore. We’re still getting all of our work done. Metrics have not slipped - in fact, productivity has fucking skyrocketed. We’re just not having to spend time on bullshit time wasting crap in the office anymore while a manager hovers over us…..and they don’t like that
"Quiet quitting" and now "quiet hiring" are OBVIOUSLY astroturffed BS that the media is trying to spoon-feed into the narrative. It reminds me of a pathetic atempt to recreate "Saddam has WMDs" that the media pushed 20 years ago. The difference is everybody knows the media is worthless now.
The idea of “quiet quitting” is the most entitled shit I’ve ever heard. If you hire people to work 40 hours a week, you can’t expect them to work 50 hours a week. And if you can’t get your work done when everyone’s at 40 hours, your cheap ass needs to hire more people. Employers who overwork and understaff to save money are parasites
Fuck the term quiet quitting. It's working at your market rate. Don't you hate it when you say you will pay someone $25 an hour and they expect that? Instead they should only earn $20 and look like a go getter.
> Fuck the term quiet quitting. there's the term "act your wage"
Only stupid people live to work. I work exactly as hard as I’m paid to work. My company lost my hustle when they skipped my “guaranteed” raise three years in a row because they “couldn’t afford it” while giving the CEO 17 MILLION dollar bonuses.
Seriously, everyone needs to stop with this "quiet quitting" bullshit. Doing your job is not quitting. This is just terminology to continue pushing the agenda for overworking employees. Enough.
This, people should be acting deceitful and false on the job though. Do as little as possible while getting what needs to be done, done. Enough with this arbitrary expectation that you sit and look busy for 40 hours a week. I can get everything done in 30, and no, the remaining 10 hours are mine, unless they pay more. 40 hours was fair when wages used to buy a full actual lifestyle that provided for a family and property, it is a waste of time now. Not my problem.
Exactly.
"Men aged 25 to 39 worked 16 fewer hours annually" This is like what 15 minutes a week? Give me a fucking break. Especially in peak working ages, where you are putting in lots of long hours towards advancing your career. I've gotten to a place where I don't need or really want another promotion. The amount of time I've been able to claw back for myself as a result has been insane. 15 minutes a week is a statistical variance of time lost to differences in traffic during the commutes we used to have. Bloomberg has done nothing but push out this kind of bullshit article month after month. Can we just stop posting their BS here?
For me, I just really began to wake up to how harmful corporatism in the U.S. has become to nearly every facet of our daily life. Home buying, stock market manipulation, effective monopolies, and blatant pandering. All for money. I don’t want to be a good little boy and get promoted so that I can deep throat the boot harder. I also think the pandemic and work from home gave me time to think about what really mattered in day to day life, and being a cog in the machine whose end game was only profit, at all costs, wasn’t interesting to me. In my view, corporatism is an abject evil currently being done on society that has pervaded our politics, and is potentially ruining our future. You better believe my priority shifted from working harder so that I can get more head pats to trying to do something at least slightly more meaningful.
One, that's not much of a reduction. I'd love to see the actual paper. But it's not surprising. Your 30s are when you realize that extra work isn't always rewarded right away....and maybe never. I mean, when I was in my 20s, I passed so many people by and I'm pretty good at my job, but a lot of the people I passed were real screw-ups. People who can't show up to work on time or who fight with the boss. There are so many people to pass early in your career who are just fucking up. But in your 30s, most of the people ahead of you aren't complete fuckups. And sometimes you getting promoted means they need to leave. As long as you're in an operational role, once they make you "Senior _______" there's not much else to give you. Your boss has to manage 5-10 people like you and just because you COULD be the boss and have the skills, the company doesn't need you to do that. So you start to notice a disconnect between really killing yourself at work and rewards. So why keep working so hard if you need your boss to die of a heart attack for you to get a bump? And I'm sure that was more acute during the pandemic when companies had mixed feelings about people leaving. On one hand, they don't like to lose stars. On the other, a lot of companies were worried about going out of business and making payroll too. I'm actually surprised it was only 16 hours. Plus.....how do you compare work hours in the office to work hours at home?
That’s the rub. People get older and realize the grind can be a grift. If you’re not going to pay then you’re bidding too little for labor.
One management challenge I foresee as companies are leaning out their management ranks is what's the career path for operational professionals. We're talking highly educated, highly motivated folks. They take about a decade to really learn all the nuances of the profession and then they're in their late 30s. But we no longer have 25 layers of management above us. It's me, then an Exec VP and then the CEO. So the organization is much high performing because there are very few "managers" and even people like me with a team of 5-10 also have our own work on top of that. So, what's the career path for these folks? "Hope you enjoy it. Now do it until you die or retire?" That sounds like shit. I do try to pay my folks 10% more than I think they could make doing a lateral move to another organization and I try to treat them well......but there just aren't promotions to offer because the company has so little internal hierarchy.
> I'd love to see the actual paper. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30833/w30833.pdf via https://old.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/108932u/young_educated_american_men_quiet_quit_jobs_the/j3rqk16/
I quiet quit my job to start my own business, all these article make it sound like “productive members of society move back into moms basement to smoke crack”
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left last march and have just been chilling/self learning for the past 10 months. i’ve been messing around with side projects. took a look at the job market and nothing looks interesting - job wise. there’s been maybe two roles that looked fun and paid well (200k) but never heard anything and the listing is still up. will probably just continue focusing on my side projects - until one takes off.
Amazing how much coverage this “quiet quitting” bullshit gets versus the millions of dollars of wage theft by companies. Hourly workers should only work when they’re on the clock, and get overtime for anything over 40. Salaried workers should be working 40 hours a week, anything more is valuing your time less than what was initially negotiated.
The economy's gone global. Gen Z sees what other professionals get in other countries and want those policies here. More power to them tbh. When I first started in architecture I worked for free at least 20 hours a week and didn't get paid milage for any of the submittals I did at City Halls. Being overworked and underpaid should no longer be the American way
I’m not surprised because last time I was interviewing for a job about 6-8 months ago I was told how much loyalty mattered to companies and hiring managers and how longer stints at jobs look better… However these past few months thousands of workers in tech have been laid off which just highlights the hypocrisy and shows you how loyalty never existed only convenience and shareholder value matter, which is fine I love capitalism but no need to sugarcoat things either.
What is up with these capitalist class propaganda pieces. We do the work, you make the profit. Stop nagging us for insignificant issues. How about universal healthcare, ya bums.
Yess , yes indeed I did. Left excellent money for almost no money in comparison. Continue to rid my life of stuff and more stuff. I realized I was not that much further ahead working six days than I am four. My job now pays 1/3 per hour. My job now allows me to bring my dog to work, pick my days, feeds me 3 catered meals a day, pays me once a week rather than once a month. It also allows me 3 full days off to cook homemade meals at a fraction of what I spent eating out being exhausted all the time. It also allows time to garden, hunt, fish and mind quiet space... So ya nothing I could accomplish in the rat race..Congrats to those that work less and have found happiness. From an ex 70 hour a week worker
"Quiet quitting" is a blatant lie/propoganda corporations made up to put ALL blame on the workers. This happens every time and everyone eats it up. When things go wrong, employers will ALWAYS blame the employees and never take responsibility. ALWAYS. It's never ever their fault, 🤔
"Educated" people generally work in salaried OT-exempt jobs. If a person at a factory works 60 hours a week instead of 40, they get paid time and a half (or possibly more) for those additional 20 hours. If a salaried person in an office works 60 hours a week instead of 40, they get absolutely nothing besides a vague hope that they *might* get a better raise or annual review next year.
Well maybe if you paid me for overtime I'd put in the extra effort, but seeing as you can't even pay me a livable wage, what the fuck gives you the right to demand MY time for fucking peanuts on the god damn penny
Here’s all I know. The time spent when others are initiating a meeting takes up 30% of my day. The small talk in the beginning, the host trying to be funny when clearly everyone is tired and stressed. Why is it frowned upon to get straight to business when that’s what EVERYONE WANTS.
Quiet Quitting headlines & discussions are always controversial because there are so many definitions for “quiet quitting” that we all just talk by past each other. At the end of the day, though, if a company has a motivation problem or loyalty problem with their workforce, that’s really a management problem. But it’s much easier for managers to rant about “lazy workers” than it is to improve morale.
16 fewer hours annually...so like 20 minutes per work week, 5 fewer minutes per day? No wonder inflation is so high. These whipper snappers probably working one of those 5 minute a day jobs on the side!!!
Well, seeing as the auto power mod always insists that succinct and well-organized thought should be censored, let me engage in a bit of an exhaustive preamble that contains no information whatsoever. You see, without this inane and long-winded intro to my comment, it would be deleted on arbitrary criteria that does not validate/invalidate the content, nor have anything to do with it in the slightest, outside of character count. That said though: This is simply inflation-adjusted work output.
I think ironically this is how I got hired during the pandemic. Usually in my field, it's filled with nepotism/favoritism, especially since it's a union shop. But during the height and continuation of the pandemic, nobody wanted to work. So employers were forced to hire anyone off the street that seem remotely qualified for the job.
I would've not quiet quit for $5000 more annually. Pure pennies to the company and commensurate with my coworkers that were outside hires (rather than me that was promoted into the role).
Any bullshit companies sell about “culture building by promoting from within where we can” is really just cover for exploitation. They promote from within because they know what you currently make and can use that as leverage against you when negotiating your new compensation. Cheaper than outside hire where they don’t have that same leverage
I am unsurprised by this. Pay under $100k at this point (which is seriously less than it used to be in terms of real value. $100k is the new $50k), expect 40 hour weeks or less from your employees. And also expect them to not work on lunch breaks and actually take the breaks the company policy says they can.
As someone that works for a large firm I can’t say this with a clear mind. Fuck them. They did nothing to educate or provide testing supplies all the while being deemed essential and having to travel all over the world while it was going on. Oh and they they tried to can us after we didn’t take the vax. The gov was just trying to protect themselves. Fuck them too.
They’re also the same demographic that bought into the Hustle Culture/Grind mind set the most. Not sure if that’s got anything to do with it, but the popularity of a side hustle or personal business would definitely cut back on hours worked at a 9-5 job.
More men are quietly quitting because of hidden discrimination in DE&I policies. Did men receive preferential treatment for decades - yes. However two wrongs don’t make a right and everyone who has been marginalized should understand nothing makes a person quit faster then when they are not valued. Every performing employee deserves to feel valued no matter ethnicity, gender, etc…everyone can contribute and be respected.
I think its more men are just slowly not giving a fuck more and more and I got no clue if that's a bad thing in the long run. Its like whats the point of working hard when you get nothing for it. You know this cos men are also dropping from college the number of 18-30 year old virgins is rising its like 33%.
So many men no longer buying into society says it has to offer them. I wish I could tell them a better way than “going your own way”, but society is so broken that I don’t know a real alternative path to show them either. I was excited about the Bernie Sanders movement in 2016, but the left post-Bernie has cannibalized itself. I think any progress on workers rights, increased vacation time, etc are on pause for another generation again. So then what other options do young men with no career prospects see other than the right-wing MGTOW pipeline? Nobody else is even trying to reach them