Quiet Quitting

I think it's an indication of a totally dysfunctional work culture that "not doing extra" can be synonymous with "not working at all"

The fact that the author claims to have given "200% of [their] energy" to their job "throughout their career" is, to me, depressing rather than admirable

Back in the day that the author initially started working, the nature of the relationship was probably much more balanced: the employee got a decent wage, was trusted to fulfil their duties with reasonable concessions and freedom (sometimes possibly doing overtime if necessary, but also being able to leave early on days when they had to take care of their kid), and they probably had much better implicit labor protections: in the event of economic downturns, the company was much more accommodating and tried its best to take care of the employee. In other words, the employer was trusted and the employee was trusted to "take care of each other". The job was "for life", after all.

Fast forward to these days: companies have stripped away a lot of the care they took for employees; in the event of economic issues, big corps will fire people basically at random. Most employees are monitored to the minute, and leeway from the employer is unheard of in most situations. All of this "taking care of your employees when things go awry" is expensive (like insurance) and employers have tightened their belts.

It's not surprising then that the employer also starts looking for ways of not doing more than they are contractually obliged to do.

It is mostly about the erosion of trust both ways.

But I don't get the benefits they did. For my line of work (not IT), I work harder, I am paid less, I pay more on my mortgage, I live in smaller, less salubrious places than they do, I will get a smaller pension, I need my wife to continue working to pay for everything. My children will have less opportunities, their university education won't be funded.

I think my specific generation were the suckers, and I can't, hand-on-heart, tell the Gen Z juniors that if they just work their arses off, they will be given some career with these kind of rewards.

Yet another aspect is that the boomers were largely male, with wives and kids who hardly saw them. This is far less tolerable these days. For every keen junior who committed 200%, there was an unhappy partner doing all the housework and bringing up the kids.

Work-life balance and over-and-beyond are opposites. You can get one or the other. Lack of fair recognition for going over and beyond is a thing. I would say recognition should have a significant monetary component to compensate for loss of work-life balance.

Loss of purpose is dual edged. A lot of times there is a part where you have to experiment and throw away certain implementations. People go “above-and-beyond” in some of these situations and end up with nothing to show for their effort. It can get very demoralizing. In that, maybe failed experiments need to be recognized as well as successful ones if sincere effort has been put in.

Either way a successful upward trending career and work-life balance are at odds with one another. It’s for individuals to make the choice. Not giving 200% isn’t quiet quitting. Not giving 100% is.