Why Companies Secretly Love Quiet Quitting
Quiet quitting has been quite the story this year. It’s known by various terms, of course. Mailing it in. Phoning it in. Corporate coasting. Acting your wage. Reverse hustle. Going through the motions. Whatever the zeitgeist wants to call it, I believe that a good amount of the way we talk about it is completely wrong. I keep reading that quiet quitting is about productivity, requirements, and metrics, but it’s not. It’s a story of ambiguity, identity, and rejection.
It’s a human story. It’s something we all do, to some extent, everyday. In fact, quiet quitting (or at least shades of it) is the byproduct of white collar work itself. The office needs the unspoken system that allows quiet quitting, otherwise the whole enterprise wouldn’t function. It’s one part of the checks and balances that keep people coming to work every day. Understanding why it exists and how it actually works can help us be better bosses, better employees, and live happier lives.
To convince you of this, we’re going to go on a bit of a journey. We’ll have to deconstruct some things you thought were true, we’ll have to give names to strange human behavior, and we’ll have to define what a unit of white collar work even is.
Of course, you have to trust that I know what I’m talking about. The good news is that I’ve spent over 20 years in various industries and organizations. From working with unions, to being employed by the government. From fancy offices to job site trailers. I’ve done engineering, marketing, banking, construction management, business strategy, and consulting. From big cities to small towns, with Fortune 100 companies and startups. I’ve been an employee and a manager. I’ve coached executives and the rank and file.
I’ve seen the machine from inside and out, and I’ve lived to tell this tale.
The Workplace Bazaar
The first thing we need to get clear on? Work is a marketplace where employees are buying and selling value with their bosses/companies, 24/7.
Let’s start with an analogy.
Say someone was trying to sell a ticket to a concert they couldn’t attend. They paid $30 for the ticket. If they are offered anything below $20, they’ll just give it to one of their friends. On the other end of the spectrum, the maximum they’d take is infinity dollars.
Now, let’s say you want those tickets. You would love to have them for free, but you won’t go above $100. So, the only way these tickets get sold to you is if the final price is somewhere between $20 (the lower bound) and $100 (the upper bound). If the price ends up closer to $20, you benefit; closer to $100, the seller benefits.
Let’s say you end up getting the ticket for $50. I’m guessing you’d consider that a win because it was $50 less than you would’ve paid. But would you still consider it a win if I told you that you left $30 on the table; that you could have spent less for the thing you agreed to pay more for?
Conversely, for the seller, would they still consider getting $50 a win if they found out they could have gotten $100?
A deal loses a bit of its sparkle if you were to find out what the real threshold was, doesn’t it? But that’s not how this transaction would work. No side is going to openly share their own threshold.
The lesson here is that the value of the ticket is what you paid for it, not what you could have paid. For the seller, the value of the ticket is what they got, not what they could have got.
This idea is key in understanding the marketplace of work.
Yes, the relationship between employers and employees is a marketplace, because there is something companies and bosses can offer that an employee wants (salary, benefits, opportunity, prestige, status, access, flexibility, experience, community, etc.), and there is something a prospective employee can offer that companies and bosses want (time, energy, know-how, leadership, potential, output, results, etc). Each side wants to maximize what it gets while not feeling like they’ve “overspent.”
For the most part, the value of the work you provide the company is worth as much or more to them than what they actually pay you in salary & benefits. The salary & benefits you get are worth as much or more to you than the time and energy you put in to get them. It’s Capitalism 101.
There are two important drivers that usually dictate where on a spectrum a price, or an agreement, lands in any marketplace:
Market factors. Is it a buyer’s market or a seller’s market? Or, who has leverage in any given moment? For example, in the housing market interest rates, inventory, and the state of the economy usually give leverage to either the buyer or the seller.
At work, who has more leverage in how you spend your time? Are you a unicorn at what you do or are you a dime a dozen? Do you have the trust of your superiors or do they watch you like a hawk? Do you know company secrets? Does your client love you, or are they underwhelmed? Do you feel like you are constantly competing with your colleagues?
Pe