All of a sudden, I'm seeing this term “quiet quitting” everywhere and I couldn't possibly be happier. The media is trying to portray it as employees are becoming slackers or lazy. No. People are waking up that hard work is not rewarded anymore and going above and beyond, sacrificing your personal life and time is simply not worth it.
Let me tell you my experience.
When I arrived in SF, startup culture was in full force. For a full decade, I bought into it. Every company I worked for was the next big thing. My equity would be worth millions. I regularly put in 80+ hour weeks, leaving the office to code from home or a bar until the wee hours of the morning, night after night, 7 days a week.
During my entire time in San Francisco, was I ever given a raise? No.
During my entire time in San Francisco, was I ever given a promotion? No.
What I was given, was a lot more work. I not only worked hard but efficiently, churning out a lot of code very quickly. So as soon as I finished something, I was given more, and then more, and more. Expectations always going higher. I must have asked for a dozen raises that were denied. More equity? Denied.
At the final startup I worked at before the pandemic, it reached a breaking point. I was the lead engineer building their neo-bank but they refused to hire a product manager or business manager for the product so I also coordinated product, customer service, design, compliance, and a lot more for the entire banking division. I was hired as a simple software engineer. Repeated requests for raises since my work required 80+ hours a week and was easily the work of 4 people were rejected. Requests for more equity were also rejected. I had a deadline to make. I worked six 100 hour weeks in a row, not having time to shave, get a haircut, or do anything except churn out code to meet our launch deadline. But I was promised a raise, a month off, and more equity after we launched.
And guess what? They renegged on all 3.
So I quit. No notice. That left them in a very bad spot since I was the only one who knew the code but that's a story for another day.
The point is that in over a decade, you know what all the equity I earned turned out to be worth? $0. All that extra work didn't get me a single extra dollar.
Hard work just begets more hard work.
So at my last job, I tried something new.
I gave higher estimates than what I could actually achieve. And I delivered ahead of time. I worked more than reasonable hours and never stressed out. And guess what? I got two raises in a year. And when they tried to put more work on my plate I told them I was busy with other stuff (I wasn't). It was a huge success.
And that's what quiet quitting is. Doing what's expected and nothing more. Not breaking your back to make the equity holders rich when you own a measly slice. And somehow, in my case, it ended up in more and bigger raises than I got when I was actually breaking my back. The appearance of overachieving in the workplace is more important than actual achievement in my experience.
So I fully support this. Don't go above and beyond. It doesn't pay and isn't worth it. You're just making someone else rich and wasting your time.