Quiet Quitting: The Cases For and Against

An unbiased look at both sides of the polarized debate and an exploration of quiet quitting’s surprising origins

If you spent any time on business Twitter last week, chances are your feed was teeming with hot takes on a supposed new workplace phenomenon known as “quiet quitting.”

So what’s all the fuss about? Is it really even a thing? And, if it is, should employers and employees be paying attention?

Let’s take a look.

What is quiet quitting?

A trend spreading mostly among millennials and zillennials, quiet quitting is a decentralized labor movement that fiercely rejects workplace hustle culture, professional burnout, and the presumption that people’s jobs should form the basis for their identities.

Its proponents argue that workers should reject expectations to work extra hours, take on responsibilities beyond the scope of their job descriptions, or do anything else that might subject them to being taken advantage of by their bosses.

Despite the name, it’s not actually about quitting. As TikToker @zaidlepplin says in the viral video that launched a thousand think pieces (including this one!), it’s about “quitting the idea of going above and beyond.”

Is quiet quitting a real thing?

Before we dive into the discourse surrounding quiet quitting, let’s first determine whether it’s a real thing or just another manufactured controversy designed to stoke controversy.

It would be impossible to count the number of quiet quitters in the world, of course, but there is some evidence supporting the idea that people are dissatisfied with their jobs.

According to Gallup:

• Just 21% of employees say they’re engaged at work.
• Just 33% say they’re thriving in their overall well-being.
• 44% say they feel high levels of stress daily, an all-time high.

Going further, the apparent rise of quiet quitting closely follows the pattern of several established workplace trends:

• The Great Resignation — The pandemic fundamentally changed the way many people consider the role work plays in their lives, resulting in record numbers of people voluntarily quitting their jobs in search of more independence and greater meaning.
• Antiwork — A philosophy that aims to dismantle the economic order underpinning capitalist institutions, antiwork moved from the (some say radical) fringes to somewhere near the mainstream over the course of the pandemic. Case in point: The r/antiwork subreddit — the de facto center of gravity for the movement — had 81k members in January 2020. Today, it boasts more than 2.1 million.

• Lying flat and involution — These are parallel Chinese movements rejecting cultural expectations to work more for less. They became so influential that President Xi Jinping himself responded, saying, “A happy life is achieved through struggle, and common prosperity depends on hard work and wisdom. It is necessary to prevent the solidification of social strata, smooth the upward flow channels, create opportunities for more people to become rich, form a development environment where everyone participates, and avoid involution and lying flat.”

So, is quiet quitting a real thing? Probably yes.

The debate over quiet quitting

The discourse surrounding quiet quitting is stirring up strong opinions from both sides of the aisle.

On one side, there are the proponents of the movement who maintain that employers have a long history of exploiting employees and under no circumstances should employees succumb to the pressure to perform free labor

On the other side, there are the equally dogmatic opponents who write the concept off entirely as an excuse for professional laziness.

There’s even debate over the term “quiet quitting” itself. Many proponents believe it’s an intentional misnomer coined by corporate leaders to deceitfully reframe workers’ reasonable demands for fair wages and work-life balance as lazy and entitled. If that’s true, the fact that the term is now being touted by an unwitting working class and media is insidiously ironic.

Now, let’s take an unbiased look at the cases for and against quiet quitting.

The case for quiet quitting

While quiet quitting is associated with “doing less” at work, Ed Zitron, who writes the labor-focused newsletter Where’s Your Ed At?, argues, “It’s not doing less. It is doing exactly what you are paid to do, not taking on additional responsibilities, not working past your allotted hours, and being paid to do so.”

And Andy Levy, who hosts the Daily Beast pod The New Abnormal, bolsters Zitron’s case this way:

After all, in a pandemic-stricken economy that saw hundreds of thousands of employees laid off at the same time corporations reaped record profits, why should people go above and beyond for employers when employers demonstrated they won’t do the same for them?

And when you boil it down, work is ultimately a transactional thing. People sell their time to employers in exchange for money. When considered through this lens, is there anything so wrong with workers simply doing what they’re paid to do and nothing more?

The case against quiet quitting

In his TikTok, @zaidlepplin makes four main points about quiet quitting:

1. You should quit the idea of going above and beyond.
2. Hustle culture is bad.
3. Work doesn’t have to be your life.
4. And your worth as a person shouldn’t be defined by your labor.

For the sake of the argument, let’s assume that most reasonable people can agree on points two, three, and four.

That leaves us with, “You should quit the idea of going above and beyond.” This is what most opponents of quiet quitting take issue with. Proponents ask, “Isn’t going above and beyond a cornerstone of a strong work ethic? And isn’t a strong work ethic something worth celebrating?”

“Mr. Wonderful” himself, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary chimed into the conversation saying, “People that go beyond to try to solve problems for the organization, their teams, their managers, their bosses, those are the ones that succeed in life. There is no balance in the pursuit of personal freedom. It is all out, pedal to the metal.“

Now, it’s no surprise that “Mr. Wonderful” is a hustle culture maximalist. But, love him or hate him, the first point he makes is valid. We live in a hypercompetitive world. Yes, many people enter the workforce with huge socioeconomic advantages. And no, there’s probably no such thing as a perfect workplace meritocracy. But even the most socioeconomically privileged must eventually compete if they want to continue up the ladder of success.

Another point seems to get lost in the debate here: Workers who want to unlock new opportunities don’t only need to impress their bosses. They need to impress their colleagues and subordinates, too.

Daffy founder Adam Nash puts it this way:

While quiet quitting is framed by its proponents as a means of reclaiming power and agency at work, in practice it can be alienating to peers. And, as Nash rightly points out, one’s network of peers is often the conduit to new and better career opportunities, so their perceptions of one’s work ethic shouldn’t be ignored.

Can both sides be right at the same time?

As we all know, Twitter isn’t a place for nuance. But when you tune out the hot takes and travel away from the polarized extremes, there’s some truth in both sides of the argument.

As quiet quitting proponents argue, employers do have a long history of employee exploitation and they deserve to be checked.

And, as the opponents say, going above and beyond doesn’t necessarily require harmful self-sacrifice. What one person sees as self-sacrifice, another may see as self-investment.

🔑 Key takeaways

⛔ No. You should never allow your time and labor to be exploited by greedy bosses.

✅ Yes. You should strive to produce the best possible work you can and sometimes — maybe even often — deliver beyond the scope of what’s asked or expected of you.

⛔ No. You shouldn’t sacrifice your mental health or personal well-being for an employer who might not have your back when times get tough.

✅ Yes. You should proactively work to outcompete your peers if your goal is to ascend to the career ladder.

⛔ No. You shouldn’t accept the status quo in an unfair, inequitable, or otherwise hostile work environment.

✅ Yes. You should go above and beyond at work, but only after carefully weighing and accepting the potential opportunity cost to other parts of your life.

⛔ No. Employers shouldn’t expect employees to define their lives according to their jobs or make extreme sacrifices “for the greater good of the company” without fair compensation.

✅ Yes. They should foster healthy work environments, pay fair wages, be generous with things like parental leave, and generally treat employees like humans so that the very notion of quiet quitting is rendered moot.

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