Quiet Quitting. Only do the Bare Minimum at Work.

Mai72

Lifer
Sep 12, 2012
11,578
1,741
126
Quiet Quitting is doing the bare minimum at work. That is about it. Nothing additional. It sounds a lot like more people are seeking work/life balance to me.

 

Dr. Detroit

Diamond Member
Sep 25, 2004
8,143
608
126
This isn't a new trend, its just that employers aren't as fast to fire your bitch ass for being worthless these days!
 
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Jul 27, 2020
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I stopped being "loyal" to my job when my software solution to a problem allowed my company to make $1.8 million in a single year and all I got was a laughably small "reward". The problem was Excel sheets that needed to be manually formatted by staff to be input into the system. It took six people working from 8 A.M. to 11 P.M. to manage to get 50 files into the system. That's how bad the Excel cell formatting issue was.

My solution was to create a form which would output an XML file which I converted to an Excel file with the correct formatting already applied, using my rudimentary knowledge of C and an Excel library. I also created an intranet using CGI and C later to do away with the form so users could enter data directly on a web page. Suddenly, a single person was able to input 300 files into the system. What did I get for my ingenuity? A measly $5000. The programming experience was pure fun and joy for me but the payoff just killed any desire to pursue it further.
 

Exterous

Super Moderator
Jun 20, 2006
20,348
3,426
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It's a bs term coined up by businesses to keep people working imo

I'm not so sure about that. At a minimum its been coopted by other groups since then. There also seems to be a bit of a debate about what it means - anywhere from 'I'm just working 9-5 and thats it' to 'I completely stopped doing any work for them and am waiting to see how long it takes for them to fire me'
 
Jul 27, 2020
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Thing is, most office work isn't very hard. You can just sit there and bide your time, doing whatever is needed to not raise any complaints about your work. If you are a manager, then it gets a bit complicated as you become in charge of projects and have deadlines to meet and employees that u need to make sure will be productive enough to get stuff done well within the stipulated deadlines. And the kissing up to higher management.
 

KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
29,044
41,729
136
I'm not so sure about that. At a minimum its been coopted by other groups since then. There also seems to be a bit of a debate about what it means - anywhere from 'I'm just working 9-5 and thats it' to 'I completely stopped doing any work for them and am waiting to see how long it takes for them to fire me'
It started to gain a lot of traction from news articles/columns a couple of months ago, it's mainly about doing just enough not to get fired, doing the asbolute bare minimum.

just like in office space

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Exterous

Super Moderator
Jun 20, 2006
20,348
3,426
126
It started to gain a lot of traction from news articles/columns a couple of months ago, it's mainly about doing just enough not to get fired, doing the asbolute bare minimum.

just like in office space
Most of the mainstream news articles about it point to it being much more of a fluid definition with strong correlations to not going above and beyond\setting boundaries as opposed to mainly being about doing the bare minimum. Forum and social media goes a bit further and heads into the "I decided to quit today I just didn't tell anyone. I stopped doing my job and am just waiting for them to fire me" spectrum
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,196
12,025
126
www.anyf.ca
I basically silently quit my last job. I applied for my current job, and got accepted, but they held me at my old job for almost a year because nobody wanted that job and they could not replace me. For that limbo period where I did not know how much time I had at the old job I basically just played Evony all day while tending important tickets. I managed to grow to 10 villages (max the game allows) and managing my troops basically became my full time job, I even had scripts to automate some of it.

I stopped being "loyal" to my job when my software solution to a problem allowed my company to make $1.8 million in a single year and all I got was a laughably small "reward". The problem was Excel sheets that needed to be manually formatted by staff to be input into the system. It took six people working from 8 A.M. to 11 P.M. to manage to get 50 files into the system. That's how bad the Excel cell formatting issue was.

My solution was to create a form which would output an XML file which I converted to an Excel file with the correct formatting already applied, using my rudimentary knowledge of C and an Excel library. I also created an intranet using CGI and C later to do away with the form so users could enter data directly on a web page. Suddenly, a single person was able to input 300 files into the system. What did I get for my ingenuity? A measly $5000. The programming experience was pure fun and joy for me but the payoff just killed any desire to pursue it further.

Sounds like my job, except I wouldn't even get 5k for it. The code would eventually get taken over by our programming contractor (same company that fudged the Obamacare site actually) , they would break it, and then the solution would cease to exist.

I sometimes do code stuff around the office but pretty much only because it makes my life easier. We have 10+ spreadsheet with building info for our sites and the info is a big mish mash and sometimes you even have to cross reference two sheets just to get certain info. I made a DB system and imported all of this into a system where you can just search for a site name or abbreviation and boom all the info is in front of you. I was actually hoping for this to get more use but nobody but me really uses it. I was surprised when they approved an official server for me to put it on instead of a VM running on an XP machine, but the new server won't work over the new VPN and the entire thing has been down for about a month now... so yeah, so much for that. I tried. I may need to rewrite it as a desktop application and have the information stored on a shared drive that way it's not relying on a server.
 
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Jul 27, 2020
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but the new server won't work over the new VPN and the entire thing has been down for about a month now... so yeah, so much for that.
My IT guy threw out the XP Core 2 Duo machine hosting my intranet after it was superseded by a fat ASP.NET web app. I didn't even get to say goodbye to it, or take a working copy of it. Found out weeks after it was gone.

Us techies are so under-appreciated. The fat app is now going to be migrated to Azure at a minimum cost of $10,000 per month. That's how bad it is performance-wise. Two load balanced 4 core Cascade Lake IIS VMs totally succumb under CPU load of about a 100 users connecting to that app. My C CGI executable handled 200+ users on two cores and it was also my work machine. Rarely would I feel things slowing down.
 

Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
30,244
10,748
136
My IT guy threw out the XP Core 2 Duo machine hosting my intranet after it was superseded by a fat ASP.NET web app. I didn't even get to say goodbye to it, or take a working copy of it. Found out weeks after it was gone.

Us techies are so under-appreciated. The fat app is now going to be migrated to Azure at a minimum cost of $10,000 per month. That's how bad it is performance-wise. Two load balanced 4 core Cascade Lake IIS VMs totally succumb under CPU load of about a 100 users connecting to that app. My C CGI executable handled 200+ users on two cores and it was also my work machine. Rarely would I feel things slowing down.


That's because people only care about tech when it doesn't work and then suddenly it's "top priority" but soon as the immediate problem is corrected it's onto the "back burner" IT goes, at least until the next crisis and nobody wants to hear about it before then!
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,196
12,025
126
www.anyf.ca
My IT guy threw out the XP Core 2 Duo machine hosting my intranet after it was superseded by a fat ASP.NET web app. I didn't even get to say goodbye to it, or take a working copy of it. Found out weeks after it was gone.

Us techies are so under-appreciated. The fat app is now going to be migrated to Azure at a minimum cost of $10,000 per month. That's how bad it is performance-wise. Two load balanced 4 core Cascade Lake IIS VMs totally succumb under CPU load of about a 100 users connecting to that app. My C CGI executable handled 200+ users on two cores and it was also my work machine. Rarely would I feel things slowing down.


They actually did the same with my old web server before it got transferred over to the officially approved one. I got lucky with that. Basically they've been trying to get rid of XP and 7 machines so they just send a "kill" update that completely trashes the machine. My workstation actually got hit during a night shift. That was fun.... PC basically started to get very slow and sluggish to the point that it locked up. When I rebooted, got hit with NTLDR is missing. Machine was completely trashed. Good thing I had backups, the file system was basically corrupted. Happened to a few other coworkers too.

I was scheduled to be switched to my windows 10 machine but there was still a few things that didn't work, so help desk still had to sort that out. We basically have two IT departments, our local one that does our actual IT stuff, they are decent but very under staffed. But then there is this other one out of province, that does their own thing, like forcing reboots, doing GPOs, inventory etc. They basically are more on the security side but they are very nazi about it, even our local IT have no say in what they do or how they operate.
 
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Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
30,244
10,748
136
Having "off-site" support staff succeeds in mostly removing "local company politics" from IT security however it often also leads to poor communication and completely being out of touch with the actual issues users have to deal with.

It's bad enough when the people you need to work with are in the next town over but when they're in another time-zone or exponentially worse based internationally and English is a 2ed (or 3rd!) language, these problems are only compounded.
 

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
11,567
2,626
136
It started to gain a lot of traction from news articles/columns a couple of months ago, it's mainly about doing just enough not to get fired, doing the asbolute bare minimum.

just like in office space

View attachment 66284
View attachment 66285
I thought exactly of this character when reading the thread title.

Hilarious it was after hypnosis.

Also, his ex in that film is George Stephanopoulos' wife.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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i worked 12 to 18 hour days last week because i'm a loser
The toll it will take on your health isn't worth it, unless you really really enjoy the work, the workplace is very nice (free food!) and there is no vampire/dinosaur/dickwad breathing down your neck. And there are cute girls there who are nice and friendly with you and charge your hormones right up to 100 percent :p
 
Nov 17, 2019
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I sort of did this this over 10 years ago. I was alone on midnights at a 911 dispatch. Most nights there was nothing to do between 1 and 6 AM .... literally NOTHING at all unless the phones rang. Then all hell could break loose right quick.

On those many dead still nights, I used to do all sorts of stuff just to keep busy and stay awake. I can't even begin to recall all of the things, but things like computer maintenance, paperwork file cleaning, sweeping floors ... whatever could be done.


But then they did a few things to irk me. I stopped doing ALL of those other things. I did NOTHING at all during the dead times. I'd get up and walk around, or jog in place or whatever was necessary to stay awake, but NO work.

That lasted about a year until I figured I'd be OK if I sort of semi-retired.
 

TXHokie

Platinum Member
Nov 16, 1999
2,557
173
106
I don't know about quiet quitting but I'm coasting til retirement and the work still gets done with some quality and on time. I just automated most of it and free up my time for naps and personal errands. What's the problem?
 
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Lee_Bo

Junior Member
Feb 15, 2020
5
2
51
I got my degree at my previous company during office hours. I figured as long as coworkers were doing it and getting away with it, I would to.


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