Why would you not try to do your best at work?

‘Quiet quitting’ – not going above and beyond in the office – has become the norm for many Gen Ys. Are they missing the point, wonders confirmed workaholic Kate Bussman – or she should take a leaf out of their book?

One particular episode from my 20s neatly encapsulates how extreme a workaholic I used to be. It was late on a Friday or Saturday night, I was on a date and, finding ourselves by my office, I asked if he minded me popping in to get my gym bag. As I leant under my desk, my computer woke up, and I saw some new emails from Los Angeles-based contacts. I tapped out a reply to one, and then another, and headed back to the lift. But without realising it, 15 minutes had gone by, and my date was slouched on a sofa in the lobby, rightly fuming. It’s not my finest moment. But it didn’t teach me a thing.

For those of us who came of working age in the 1990s, workaholism was standard. Presenteeism wasn’t just expected, it was the only option; the first company I worked for didn’t even have email when I first started there, let alone Zoom calls and the possibility of WFH. When I was a university fresher, we were emerging from a recession, and the optimism of the 1980s was gone: instead, fearful we’d never find a job, myself and many friends worked every holiday in unpaid internships, bowing, scraping and fetching tea for bosses who we hoped would let us on to the first rung of the ladder.

So it’s no wonder, really, that we midlifers find the “quiet quitting” phenomenon utterly baffling. As we emerge, again, from a period of wealth into a possible recession, many of today’s 20-somethings are not buckling down and trying to impress their bosses. Far from it. Instead, if we’re to believe the Gen Y TikToker Zaid Khan, who took the term mainstream, it is “not outright quitting your job but quitting the idea of going above and beyond. You’re still performing your duties but you’re no longer subscribing to the hustle-culture mentality that work has to be your life. The reality is it’s not, and your worth as a person is not defined by your labour.” The backlash from those of us who have spent an entire career burning out from that “above and beyond” was swift, and to my eyes not a little defensive; Gen Y’s reaction to that backlash was pretty entertaining. “Doing your job is actually quitting, sources say,” joked one Twitter wag; “They’re panicking because people are ‘acting their wage’,” said another.

For those in the HR world, however, quiet quitting is one aspect of a broader, and far more seismic shift in the way we work. That shift is in what’s called the “psychological contract” of work, which is to say, the unwritten code that defines how bosses and employees interact, and how we expect to be treated. For an eternity, it’s often looked like a parent-child relationship; a relic,

‘People are taking more control of their relationship with work than ever before’

‘Ambition used to mean climbing the ladder, but now it means being ambitious for yourself ’

one might argue, of the feudal system. But after the hierarchy-flattening effect of Zoom calls and the Covid-induced insight that (shocker!) there may indeed be things more important than your job, people now expect to be treated as trustworthy adults, with equally valid responsibilities outside their nine-tofive. They are starting, too, to see their bosses simply as colleagues, not micromanaging deities who must be obeyed.

Witness what happened when Apple told all its employees to come back to the office full-time – many simply refused, and in an anonymous interview with the FT, one accused the company of “hubris in believing it’s a desirable place to work”. In April, Jacob Rees-Mogg left notes at unattended desks in Whitehall saying: “I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon”, a move that doesn’t seem to have had the desired effect. If that was indeed “passive-aggressive”, as a Labour MP put it, Elon Musk’s email to Tesla employees in June was just plain aggressive: “If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned,” he stormed.

Like many of my peers, I am wildly conflicted about all this. Pandemic WFH compounded my workaholism, removing any boundaries between work and home until I was emailing at 7am and 11pm, just as I did before I had a husband or child to think of. But I like my job, and I’m ambitious; and after several years job-sharing while my son was younger, I recently quit that parttime role in order to go back to full-time – to work more hours. So reading about this Gen Y-led attempt to put work back into its box, to avoid the burnout of hustle culture, is fascinating. Khan is right in at least one way: your worth as a person is not defined by your labour. Could there be something in it for us midlifers to learn?

“I think quiet quitting does have some positives – people are taking more control of their relationship with work than I think we’ve ever seen before,” says Sarah Ellis, co-host of the podcast Squiggly Careers, and co-author of the book of the same name. “It’s people saying, ‘I’m more than my work.’ During the pandemic, people asked more questions about their careers and work-life fit than ever, and probably for the first time that I’ve seen in my career, where they’re not happy they’re challenging their employers. I could never have imagined having the confidence in my 20s to say, for instance, being full-time in the office doesn’t work for me.

“But if quiet quitting is doing the bare minimum, it will get demotivating really quickly,” she warns. “I think where this has come from, and I even saw it on a few WhatsApp groups this week, is that the amount of what’s described as ‘discretionary effort’ that’s required of people – going above and beyond – is no longer occasional, it’s constant. I saw an example this week of a woman in a job who’s also being asked to do some of the job a level above her, and some of the level below – and they won’t give her a pay rise. At that point, you can really see why people opt out. Those organisations will lose people, because there are others that are much more progressive.”

But far from there being a trend for checking out amongst midlifers, she’s seeing the opposite, and increasingly hearing from women who, with postpandemic clarity, are challenging the old adage that you can’t have it all, that you can only prioritise career or family, and they’re challenging the very concept of ambition itself. “Ambition used to mean climbing the ladder, but now it means being ambitious for yourself,” says Ellis; their term “squiggly career” denotes the idea that you don’t have to just climb a ladder, and shouldn’t be defined by job title or seniority. “I’ve spoken to quite a few people over the past year, particularly women in their 40s, who are feeling more ambitious. After having compromised their careers, because women still are the primary carers, they’re rediscovering some confidence, and wanting to either restart or accelerate.”

She could be describing me – but she’s also describing her own husband, an accountant who resigned and decided to take the summer off before seeking a new job. A woman I know left an always-on senior role in the music industry, retrained as a financial advisor and now works in school hours only. But, of course, you don’t just have to quit to take control of your “work-life fit”. Deborah Joseph, editor-in-chief of Glamour magazine, advocates what she calls the “70 per cent life” – prioritising what matters, and letting the other 30 per cent slide. Or you could move to Portugal, where parliament banned employers from contacting workers out of hours; it may not be coincidental that in recent years the nation has sped the fastest up the Economist’s glass-ceiling index, a measure of the role and influence of women in the workforce in

OECD countries.

Ultimately though, Ellis would like to see a trend for the opposite of quiet quitting, citing the example of a woman who posted publicly on LinkedIn about the reasons she quit her job at Meta. “Leaving loudly” is what she calls it. Doesn’t that sound more fun?