During COVID, a new term emerged that I didn’t pay much attention to at the time: Quiet Quitting. When I finally looked into it, I was surprised to find a startlingly accurate description of my own behavior at my current Empire. Today, I want to explore whether that label truly applies to me.

What is Quiet Quitting?

Quiet Quitting is essentially doing the bare minimum required to get by in your job—no more, no less. It means choosing not to care about the corporate ladder and refusing to play the game of “getting ahead.” Your job is simply a set of tasks; you don’t care about doing anything extra, and you might actually resist it. 

When I first read this description, my impression was that the behavior isn’t new; only the name is. This mindset exists at every company I’ve ever worked for. The real indicator of a company’s health isn’t whether it has Quiet Quitters, but what percentage of the staff falls into that category.

• At a “Good” Company: Perhaps only 10% to 15% of the staff act this way. The company is typically small or new enough that people still believe in the goals. Eventually, the outliers are weeded out—either they are pushed to work harder and choose to leave, or they are “paid to go away” (fired).
• At a “Bad” Company: Close to 50% or more of the workforce is in the Quiet Quitter boat. These are often larger, older organizations where people have given up. Perhaps they tried to improve things and were told to stop, or they put ideas forward only to be run over by aggressive management. Over time, they learn they cannot change the system, become jaded, and stop trying.

The Two Paths of the Jaded

Once an employee realizes that their pay raise remains the same regardless of effort and that they aren’t on a promotion track, they usually take one of two paths:

1. The Path of Pride: They do the assigned job and produce quality work. They are dependable, but they no longer try to change their career trajectory. Many companies actually rely on these people—the ones who aren’t looking for a promotion but are the only ones who know how the systems work.
2. The Path of Driftwood: They stop caring about the company entirely. They spend their time avoiding work, looking busy, and essentially disappearing. I call this group “Driftwood” or in severe cases “Deadwood.”

Standing Out in the Empire

In a company with 50% Quiet Quitters, it is ironically easy to stand out as a “doer.” If you are smart and work hard in the right places, you look like a rock star by comparison. The “deadwood” around you can actually help your career by providing opportunities to take on important, challenging work.

However, making big changes in such an environment is exhausting. The institutional inertia makes every task feel like rolling a boulder uphill. While these companies might help you land a great title, they are often stale environments that aren’t sustainable for a 30-year career—at least not for your mental health.

Quiet quitting isn’t always easy; it can be soul-crushing to spend 8 hours a day pretending to care about things you don’t. 

The Mid-to-Senior Management Sandbox

This leads me to a unique category of Quiet Quitter that I may belong to: Mid-to-Senior Management.

Many managers in these roles didn’t arrive via a “fast track,” but rather through a “side door”. Large companies often favor external hires because it’s easier to hire someone who already has the title on their resume, even though an insider might understand the people and problems better. Believing in someone you know internally to do something new is harder then hiring a stranger that has supposedly proven themselves

In the best cases, these managers have the drive to make changes—but only if the company actually wants them too. Often, companies just want someone to maintain the status quo or “put lipstick on the pig” to make things look acceptable. Managers are often paid well simply to play the corporate game and not rock the boat.

Learning the Game

In my last role, my first boss wanted changes but offered zero support. My second boss understood the problems, but my third boss didn’t want to know the facts, preferring to listen to “fanboys” and manage by perception.

When facts don’t matter, effort feels futile. I went from a boss who wanted me to bring the “hard truth” to a new boss who just nodded in the meetings. This is the “smoking gun” for why people quit or shut down. It is emotionally exhausting to provide data-driven solutions only to be overruled by “corporate vibes” or optics

I realized I had been “quiet quitting” for three or four years once I understood the boundaries I was allowed to play in. In my experience, middle management roles in service groups (like HR, Finance, or Procurement) are often treated with a “be seen, not heard” attitude. These groups are necessary for daily operations, but they aren’t viewed as core competencies. There is no “winning” in these roles, only degrees of losing.

If these groups do their job perfectly, no one notices. If something goes wrong, everyone screams. When you realize that “perfect” is the baseline and there is no “above and beyond” that actually gets rewarded, the motivation to do more than the minimum evaporates.

The Golden Handcuffs

Why do we go along with it? Golden Handcuffs. We are compensated very well to stay within our predefined sandboxes and keep things from breaking.

So, am I a Quiet Quitter? Yes and no. When I start a job, I’m a “fixer.” I do the heavy lifting in the first year to point the department in the right direction.  When you’re brought in to “save” a department, the adrenaline keeps you engaged. But once the crisis is over and you’ve built a stable system, the company often doesn’t know what to do with a “builder” in a “maintenance” phase. 

Once the new status quo is established and I’m told to stay in my sandbox, I slowly drift into Quiet Quit land.

I am currently nine months into my current job… and the Quiet Quitting has begun. Combine that with only 6 months to go to retirement and it could be quite a slow boring period.