Thoughts on 'quiet quitting'

Seems like the media latched onto a relatively small trend and blew it up to seem like a bigger deal. There is some truth that workers are sick of going above and beyond without being compensated properly with money or promotions from the effort.

Seems like a silly title for them to make up. "Quitters" implies quitting and they're still meeting the job requirements work-wise, just not doing "extra". If I were working a retail/foodservice job and I didn't get any kind of bonus or other performance-based incentive why the hell would I want to do extra? Not everyone is looking to to climb a career ladder and if anything people in general should be thankful for that. 

Biggest piece of media nonsense since the dad bod 

I agree with the other commenters that I dislike the term since it literally isn't quitting at all, nor is it quiet since it's not like you're ignoring your boss or something

In terms of the actual practice of not going the extra mile, I think it raises a big concern. If we assume that more people are coasting now vs before that indicates that there's something really bad happening in our workplaces. My perspective is that far fewer people are as invested in their career ambitions & relationships with coworkers in a remote environment. We know that e-learning isn't very good for student passion, I'm not surprised that e-working isn't very good for worker passion

I’ve had discussions about this with a few people at work. Misc thoughts below in no particular order:

• I think “quietly re-balancing” would have been a better term. More and more people are tired of the rat race and they are simply redirecting their energy towards more crucial parts of life (eg family).

• As with anything in life, there needs to be an optimal balance. Without overachievers and people going above and beyond, the US would not have become the world leader in innovation. In a more extreme example, lives have been saved because people have gone beyond the job description (think of soldiers who went beyond the call of duty, Medal of Honor winners, etc.).

• As it relates to finance specifically, a work-life rebalancing is long overdue. I did my analyst years before the introduction of things like protected weekends and I’m in full support of the industry moving away from its 1990s/2000s mentality (eg it’s somehow glorious that you are eating out of styrofoam boxes and sleeping under your desk).

• Finance is a high achiever, Type A industry. You cannot escape doing “more than normal work hours” once in a while and I think people get it heading into the industry. That being said, there are certainly tons of excess fat that can be trimmed. For example, consistently getting comments at 9pm just so you can rearrange logos in PowerPoint is just dumb and disrespecting people’s time. Also, creating work “for the sake of work” (eg thicker decks = better look to clients) is just dumb (I’m on the buyside now and I don’t read 85% of slides I get).