Heh, I’ve seen this personally. I work for a Japanese company, and part of my job is coordinating tooling installations with the factory I’m stationed at (pick a chip fab in the US, I’ve probably been there). When we get a tool onsite, I get an install team directly from our factory in Japan who handles all the physical installation aspects. They work hard, efficiently, and with the utmost care for the finer details (some of these tools are expected to last 20+ years - we have a few that have been in production for nearly as long with very little fuss). Occasionally, they will finish their tasks early the last couple days and take off after lunch, letting me know of this beforehand and that their daily reports will be sent to me and other relevant managers at the “usual” time, with a wink and a nod.
I don’t care how much time they clock, as long as shit gets done properly. Haven’t had any issues.
How is this related to quiet quitting?
Considering the article specifically mentions Japan, and that typical Japanese work culture is quite literally the opposite of what I’ve observed, I think this is very related.
Generally, leaving work early in Japan is (was?) seen as lazy and a sign of a morally dubious person. Keep in mind that, traditionally, people in Japan are expected to work 12-16 hour days with no complaints and, for businesspeople, sleep at the office if there is a lot of work to be done.
The fact that people are eager to leave early and don’t think of it as inherently shameful signifies a huge shift in culture.
Japanese work culture often meant staying late and working unpaid overtime to appear extra-productive. Now you’ve got an anecdote describing people who finish the job, consider their work done, and cut out early despite not having fulfilled an arbitrarily dictated number of hours worked. It is a sharp reversal in behavior.
The Japanese work ethic doesn’t even make sense and does more harm than good. If you don’t have time for yourself or family the society will collapse (already happening). To be clear, I’m not talking about being diligent work, but working 8+ hours every single day.
Many Japanese don’t leave work at 5pm even though those are the official business hours because it’s rude to leave before the boss leaves. So people stay at work until 7 or 8pm. Many times having to also go drinking with co-workers or the boss. So, depending on the day, you may end up with 1-2 hours for yourself. No wonder they aren’t having children, and depression rates are sky high.
Same applies to Korea.
This is what happens in societies that have increasing income inequality.
Why should workers feel compelled to bust their asses when it benefits their bosses, but not themselves?
so goes Japan, so goes the world!!! ive been quiet quitting since i entered the work force
Thank goodness. Now when im napping during work I can feel less guilty thinking about Japan doing it too.
When you’re napping, know that someone in Japan is also asleep, but largely because of the time change.
Thanks friend. Lol
ow when im napping during work I can feel less guilty thinking about Japan doing it too.
if questioned, tell your Boss, you are practicing a japanese work ethic
Good
Fuck the term quiet quitting. Call it what it is, doing your job.
Employee burnout is a symptom of a toxic work culture, and “quiet quitting” is a corporate psyop invented to prevent you from noticing it.
Wtf is quiet quitting
“Businesses can no longer rely solely on the goodwill of employees that they have financially and emotionally abused to the point of class collapse.”
People are just doing the bare minimum and that’s not ok by the CEO.
It’s doing the bare minimum, sometimes below the minimum so that they have to fire you. Like how you would act if your boss yelled at you for no reason and you no longer care about your job.
So is the goal to actually get fired? Or to just not go for a promotion? I’m a little confused.
Or is it the guy from office space? “[make a guy]…work just hard enough to not get fired.”
Edit: Oh… I’ve got a good way to help clarify this…
Another office space reference, but I think this quantifies it well:
So if they ask you to wear 37 pieces of flair, is quiet quitting wearing 35, 36, 37, or 38 pieces of flair?
-
and that’s a write up for explicit underperformance and en route to being let go.
-
is basically the same thing but could be taken as a technicality or mistake.
-
is technically right, but a lot of shitty bosses will have a fit with their own standards and be all passive aggressive about it, and may even rock the boat until they have to fire you.
-
is juuust above the bare minimum, so they can’t say shit, but you won’t be getting a promotion anytime soon.
And anything above that, I’m just going to categorize as not quiet quitting for sake of simplicity. Don’t worry about performance percentages, that’s not the point here.
“[make a guy]…work just hard enough to not get fired.”
This one.
The goal is apathy. How can I put in the absolute minimum amount of effort to not get fired with the mindset that if I did get fired it wouldn’t be the end of the world. It generally comes from feeling like you aren’t appreciated or properly compensated from your job.
I think the guy from office space with the “work just hard enough to not get fired” sums it up perfectly
It’s not a new concept as office space made a joke about it in the 90s but it’s a current buzzword and becomes more applicable as the gap between C suites and average employees continues to grow
-
It’s corporate media term for doing what your job requires, but not giving your time to companies for free
Corpo media licking boots so hard they’re literally breathless
Corpos own the media, so they’re literally just the trumpets of money hoarders
No one gives their time to a company for free. That’s volunteering. Getting paid doesn’t mean you’re quiet quitting.
Quiet quitting means doing the absolute minimum not to get fired, showing no initiative or ambition. Employers often expect you to work extra hard and do a bunch of bonus work to try to get promoted or a raise. They believe all this extra work is part of what they’re paying for. But an employee who has quiet quit will do none of that, accept that the job is a dead end job, and just do the minimum to keep from getting fired.
People do give their time to companies for free- it’s called working free overtime and tons of people do it (exempt employee pain), which is why employers are not happy with the change. What my comment says is just the short version of what you’re saying- you’re doing what the job requires and no more
But why quitting?
Why not
Quiet Cocooning
because if you’re not giving your all to the company, are you really working?
Japan has strong worker protections. It is very difficult to fire an employee in Japan, without showing that the employee committed a crime. Employees can do practically nothing at work and still get paid. Call in sick as much as they want and the only penalty is not getting paid sick days once they run out of paid sick leave and vacation days. If an employer does mass layoffs, they have to show that the company is on the verge of bankruptcy and they have tried everything else, including reducing the pay of executives or removing executive positions before firing employees. Elon Musk is in hot water in Japan for mass firing Twitter employees in Japan. He violated Japanese labor laws.
It’s a different culture altogether, where a job is expected"for life", which also makes it difficult to quit a job. People are literally hiring other people to deliver their resignation notices because it’s impossible to do in person.
No, not that I have seen. Job for life is some outdated Boomer generation shit. When people want to quit they just quit. But quitting on your own may mean no unemployment benefits. When an employer wants a worker to leave, for whatever reason, they come to ask the employee to resign and offer them some money for agreeing to quit. Usually about 3 months pay. The employee can also collect unemployment benefits for several months if the resignation is at the request of the employer. So if you want to quit, it’s better to make your boss want you to leave, without committing any crimes. That way they ask you to resign. Much better than it was in the USA.
Japan has strong worker protections
this doesn’t apply to contractors and part-time employees, AFAIK
That was several years ago, so surely the water isn’t that hot. Have they tried bringing it to a rolling boil yet?
As with most governments, Japan has a justice system that works slowly and methodically. Thousands of workers were not given their required notice or severance pay when they were unilaterally terminated. Twitter / Musk cannot make the case that the company was on the verge of bankruptcy and didn’t even bother trying to. He just assumed because workers have no rights in the USA that he could do the same thing in Japan that he does in America. By not paying the workers their severance or giving them proper notice he opened himself up to each individual having the ability to sue him for at least a year’s salary, probably more. The government can also attach additional fines and penalties because they have to dish out unemployment benefits for all of those workers because Musk broke the law. The water will boil when it boils and it won’t stop.
Ooh, ‘boil the billionaires’ has a nice ring to it
So when the CEO of Nintendo cut his salary due to the poor sales of the Wii U and every American tech writer praised him for it, that was just common practice in Japan?
He voluntarily cut his salary in half. That’s more along the lines of taking responsibility than shoring up the company. CEO pay is a tiny percentage of revenue, despite what lemmy thinks. To make a serious dent, pay would have to be cut across all the C suite, and much deeper.
CEO pay is a tiny percentage of revenue, despite what lemmy thinks
It is the most obvious symptom of the problem, that’s for sure, no wonder it’s the most targeted
Every thread where you see “ceo of failing company gets $3M bonus” followed by “those workers could have used that” ignores the fact that there are so many employees that, divided evenly, it’s never more than $5, and frequently less than a dollar.
Yes, that’s technically better than nothing. And I agree the CEO doesn’t deserve a bonus if their company is failing. But focusing on this is missing the bigger picture of the lack of workers’ rights in America, and paints a target on the wrong people (CEOs instead of the government).
They have to try reducing or eliminating the costs at the upper levels before trying to fire the wage slaves in Japan, so yes.
Yea, every article using the term quiet quitting is getting a down vote. Doing what you’re paid for is simply doing your job. This is basically akin to getting mad you didn’t get a tip. A TIP IS OPTIONAL.
Whoa dude, Americans can see this! Don’t say that!
Ohh, right…
I should make that part bigger.
Doing just what you’re paid for and not one bit more is called “Work to Rule” and it’s just total bullshit that it’s an effective labour tactic of resistance, because it implies that exploitation is part of the expectation in capitalism.
People want to do a good job and employers milk that.
Tipping is optional but in the US many tipped employees are making $2.35/hr. They’re paid a minimum of min wage after tips, but their tips first have to cover them to minwage
You’re doing exactly as much as required? How rude of you.
I mean, that’s not what quiet quitting is. Quiet quitting is doing the bare minimum to not get fired from your job, which is different from the bare minimum that would be reasonably expected of you. Most of the time, if your employer actually knew how much work you were doing, they would want to fire you, and it would be for-cause, because you are doing essentially nothing.
This is possible because many workplaces have very little accountability. One of the classic moves is to always be working on multiple projects - so anytime someone asks you to do something, you say “I dunno how quickly I’ll be able to get that done, I’m pretty swamped from X” - at which point everyone sagely nods and agrees that the team working on X is definitely swamped.
If your bosses actually knew that you were just lying, and were spending 7.5 hours everyday playing video games, you’d be fired. But since they don’t know that, you can keep getting paid for showing up to a few meetings every week. That’s what quiet quitting is.
I have never seen the term used the way you describe. Because doing that is definitely not doing your job and grounds for termination if they ever found out.
… yeah. That’s the “quitting” part. You aren’t doing your job, but you are quiet about it so you keep getting paid. That’s what this phrase means.
Hence the quietness
So what does it mean in the context of Japan, where employees cannot be fired except under exceptional circumstances?
I dunno. I’m not Japanese.
The phrase “quiet quitting” really grinds my gears. Are you fulfilling the terms of your employment contract? Yes? Then you’re working, and haven’t quit.
I’m not quiet quitting, I’m doing exactly the work I am paid to do and no more of the extra stuff I’m not paid to do.
deleted by creator
From what I’ve read, Japan’s work ethic has been more about presenteeism than productivity for a while. While long hours are the norm, it’s more important to be seen to be working than to be productive, so you don’t leave before the boss does, but you do spend a large amount of that time staring out the window or otherwise idling.
I always used to get from bosses, “Hicks! How come you’re not working?”
I go, “There’s nothing to do!”
And they go, “Well, you pretend like you’re working.”
Yeah, why don’t you pretend I’m working? You get paid more than me, you fantasize, buddy! Hell, pretend I’m mopping! Knock yourself out! I’ll pretend they’re buying stuff, we can close up! Hey, I’m the boss, now you’re fired! How’s that for a fantasy, buddy?
- Bill Hicks
I worked at a place where basically every other department would stand in the lobby at 4:58 PM, waiting for accounting (which was on the other side of the building) to leave. If you didn’t wait, the CEO would likely see you from his office window and you’d be getting a “talking to” by your supervisor the next day. I have never before or since worked anywhere where I’ve seen so much collective time wasting, trying to keep up the appearance of being busy.
This was an American company. I don’t miss that shit hole in the slightest.
America has a mentality of “I’m paying you for your time, not the quality of your work.” Even if you complete the work assigned to you they will throw a hissy fit if you leave one minute early because that is one minute they are paying you that you arent available if something goes wrong.
It’s all ass backwards because it is cheaper in the short term to pay for cheap labor with low reliability and high availability than for expensive labor with high reliability and medium to low availability. If you take the high availability away from the former you are left with nothing.
Which, as a salaried engineer, is the stupidest fucking thing ever, and something I’ve dealt with over the vast majority of my career. You pay me to solve problems, not warm a chair and look over my shoulder. If you give me stupid metrics to hit (coughRTO metricscough), I’m going to maliciously comply and hit them in a stupid way that you won’t like, but that still abides by the rules and regs. If you are the problem, I will solve you.
That’s what I don’t understand about all this RTO. If a company foces me to come to the office 5 days, I might comply, but I will for sure stop working hard when I am on the office, unless I really love what I am doing, and they pay me a shit ton of money.
If a company wastes my time, I’ll waste theirs.
Doing a good job is also self-defeating.
Managers want to see you grow every year. If you do your best early on in your career, you will hurt your ability to show growth that’s visible to management. Therefore, the optimal solution is to do a better job by a barely perceptible amount every year, staying under your maximum quality output until you’re retired/dead.
The reward for good work is more work
Which isn’t a bad philosophy if the rewards match. If they don’t, why would you do more than the minimum?
depends on what you do. I’ve only seen that when working at a corporate grocery store as a teen. after that I’ve been surprised how it wasn’t that way at all even though I was always told in school it would be that way. every other workplace I’ve been in (office jobs) has treated everyone like an adult. get your work done and do it well and do what you need to do that. I’ve been pretty lucky I guess
You are lucky. Office jobs with stack ranking are rife with backstabbers and politics.
This is one reason I hope to never leave my sweet WFH gig
til I’m Japanese
今こそ日本語の話し方を学ぶ、expatriadoさん。
Duolingoはもう選択肢にないようです
This is also going away (and it’s less staring out the window and more pretending to be busy), but it’s not going to happen overnight, particularly where the micro-managing dinosaurs are still in control. I’ve worked at two (fairly westernized) Japanese companies and have not seen this personally, but know many who have.
I’ve been reading more about the job market in Spain lately and it sounds like they have a similar problem. Not nearly to the extent that Japan does, but similar attitudes about being at work for unnecessarily long hours even if there’s no real point. There doesn’t appear to be any reward, either. I don’t blame people for declining to participate.
It is seen as a positive to fall asleep at work because it means you’re working hard 😂
From the original reporting in the Japan Times:
Some 45% of full-time employees in Japan are “quiet quitters” — workers doing the bare minimum to meet their job requirements
Oh, no! People are doing their jobs! What a disaster!
I much prefer the term “acting your wage”. I’m not doing the bare minimum - I’m doing what I’m paid for. You want me to do more? Guess what, there’s one way to motivate me to do so…
Let me guess… pizza!
Office pizza parties on fridays and free water & fruits. Basically the benefits any start-up offers for your hard work…
Goddamn I wish they’d stop using “quiet quitting”
