“I recently learned about this term called quiet quitting, where you’re not outright quitting your job, but you’re quitting the idea of going above and beyond,” reads this NPR article about “Quiet Quitting”, the latest term for the age old concept of doing only what you’re payed to do.
Watching this term trend has made me think of things I’ve learned throughout my career as a software engineer. Here are some random bullet points
- Companies are structured to get all they can out of employees. From the moment a hiring decision is made, a company will try to get a new hire to take the lowest salary possible. After that, they’ll try to squeeze as much as they can from them. Keep that in mind.
- Did I mention companies try to squeeze as much as they can from employees? They’ll create a culture where employees essentially donate their personal devices, cell, and data plans to the company. Do you have company MSTeams, Slack or whatever else installed in your personal phone? There you go.
- “Above and beyond” is turned into the standard to get to the upper echelons. You may have heard the term “+1s”, or what in school was called “extracurricular activities”. Did I mention companies squeeze as much as they can from employees?
- There are times it is absolutely necessary to go “above and beyond”. The days leading up and during a production release are a good example. Yes, it is crunch time with crazy hours to get a piece of software into production and yes, things go on production during a weekend. This is fine. This is ok and rewarding… if your project is actually helping people.
- Going up the ladder in a company is a must to make more money. Having said that, you don’t have to keep going up. Will going to the next level mean you’ll have to do a job you hate? Will going to the next level mean you’ll have to sacrifice life with your loved ones? Know when to say “enough”.
Bottom line: don’t give all to a company and your career without personal reflection.