Quiet Firing Represents a Broken System

I’m sure you’ve heard about quiet quitting, as it’s been around for a few years and describes the psychological withdrawal of an employee from their role.

18 months ago, I realised that I’d been quiet fired — wrote a blog post about it and … did nothing. I’m still there, and I’m thinking this whole shower represents a broken tech system that we need to fix.

So…What is quiet firing?

Quiet firing is a relatively common work practice these days. Management and leadership fail to provide coaching, support, and career development to employees with the result that the employee leaves the organization.

It’s poor management. It damages the organization’s position as a nice place to work but also drives a knife into teams.

A New Boss Ignored Me

We had a new boss something like six months into my tenure with this company.

When they first joined, I suggested some ways we might do things better. They wrote down the suggestions and filed them into a folder called “ignore”, which I guess is reasonable.

Then we had no contact, and review time was coming.

Objectives? What Objectives?

The company I work with reviews objectives each and every quarter. When our new boss entered the business, I didn’t have any objectives, and fair enough that wasn’t their fault.

My colleague summed up the company's attitude to objectives when I was new:

“Objectives aren’t important here.”

So perhaps the new boss is simply adhering to the wider culture of our company, so I didn’t let their icy silence worry me.

Performance Review Time

The process at this company is to write up what you’ve achieved in the previous 12 months, review it with your manager who then gives a performance rating.

I wrote myself up, asking three colleagues asking for their feedback about my performance. Everything was set for our performance review.

My boss at the beginning:

“I won’t take up too much of your time.”

As we progressed through the conversation is became obvious that my self-review hadn’t been read. Amusingly my manager claimed I hadn’t given to them (not true).

We rushed through the session in 15 minutes (an hour was scheduled) and they quickly gave me a “satisfactory” rating. I didn’t argue.

The Result

My next performance review was much the same. We never have the meetings to catch up on my progress every quarter (they once scheduled a meeting 6 times, pushing each one back until they simply didn’t bother to make it at all).

Since I don’t get any support, and I’ll only ever be satisfactory (and believe me I am not a satisfactory developer) so I disengaged completely.

Why I Think of This As A Quiet Firing

I’ve been at this company for some time doing the same work. I say work, but I have completed 2 PRs this quarter.

I can only imagine that they aren’t even interested enough as a company to fire me.

I’m lacking:

Coaching
Support
Career development
Human contact
Any work to do

And the job market has limited my opportunities to find another role.

I’m paid pretty well, but if they loud fired me, I guess I’d be able to find a different role pretty fast…we will have to wait and see.

Why This Represents a Broken System

I have no idea how I’m getting away with this.

My work is unacceptable, I’m not putting any effort in and still I’m being paid a good salary.

The fact this is even possible is astonishing to me.

Then I saw this:

As an industry how do we allow this to happen? Is it just due to a disinterest in people and a focus on machines and software? Please do let me know in the comments.

Conclusion

If the industry continues to treat people as reusable parts in a machine that can be swapped in and out, we are going to see poor outcomes.

That is, poor career development, poor code and poor end user experience. Surely nobody wants that?