There’s a lot of talk around quiet quitting. For anyone out of the drift, essentially quiet quitting is giving an employer the bare minimum work you are paid do. It’s work-life balance and new age justice for the employed and against employers. And it seems to be catching on everywhere.
A certain Indian start-up CEO was berated for talking about 16 hour workdays. Right now, Elon Musk is being bashed for asking twitter employees to put in extra hours. And there are countless others who have appalled the ‘people’ with their demands for time & results.
To all those gurus, advisors and intellectuals promoting this trend, I will keep it simple and make three points.
a. Just the same way most cars are not Ferrari LaFerrari’s, most entrepreneurs are not Elon Musk. Yet most new jobs are created by this entrepreneurship led, chaotic start-up economy. We can safely blame capitalism, technology & stock prices for traditional companies not increasing jobs but unemployment has become a key issue everywhere. In India, most innovation is driven by small entrepreneurial start-ups. To be clear, start-ups are not an office and ten computers but the team committed to a mission to change a market (or the world). To give a tiny start-up an opportunity to compete and reform markets, it requires something special from the team. To not deliver something special means death for start-ups. Which in turn means fewer jobs to go around for everyone sooner rather than later. So don’t kill the eco-system for your selfish reasons. Earn your pound in flesh by becoming a critical cog in the team where the impact of losing you is damaging. Trust me, it happens more often than you believe possible.
b. As my favorite ex-boss so eloquently put it, “The employment pyramid in India is very bottom heavy, focus on getting out of the bottom to become visible despite the layers above you.” It’s an unpleasant truth but it makes sense. So evaluate your station in life and ambition very carefully. Quiet quitting makes for the “hindu growth rate” in your career and possibly being buried in the lower rungs of that pyramid. Even Usain Bolt, talented as he may be, needed to put in an exceptional work ethic to hit the top.
c. This point is even more selfish. It’s a crazy big opportunity. Think about it. Most start-ups are understaffed and the breadth of what you can learn is mind-blowing should you choose to extend yourself. If you ever have an entrepreneurial dream of your own, this is the most fertile learning ground, all while you get paid. The cost of learning however has always been application of your mind and effort. When teams are smaller, people are willing to take greater risks on promising team members. When they are well funded, even a role in office administration become a resume war. Think about how this can serve you in your ambition.
In conclusion, I submit that success for top performers and the businesses where they work are not a competitive relationship but a mutual dependency. One cannot exist without the other. That’s my argument. Hope it makes sense to you. That’s it.
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