Quiet quitting is a fake term. It was invented by people who think work should be your entire personality and get offended when you don’t answer a Slack message at 8:00 PM on a Tuesday. If someone is doing exactly what’s in their job description and nothing more, they aren’t ‘quitting’—they’re just working. But I get it. As someone who has managed teams for a decade, I know that ‘checked-out’ feeling. It’s when the Zoom cameras stay off, the Slack channel is a graveyard, and projects start to feel like they’re moving through molasses.
The problem is that most managers try to fix this with ‘engagement initiatives.’ They buy a subscription to an app like Donut to force people into random coffee chats, or they schedule a ‘Virtual Happy Hour’ where everyone sits in awkward silence holding a beer in their living room. It’s pathetic. I’ve been that manager. I’ve done the cringey stuff. It never works.
The 2021 Pizza Party Disaster
I remember October 12, 2021, vividly. My team was burnt out. We had just shipped a massive update for a client in Chicago, and instead of feeling proud, everyone just looked… grey. I decided to be the ‘fun boss.’ I sent everyone a $30 UberEats voucher and told them we were having a ‘Digital Pizza Party’ at 4:00 PM.
It was the worst sixty minutes of my professional life. One guy was clearly folding laundry. Another person’s Wi-Fi kept cutting out, so we just saw his frozen face mid-chew for ten minutes. I tried to start a ‘fun’ conversation about hobbies, and the silence was so heavy I could feel it in my chest. I spent $450 of the company’s money to make my team hate me a little bit more. I realized then that you can’t force engagement. You can only build an environment where people actually want to show up. Anyway, I digress. The point is, if you’re thinking about a virtual escape room right now, close the tab. Just don’t.
The data doesn’t lie (even if it hurts)
I’m a bit of a nerd for tracking things. I tracked my team’s Slack response times over 14 Tuesdays in 2022. I wanted to see if our ‘social’ meetings actually helped morale. The results were depressing. On days when we had a ‘fun’ mandatory meeting, response times on actual work tasks increased by 38 minutes in the afternoon. People weren’t energized; they were drained. They were ‘quiet quitting’ the rest of the day just to recover from the forced socialization.
Engaging a remote team is like trying to keep a campfire going in a rainstorm. You can’t just throw more wood on it; you have to build a shelter first.
Most remote teams are drowning in noise. A Slack channel with 50 people is a digital mosh pit. If you want people to engage, you have to stop shouting at them.
Why I hate Donut and other ‘engagement’ garbage
I know people will disagree with me on this, and some HR folks swear by these tools, but I think apps like Donut are the absolute worst. I actively tell my friends to avoid them. There is nothing more soul-crushing than getting an automated ping telling you that you’ve been ‘matched’ for a 15-minute chat with a guy from accounting you’ve never met. It feels like a blind date with someone who smells like ham. It’s forced. It’s inorganic. It treats humans like variables in an equation. If I want to talk to Dave in accounting, I’ll message Dave. Don’t make it a task on my To-Do list.
The part that actually works
If you want to fix the ‘quiet quitting’ vibe, you have to stop managing the clock and start managing the output. It sounds like a LinkedIn cliché, but I mean it. Here is the step-by-step that actually moved the needle for me:
- Kill the daily standup. Most of them are useless. Move it to a thread in Slack. If someone doesn’t post, then you have a 1-on-1. Don’t punish the whole group for one person’s silence.
- Radical Asynchronicity. I used to think—actually, let me put it differently. I used to be obsessed with ‘real-time’ collaboration. I was wrong. The best work happens when people have four-hour blocks of uninterrupted time. Use Loom videos instead of meetings.
- The ‘No-Camera’ Rule. I might be wrong about this, but I honestly believe cameras should be optional for 90% of meetings. Zoom fatigue is real, and staring at your own face for six hours a day is a form of psychological torture.
- Pay for the ‘Third Space.’ Stop sending pizza. Instead, give everyone a $50/month stipend for a local co-working space or even just a coffee shop. Let them get out of their house.
I also have this weird, probably unfair take: I refuse to use the ‘raise hand’ feature on Zoom. It’s for grade schoolers. If you’re a grown adult and you can’t find a gap in the conversation to speak, or use the chat like a normal person, that’s on you. The little yellow hand icon makes me lose respect for people instantly. It’s just too polite for a high-performing team.
A confession about cameras
I used to be the guy who demanded cameras be on. I thought it was about ‘accountability.’ What I realized was that I was just insecure. I wanted to see people nodding so I knew they weren’t ignoring me. That’s a ‘me’ problem, not a ‘them’ problem. Once I stopped caring about seeing their faces, the quality of the work actually went up. People sounded more relaxed. They were probably in their pajamas, and honestly? Who cares?
I tracked 42 projects over 18 months and the ones with the *fewest* meetings always had the highest internal ratings for ‘team satisfaction.’ It’s not rocket science. People like doing their jobs. They hate talking about doing their jobs.
I think 90% of middle managers could be replaced by a well-configured Trello board and nobody would notice for six months. That’s a risky thing to say, but I’ve seen it. The managers who are ‘fixing’ quiet quitting are usually the ones causing it by over-managing.
I don’t have all the answers. I still have days where the Slack channel feels dead and I wonder if everyone has gone to the beach. But I’ve learned to trust the silence. Silence isn’t always disengagement. Sometimes, it’s just people working.
Stop trying to make your employees love the company. Just make it a place where they can do their work and then go live their actual lives. That’s the only fix that stays fixed.
