A new term recently flooded the zeitgeist: letting go. Nearly a quarter, 21% of working Americans say they are quiet leavers themselves, according to an August 2022 ResumeBuilder.com survey of 1,000 workers.
A passing TikTok user zaidleppelin started the conversation with a video he posted on July 25. “I recently learned about this term called ‘soft exit,’ where you’re not completely quitting your job, but you’re giving up the idea of going above and beyond,” he says. in the video, which has amassed 3.4 million views as of this article’s publication.
With so many people weighing in, the term has since evolved to encompass a wider set of definitions.
“To me, silencing comes back to setting your boundaries on what your results will look like in your work,” Amanda Henry, who made a series of videos on the topic on TikTok, tells CNBC Make It.
“For some, that might just mean doing the bare minimum because that’s all they have to give at the moment for a variety of reasons. For others, it just means not burning yourself out.”
These kinds of attitudes aren’t new: As comedian Josh Gondelman tweeted, the idea of ”mailing it in” has a “rich and storied history.”
However, recent buzz around the term has started a lively discussion about what boundary-setting might look like at work. Here are three millennials who have taken part in quitting smoking quietly and a look at who might be kicked out.
‘I will not tire myself again’
Daniella Flores, who uses the pronouns they/them, was working in IT at a financial company in June 2021 when they decided to go silent. Eventually, they quit their jobs altogether.
“A lot of people who work in technology and IT have this problem where it’s really rare early in your career to work 40 hours a week,” says the 32-year-old Port Orchard, Washington-based man. At the time, they worked 50 to 60 hours a week.
At some point they realized that the extra time they were spending getting last minute tickets and taking on work beyond the scope of their job title wasn’t worth it. When they wanted to get a title and compensation change, they say their boss let them down.
At that moment something clicked. “I will no longer tire myself,” says Flores they decided. They switched teams and told their new boss that they were blocking time in their calendar in advance to focus on their assigned work and avoid unnecessary meetings. This cut their hours to between 40 and 45 per week.
Danielle Flores.
Courtesy Daniella Flores
Flores officially quit their corporate job altogether in June of this year to run their hustle-focused blog I Like To Dabble full-time and take on other creative projects.
“Our institutions must be careful”, they say. “Why are we calling you just doing your job while quietly leaving?”
Leaving alone is a ‘survival tactic’
Maggie Perkins worked as a middle and high school teacher for six years. The 30-year-old, based in Athens, Georgia, quietly started quitting soon after her daughter was born in 2018, when she realized, “if I didn’t leave school right after the contract hours, I would basically be fined from daycare,” she says. . She forced him to create that boundary.
This lit a light bulb. “Within education, above and beyond is not compensated or often not even recognized,” she says. The typical teacher works 54 hours a week, according to a 2022 Merrimack College teacher survey of 1,324 teachers.
Leaving when her day was officially over made Perkins realize, “I don’t need to work 60 hours a week,” she says.
Maggie Perkins.
Courtesy Maggie Perkins
Eventually, she found ways to build boundaries during the school day as well. When her school couldn’t find a sub to fill in for another teacher, for example, and she was asked to fill in during a class that would otherwise be devoted to grading papers and preparing for class, she still used the time to do just that. . She would tell the students she was looking for, “here’s the job you’re going to do and here’s the job I’m going to do.”
Like Flores, Perkins left entirely in 2020 to pursue her doctorate in language and literacy education. An advocate for teachers, she has made a series of TikTok videos about quitting, including one with advice for them specifically how not to take work home and spend your paycheck in the classroom.
For her, leaving it alone is “a survival tactic,” she says. “It’s a coping mechanism. It just breathes more life into a career that I love and miss.”
‘Abandoning silence is a self-care tactic’
For Clayton Farris, a 41-year-old freelance writer and content creator based in Los Angeles, quitting is more about a mindset change than any specific change in his schedule or setting boundaries with an employer.
“Quitting is about allowing yourself to put other things before work without feeling bad about it,” he says.
It’s a change he started making during the pandemic when he found himself constantly worrying about whether or not his customers were happy and where his next job was coming from. Although he usually works about 30 hours a week, with all the anxiety about work even when he wasn’t actively engaged in it, “it felt like I was working 50,” he says.
Clayton Farris.
Courtesy Clayton Farris
Taking that last stand, however, “every time I send an email and I’m waiting for a response,” he says, “I’m literally shutting down my computer and going to the beach.” Worrying about an answer won’t make it come any faster, he says he realized.
“Quitting smoking is a self-care tactic,” he says. It’s about mentally detaching from his work life when he’s not actually doing his job.
For some, borders are ‘a little harder to navigate’
Not all workers feel they can fully participate in the quit trend, says Henry, 30, one of the TikTokers weighing in.
As a black woman in corporate America, Henry says, the situation is more complicated. “For us, it’s a little more difficult to navigate setting those boundaries because we always have to prove ourselves and go beyond and just be seen.”
Although she doesn’t identify as a quiet leaver herself, during her eight years in the workforce, she’s learned to stand up for herself and set boundaries around what she will and won’t take on.
Henry hopes that there is a future in which everyone can participate in this kind of decision-making.
“Because of the seismic shift we’re seeing with this new generation, I hope it hits us a little sooner,” she says of minority groups like hers. “That way we can also take our foot off the gas. You know, for a lot of us, we’re just proving that we deserve to be in these spaces.”
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