Quiet Firing: A Valuable Advance Warning

Quiet quitting is the new buzzword for an old phenomenon: doing just enough to keep one's job. Many employers notice, and that could lead to quiet firings. [bold added]

quiet firing refers to minimizing an employee’s significance. Companies have always had subtle ways to nudge people out the door. Tactics include sidelining them by cutting responsibilities or denying promotions and raises to make someone miserable enough to leave—what the gang in legal calls a “constructive discharge” and the rest of us know as managing out.

As noted in the quote, these phenomena are nothing new. Workers should always be sensitive enough to the company vibe (it may be the industry, not the company, that is giving off the negative signals) to be on the lookout for a landing spot.

If the timing's right, one can have a new job in hand before the employer issues the pink slip. Then one can receive severance, maybe even collect unemployment benefits and take a break between jobs.

Being quietly fired is a valuable advance warning to prepare for your real firing, which in order to do correctly requires more work than when you were quiet quitting.