loud quitting

Doing only the work explicitly required by your job description — no unpaid overtime, no extra projects. Technically still employed, mentally checked out. The 2022 Gen Z labor mantra that gave HR departments a quiet panic. Productive in moderation; corrosive in extremes.

An act or instance of the ceasing of overachieving at one's workplace.

Gradually making an employee's job miserable — no promotion, no growth, no feedback, stripped-down projects — until they quit on their own. Legally safer for the company than firing; emotionally more damaging for the worker. 2023 saw the term become an HR bogeyman.

The deliberately positive flip of quiet quitting, coined in a 2022 Washington Post piece by psychotherapist Lesley Alderman: instead of mentally checking out of a job you can't or won't leave, you make small, intentional adjustments — building a friendship with a colleague, taking real breaks, picking up a more interesting side project, redecorating your desk — that quietly improve your day-to-day experience of work. Quiet thriving is framed as an individual coping strategy rather than a structural fix, and is often promoted by HR and wellbeing teams precisely because it asks the employee, not the employer, to do the work of feeling better.

Resigning by simply disappearing — slowly fading out of meetings, stopping replies to email and Slack, eventually not showing up at all — without ever submitting a formal resignation. Borrowed from the dating term "ghosting", ghost quitting became more visible in the post-2020 remote-work era, when employees could be physically absent for days before anyone in management noticed. It is most common in low-engagement hourly or contract roles, but has also been reported among salaried remote workers. HR teams generally treat it as job abandonment and process the exit unilaterally, often with consequences for references.