The term ‘quiet quitting’ may be new to our collective lexicon, but is the phenomenon really that novel? According to this Los Angeles Times article, we were already ‘quiet quitting’ in the 1990s—it’s just that, back then, it was called ‘coasting’. 

So why the sudden surge in interest? The term came to prominence when a career coach named Bryan Creely mentioned it on his TikTok account, @alifeafterlayoff. In this video, Creely references a Business Insider article on coasting and talks about the growing number of people who, burnt out from hustle culture and taking advantage of a shrinking labor market, are choosing to do only the “minimum amount of work necessary to maintain their position.” 

By late August, ‘quiet quitting’ had become the hottest buzzword on social feeds since ‘The Great Resignation’, with Google searches for the term reaching their peak during this time. 

However, if we are to truly understand this phenomenon, and what it means for modern businesses and the way they work, it’s necessary to look a little bit deeper.