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Are you being fired without a fuss? It happens more often than 'quietly leaving'

You might not be 'quietly quitting'; you might be 'quietly fired.'

"A lot of talk about 'quiet quitting,' but not much talk about 'quiet firing,' which is when you don't give someone a raise in 5 years even though they keep doing everything you ask them to," read a tweet from earlier in August, which got 18,000 likes and followers agreeing with it.

"Quiet firing" is pretty much the opposite of "quiet quitting." Quitting quietly means you don't agree that employees should go above and beyond.

According to a now-viral post by a recruiting expert, this is when employers quietly cut the amount of work they give an employee or avoid talking to them about moving up in the company until the employee gets so frustrated that they quit.

Bonnie Dilber, a recruitment manager in Seattle, says that "quiet firing" happens "all the time" and is "rife." This is why "quiet firing" should be talked about instead of "quiet quitting."

In a LinkedIn post that has gone viral, Dilber wrote about the signs that an employee is being "quietly fired," which is often a sign of bad management.

"You don't get feedback or praise, you get raises of 3% or less while others get much more, and your one-on-one meetings are often canceled or moved," she wrote.

The recruitment expert says the concerning trend is employers 'quietly firing' employees.
The recruitment expert says the concerning trend is employers “quietly firing” employees.
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On top of that, other signs included not being asked to work on "cool" projects, not being told "critical" information about your job, or your boss never talking to you about how to move up in your job.

Like quiet quitting, it has less to do with how loudly you say you want to leave your job and more to do with what happens around it, in this case mostly what other people do.

"It works well for businesses...

"Eventually, you'll either feel so incompetent, alone, and unappreciated that you'll go find a new job, and they'll never have to deal with a development plan or offer severance," Dilber wrote. "Or your work will get so bad because you don't have enough help that they'll be able to fire you."

The post resonated with a lot of people.
According to Seattle-based recruitment manager Bonnie Dilber, “quiet firing” happens “all the time” and is “rampant,” which is why it should be the focus of conversation instead of “quiet quitting.”
LinkedIn / Bonnie Dilber

Her post got more than 20,000 likes and several hundred comments, and many people agreed with her or said they'd seen something similar at work.

"I had that happen to me. "As a manager, I was left out, put down, ignored, and had doors slammed in my face during important meetings where I should have been," one user wrote. "It was scary and embarrassing to have to ask what was going on all the time."

Some people said that both of these trends might just mean that employers and employees need to be more open with each other.

"In both cases, it's a bad relationship that's been going on for too long, but people just don't want to end it," they wrote.

Dilber said that instead of worrying about quiet quitters, companies should look at their management practices and find places where people are being "quiet fired" by bad managers who don't want to do the work to support, train, and coach their teams.

Now, Dilber is responding to the many commenters who have written about being "quietly fired" by offering support, advice, and some empathy.

She said, "We need to be brave enough to have the hard talks."

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