This one article was originally published on .sect by means of Luis Minvielle. .cult is a Berlin-based community platform for developers. We write about all things career, make original documentaries and share tons of other untold developer stories from around the world.

Stop quietly is a whole new way of approaching work-life balance. Contrary to what the name might suggest, quitting quietly doesn’t really mean an official dismissal from your job. It’s just a transformation in the way employees approach their work.

The catalyst behind this movement is simple yet powerful: a general, overwhelming desire deep in the minds of the new wave of workers, primarily those of Gen Z, to counterbalance the long hours spent behind desks and computers , or in front of another screen.

Generation Z workers are only now entering the workforce, facing the aftermath of the repressed, overworked traditions endured by their millennial predecessors. These traditions are part of a wider belief system ingrained in a culture that values ​​those who dedicate their lives to their work and neglect their personal lives, resulting in a generation of overworked, burdened, burnt out and exhausted individuals.

The demand for work-life balance

So this is where the transformation mentioned above, mainly centered in the tech industries, comes into play. It is essentially the product of going from ‘Above and beyond’ to ‘Acting your pay’. Under this new model, the average worker will no longer accept or tolerate excessive office hours and will take control of his life by prioritizing personal matters over his work duties.

On the surface, this new idea (increasingly popular with younger workers and increasingly lamented by company veterans) seems to respond to a fleeting desire to work less. Still, quitting quietly is a more comprehensive, powerful, and all-encompassing response to a culture where burnout and exhaustion have been normalized until now.

So stopping quietly is a reassuring choice, it’s a growing, powerful revolution that is changing the way the business world approaches its relationship with employees and the mindset of the employees. Employers can no longer expect their employees to prioritize their work over their private life and family.

It’s not just cultural. Many European labor laws protect workers’ right to leeway. Even Elon Musk, who is going through a renewed jack-of-all-trades phase, has trouble shooting (rather than firing) European Twitter workers because of these laws, which prevent employers from contacting staff outside of working hours and also allow them due process before they are fired from their jobs.

Stopping quietly is an important movementbut it also means that you still maintain a relationship with an employer who wields considerable power over you and wastes the precious time you would rather spend on, say, a Developer of 10,000 hours. So why not go for it truly liberating choice to just quit? Of course taking into account all the parameters involved in that decision.

Take the plunge

While quitting quietly made headlines in 2022, actually quitting quietly (pun intended) has become an HR darling. The term “Great Resignation,” as executives and consultancies called it, has also been shaking the professional space for the past two years. During the Great Resignation, more and more professionals left their posts and redefined their careerswhich gives a further twist to the concept of ‘doing what it takes and that’s all’.

Some professionals didn’t change their careers, they simply changed the way they approach their work. A Stack Overflow survey noted that many developers moved from full-time arrangements to freelance, independently operating systems while essentially doing the same thing, entering code.

Even if these insights were motivational for someone struggling with the decision to quit their job (in the sense of “if everyone else is doing it…”), they are not the only truths a struggling employee can use for motivation. While job insecurity and an ominous global recession may make people reconsider quitting, the market tells a different story.

Programmers are in high demand in the tech industry: jobs and pay, like ours salary reports detailed, are abundant. Quitting your job to become a full-time programmer may seem like a scary feat, but as our research tells us, it’s can pay off quicklywith a good bang-for-buck ratio.

The best part? You don’t need a college degree or years of training to break through on the labor market. With a short boot camp you can make a good start. As our deep dive into boot camps revealed, in 2020, 79% of boot camp participants found a job 180 days later complete their training.

Really stop and start again works

Due to the scarcity of job opportunities and the incredibly high demand for skilled programmers, combined with the many accessible options for learning how to program, a job in coding is a very attainable goal. As the insights of the Great Resignation reveal, it is an increasingly popular choice.

A 2020 Report on Coding Boot Camps by Course Report found that the average college graduate had seven years of experience in an unrelated field, a college degree, and no previous programming experience. Making this career-changing move may seem like a big step, but it allows you to free yourself from the constraints of the corporate world and start working on your terms.

Quitting your day job may be the most liberating choice you’ll ever make: You have control over your schedule and more say over who you want to work for. And hey, you can be on the receiving end of a very competitive salary. So while stopping quietly is definitely the more relaxed, most comforting choice, sometimes it can be the more liberating choice to let go of everything and start over in your circumstances.

We hope you have a better idea of ​​what quitting can do for you. We definitely don’t recommend taking it lightly, it’s important to weigh all your choices and do what’s best for you. But hey, if you do make that decision, you can read our article’How do you tell your boss you’re quittingto get inspiration and ideas.