Transcript: Public quitting videos are spooking managers

This is an audio transcript of the Working It podcast episode: ‘Public quitting videos are spooking managers’

Audio clip from TikTok video
I find out if I’m laid off in 20 minutes. Yeah, I got the email. Holy shit, dude! I am laid off. Wow. That’s crazy. This is how I’m gonna go. So last night at like, 10:00, I got a calendar invite from the COO of my company. I have no idea what this is about. My first suspicion is that I’m getting fired. I’m about to join this Zoom meeting. And I’m gonna film.

Isabel Berwick
Hello and welcome to Working It from the Financial Times. I’m Isabel Berwick.

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When I speak to managers and leaders off the record, one subject comes up again and again: how difficult it is to keep younger staff engaged. Gen Z workers born after 1997 expect flexibility and purpose in their work. They question workplace norms and value transparency. And they’re more willing to quit jobs that aren’t satisfying them. Some younger workers post personal videos about how they left their jobs, or even record the moment they quit or got laid off. They post the videos on platforms like TikTok, a trend known as “Quit-Tok”. But why do they do it? Are they exposing the banality of corporate life, or are they just looking to jump start lucrative careers on social media?

To find out, I’m going to speak to Gabby Ianniello, who quit her job on social media and now runs Corporate Quitter, a platform for people looking to ditch the 9 to 5. I’ll also speak to Rhiannon Rowley, an outplacement consultant who helps people who have been made redundant, and to FT reporter Josh Gabert-Doyon, who wrote a recent hit feature on the Quit-Tok trend.

Let’s get started. Gabby, you quit your job on TikTok. Why did you do that? Could you tell the listeners?

Gabby Ianniello
Yeah. So part of my reason for kind of taking it public was to inspire others to do the same thing. I think the pandemic taught a lot of us that there’s more to life than just kind of sitting in a cubicle and kind of doing the same thing. And so I wanted to show other people as the story was unfolding, like, hey, this is what I’m doing. This is why I quit. If you feel inspired to do the same, you know, follow along or kind of ask yourself, is this the right time for you to do, you know, an exit of sorts? So I found that doing that not only helped me in terms of like, you know, accountability and things like that, but actually helped to foster a larger community and help with the ease of quitting, which is such a daunting thing for so many people.

Isabel Berwick
Yeah. So what was the feedback you got?

Gabby Ianniello
Obviously mixed, so we have people who are like, you’re crazy. Like, you’re not taking your future into account. You know, you’re jumping out of the plane without a parachute. Some people are like, oh, you know, you’re throwing your future away essentially, because I had a great career, I had a great relationship with my employer. I was with a reputable brand. So it just . . . A lot of people are like, we don’t understand. But the people who were in my circles who were around the same age or who had felt the same sort of stress and kind of pain, if you will, during the pandemic and just during their career as an adult had found a lot of solace in finding oh my God, I’m not alone.

Isabel Berwick
Did you at any point regret quitting in such a public way? I’m feeling not.

Gabby Ianniello
It definitely in the beginning was really bad in terms of my reputation. I had people that I worked with who were like, you can never be hired again. Like, you know, especially being the corporate quitter. Like you can never go back because you’ve taken such a public stance. And so there’s a bit of regret in that when, you know, the financial woes come up or the being lost and not knowing what the next direction is gonna be in my business, or if I lose a freelance client or something shifts. But ultimately I wouldn’t go back.

Isabel Berwick
Rhiannon, one of the things that you do is help people who’ve left their jobs to set up new businesses. But could publicly quitting hurt their chances of success? You know, might it damage your reputation as you start out in a new venture?

Rhiannon Rowley
I think it really depends on your intention behind what you’re posting. If you are saying negative things about a former employer or former colleagues, then yes, of course, there’s a reputational risk to you there. If you’re posting more about your experience and your feelings and your emotions and the journey that you’re going on, then actually that could really help enhance your brand and embody your work ethic and demonstrate some of those skills that you have and that you could bring to a workplace or bring to your business venture.

Isabel Berwick
And talking about quitting very publicly on social media, you know, could that hurt your chances of success, or is it something that you’re seeing people doing to raise their brand, for example?

Rhiannon Rowley
I think it really depends. Again, it comes back to that intention. What are you trying to achieve through doing that? So you could use it to show innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship. There’s ways that you can demonstrate all of that through this. But I think it’s always remembering to be mindful of what you were saying about those past experiences. Any negativity that you’re bringing about that, there is going to be a risk there. And it’s really treating people with kindness and respect and, you know, treating people as humans. It goes both ways. When people have been laid off, they wanted to be treated like an individual, and employers want the same treatment in return. So if you are adhering to that and you’re doing that, then you’re going to be minimising the risk to yourself. So it can’t be a hard and fast sort of advice in that sense.

Isabel Berwick
Yeah. And I wanted to bring Josh in here who’s reported on the trend for the FT. How are companies thinking about people who quit on social media? What did people say to you on or off the record?

Josh Gabert-Doyon
Yeah. I mean, I was sort of surprised at how concerned companies were about this. They’re really thinking about how are we gonna do these redundancy processes, how are we gonna deal with, you know, changes in somebody’s employment status. And they’re starting to think about the kind of reputational risks.

And I guess there’s two kind of pathways they can take. One is to become softer, more considerate, offering better severance packages, starting to see some evidence that at least employers are starting to think about that a little bit more.

And the other pathway that we’re also seeing is employers who are stressed out about this and saying, actually, you know, as a manager, I’m gonna not be involved with the process at all because it’s a liability for me to potentially be on video. Maybe you’re an executive and, you know, you have a high profile or it could turn into a high-profile scenario. Then in that case, you maybe will step back from the process because it’s now seen as a real risk that somebody will film you while you’re delivering a lay-off.

Isabel Berwick
So I wanted to talk more generally. This is a real generational thing about how Gen Z feels about work. You know, there’s a lot of talk about younger workers needing purpose at work and feeling disengaged. Gabby, let’s start with you. You know, how are people feeling that you’re hearing from?

Gabby Ianniello
I think people are wanting to show up to a place that is doing right by its employees, so maybe they’re donating to causes, they’re practising good practices in the office that prioritise mental health. I think there definitely is a rise of that. I don’t think that’s gonna stop, and I think there are a lot of companies, as we’ve seen, that are in hot water for this reason. I think it’s actually a great thing because if you as an employee believe in the company, believe in the product, and thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy your job, the productivity and the rate of your commitment to the job is gonna be better. So it does actually work in favour of the company.

Isabel Berwick
Yeah. I mean, I was slightly concerned that these companies feel they’re being shamed into it and they don’t really believe it. Josh, what was your feeling when you were reporting this? Are companies really wanting to change or are they just scared?

Tam

Josh Gabert-Doyon
Yeah, I think it’s a bit of both. And I think they’re only gonna act if there’s some pressure on them. It is difficult to watch some of these lay-off videos and I think that for HR teams to kind of replay those difficult conversations that sometimes maybe HR people do have to have when it comes to lay-offs, I was getting the sense that people were starting to think about things differently.

Isabel Berwick
I think we are at a bit of a tipping point. Rhiannon, I wanted to ask you, employees have always talked about their employers and being willing to leave. You know, is this new wave of social media a big departure from people criticising their employer on Glassdoor that’s been going on for a long time?

Rhiannon Rowley
I think it’s just the next evolution of it, really. It’s the same sort of things that they’re saying, just in a different format. It’s maybe a bit more visceral because you are seeing somebody. You feel what they’re feeling rather than reading it as words on a page. But it’s the same principle that we’ve seen for years in terms of that employer reputation having an impact on where people are choosing to take their work.

Isabel Berwick
Rhiannon, are you finding that people are more willing to leave their jobs since the pandemic, or has that trend reversed, ’cause the Great Resignation was a big thing a couple of years ago?

Rhiannon Rowley
I think what we’re seeing is more that people are more selective about where they want to go as their next step. Typically, I’m working with people whose roles have been made redundant. Whether they are more likely to leave voluntarily — I think if things aren’t fulfilling them where they are, people are a bit more aware of other options rather than just accepting the status quo of this is how it’s always been.

Isabel Berwick
Josh, when you were researching this, what was your sense of how big Quit-Tok is at the moment?

Josh Gabert-Doyon
I mean, this is slightly a labour market thing, right, that we’re seeing more lay-offs. In the tech industry in particular, we’re seeing these rolling lay-offs so it’s become a little bit more of an issue now. And yeah, I think this is a sort of shift post-pandemic.

Isabel Berwick
Gabby, what would you say to people listening who are managers and are terrified by all of this?

Gabby Ianniello
I would say part of the reasons that some of these negative things happen is because you have managers who aren’t self-aware, who aren’t even aware of the things that are going on in their employees’ or their colleagues’ lives. But if you do enough work on yourself, you can start to pick up on certain patterns and maybe work on your communication a little bit better. Usually, if a company is a bad apple, so to speak, it’s usually coming from the top, right, it’s coming from the top executives, it’s coming from management. So that would be probably something to consider. It’s your best bet at kind of combating these things. But ultimately, if there’s a certain way that they go about letting people go or if there’s no budget and they have to let employees go, there’s no real workaround with that.

Isabel Berwick
Yeah. And I wanted to follow that up, Gabby, by saying, you know, you must have got a lot of comments and replies and support when you did the Quit-Tok. But more generally, are people doing this because they’re getting more support online and that’s lacking in a corporate environment? Is there a solidarity missing at work?

Gabby Ianniello
I’m sure part of it is it’s validating to say, OK, I’ve got people behind me who are supportive of what I’m doing. And sometimes at work we don’t get the, like the pat on the back or even the promotions or like any sort of validation of the work that we’re doing or the contribution that we’re making. And so there’s a different sort of appreciation in my community that I have. But there are people in the space who are clout-chasers, as they say, or they’re looking for the virality that’s gonna kind of set them off into, you know, a new level of business success or whatever it is that they’re looking for.

Isabel Berwick
So I wanted to ask all of you, perhaps a sort of macro question, you know, what does this trend for public quitting say about the way young people are thinking about work more generally? Josh, I’m gonna start with you. You must have trawled through thousands of videos.

Josh Gabert-Doyon
Yeah. I think there’s a deep resentment that employees have towards employers, particularly younger employees who feel like the system isn’t working for them. And I think watching these videos, a lot of people will say this is product of an influencer culture or people who wanna be content creators. I agree that I think that’s part of it, but I think there’s also a real deep resentment that we’re gonna have to grapple with in the coming years.

Isabel Berwick
Yeah. Rhiannon, would you agree with that?

Rhiannon Rowley
To an extent. I think also it’s about a change in the power dynamic that historically employers have held more power in this relationship and that’s felt evident to employees. Whereas I think what this trend is really showing us is that employees want to have more of that power as well and have a more equitable relationship and seeing what it is that they are bringing to the employer, what the employer is getting from them, as well as what it’s giving them as an employee.

Isabel Berwick
And Gabby, you must talk to a lot of people in your line of work now. What are they all saying?

Gabby Ianniello
Everyone’s just looking for a new form of freedom. So it’s not so much, oh, I want to live a luxurious lifestyle. It’s becoming an actual problem where people, at least people my age, we’re not able to get housing. Even if you have a good job, you know you’re either lacking on the freedom, the financial stability. So this is sort of an avenue for people to find, you know, a new way of pursuing freedom. This is an issue that’s only just starting now. I can’t imagine in the coming years the ripple effect it’s gonna create in everything. 

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Isabel Berwick
Gabby, thank you so much for joining us from Texas.

Gabby Ianniello
Thank you so much for having me.

Isabel Berwick
And Rhiannon, thank you.

Rhiannon Rowley
Thank you so much.

Isabel Berwick
And Josh.

Josh Gabert-Doyon
Thank you very much.

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Isabel Berwick
Clearly, some younger workers feel they’re within their rights to go public when they quit or lose their jobs. And that level of openness is understandably scary for employers who don’t want these difficult moments to draw undue attention. I think respect goes a long way on both sides. Workers ought to be treated with dignity and care, especially when they’re getting bad news. And employees should be careful not to say anything in the public eye that they may come to regret.

Quit-Tok is a symptom of wider workplace tensions between generations. The causes of that tension should be where managers focus their energies. If you do what you can to make sure employees are engaged, stretched and rewarded properly, you might save yourself a headache further down the line.

Thanks to Gabby Ianniello, Rhiannon Rowley and Josh Gabert-Doyon. This episode of Working It was produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval and mixed by Simon Panayi. The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Thanks for listening.

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