Barcelona's Weekly Tech Update

Hello and happy Monday,

This week’s main headlines:

BCN named world’s best smart city at Korean expo 💡
Apple to grow AI workforce in new BCN office 🏢
Equity & investment startup Capboard get €285K 💰

If quiet quitting is the new Great Resignation, what about quiet firing? 👋

If you haven’t already seen the countless articles and posts about it, quiet quitting has been the ✨ New Thing ✨ to talk about in the office, post about on LinkedIn, and share via viral TikToks. I even chatted to a stranger on a bus about it the other day.

Despite sounding a bit passive-aggressive, to most people, it’s not about being a subpar employee 🙅. It’s not a new thing (especially for men, apparently), and it doesn't even involve quitting. It actually means just doing one’s job as prescribed, without racking up unpaid overtime, indulging after-hours emails, and generally tipping the work-life balance ⚖️ too far.

So why is it everywhere? Another TikToker says that it’s a generational realization–millennials 🥑 are entering their “corporate villain era where jobs aren’t our whole personality”. Surely, a greater awareness of our mental health 🧘 and the effect recent years have had on it is something to do with it, too.

Similarly, this founder & CEO says it stems from a "widespread problem with corporate cultures of overwork, under-appreciation, and frankly distant or ineffective managers and leaders”.

Harvard Business Review even drafted a survey 📊 that suggests it’s linked to how well management leads. Results showed that the least effective managers had 3-4 times as many quiet quitters, while the highest rated had 62% of their direct reports willing to give extra effort and only 3% quietly quitting.

And now we have a New New Thing: quiet firing, aka when employers do things like refuse pay rises or promotions and pile on the workload 📚, all in hopes that unwanted employees will quit on their own. However, while that definitely is passive-aggressive 😒 behavior, it’s also not a new concept either: LinkedIn’s recent poll showed that 83% of respondents had seen or experienced it before.

What do we think? 💭 Is quiet quitting something for managers to worry about, ignore, or back? Do more still need to realize that an encouraging, supportive work environment = happier employees who achieve their goals 🙌 and the company’s? And is quiet firing the cause of quiet quitting? Reply to this email if you like, or tag me or Barcinno in your posts.

Written by Tasha

BCN FinTech returns next month in style! In this edition, featured speaker Clemens Rossberg, Co-founder & COO at fonYou 📱, will share his journey, experience & views on all things fintech. You'll also have the chance ask him your own questions before networking with the fintech community whilst enjoying some drinks & snacks 🍺🍕. Best thing? It's free. Sign up now here!