The Gen Zer who helped spark the quiet-quitting trend ended up leaving his job after all. He blames bad managers for a generation of disengaged employees.

• Zaid Khan, 25, got the US talking about quiet quitting after posting a viral TikTok last year.
• After quiet quitting at his job for six months, he realized it wasn't the answer for him.

Last July, Zaid Khan's TikTok sparked a national conversation about quiet quitting. But now, nearly one year later, the 25-year-old New Yorker told Insider the practice wasn't sustainable for him.

Khan said he first heard about quiet quitting in a YouTube video in June of last year. The term, much like one that appeared in a March 2022 Insider story on "coasting culture," describes the not-so-new idea of establishing work-life boundaries while still collecting a paycheck.

The idea resonated with Khan, so he decided to post a TikTok video about it.

The 17-second video, in which Khan describes quiet quitting as not quitting your job, but "quitting the idea of going above and beyond" — went viral. It has been widely credited for making quiet quitting into the phenomenon it's become.

"When I saw the response to it, and the wave of quiet quitting sentiment that followed that video, it really dawned on me that, 'Wow, I'm not alone in this experience,'" Khan told Insider.

But after trying quiet quitting for six months, and then actually quitting his job, Khan reflected, and said that for him personally, quiet quitting isn't the answer.

Insider spoke with him about the downsides of quiet quitting, who is actually to blame when workers do it, and what his future career plans are.

Khan says bad managers are to blame for quiet quitting

In late 2021, Khan said he began to feel a sense of disillusionment at his remote tech job. These feelings built until he posted the viral TikTok last summer.

It was around this time that he began actively quiet quitting at his job, which for him meant being less responsive, taking on less work, and not working full eight-hour days.

"No matter how hard I worked in that role, I wasn't going to see the payoff that I was expecting," he said," adding, "That is really when I shifted gears and just kind of tested the limits of how much I could get away with."

Khan said his productivity took a hit, but that he thought no one noticed until about six months in, when some coworkers expressed frustration with him. He said this was among the reasons he quit his job in January.

But even if no one had ever noticed a dip in his productivity, Khan said it's unlikely he'd still be quiet quitting to this day. That's because it proved to have its downsides.

"What tends to accompany that 'jobless employment' is two feelings," Khan said in a TikTok earlier this month. "Firstly, this looming fear that you're gonna be found out and fired, and secondly, this broader existential dread of, 'What am I actually doing with my life?'"

Khan tried to put more energy into his life outside of work — spending more time creating music, volunteering, and producing TikTok content. But in hindsight, he said it's clear that leaving his job was the only answer, something he knows people in difficult financial situations might not be able to afford to do.

"It wasn't until I made the decision to actually leave my job that I just felt this enormous weight lifted off my shoulders," he told Insider. "And it's a decision that I wish more people could make, because I do think life is too short to be dissatisfied wherever you are. Because the reality is work does consume so many hours of our lives."

Since stepping away from the corporate world, Khan said he's had one big revelation about quiet quitting: "Poor management is truly to blame for disengaged employees."

"If you don't feel like you're part of a team or in some sense connected to your work, of course you're gonna be alienated," Khan said in his recent video.

Today, Khan said he is working on freelance projects and contemplating not only what he wants out of a career, but what he's truly passionate about. He thinks a lot of people eventually regret pouring so much of themselves into their jobs, something he said he wants to avoid.

"Maybe they got a cool title, maybe they got the house and the car that they wanted, but do they actually feel like they lived?" he said, adding, "So I think just having that self-awareness — which seems to be more and more common in my generation — realizing, 'Wait, what are we working this hard for?' With climate change, with the world dying, 'Why are we doing this?' So I'm just embracing that ethos for myself and trying to just take it a day at a time."