Workplace Toxicity Triggers Similar Responses Across Generations

Gen Z professionals are often portrayed as quicker to disengage or quit when work turns toxic, with concepts such as “revenge quitting” cited as a trend championed by Gen Z. However, a new survey by Blind, the anonymous community app for professionals, suggests that reactions to workplace toxicity are far more similar across generations than commonly assumed. The survey was conducted between January 23 and January 31, 2026, and gathered responses from 1,677 professionals in India across Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers.

When work starts feeling toxic, quiet disengagement emerged as the most common response across all generations. While Gen Z were the least likely to “endure and adapt” (19%), most respondents across age groups showed a stronger tendency to remain within the organization and look for ways to cope before exiting. 

Attitudes toward after-hours messages and late-night work showed little divergence. Across every generation, around half of respondents said these are sometimes necessary but often overused, reinforcing that burnout-related stress is not confined to a single generation. In a separate Blind survey released in April 2025, 72% of Indian professionals reported routinely exceeding the legal 48-hour workweek, and 83% said they had experienced burnout.

When asked how they would respond if their company banned or discovered a side job, responses were again broadly similar: 36% of Gen Z said they would look for another job, compared with 31% of Millennials and 29% of Gen X. Millennials were more likely than Gen Z and Gen X to say they would stop immediately (32%).

Taken together, these cross-generational behaviors align with economist Albert Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, Loyalty, and Neglect framework, which explains how individuals respond when organizations fail to address internal problems. In this model, quiet quitting corresponds to Neglect, a passive response that often follows repeated, unsuccessful attempts at Voice. Labels such as quiet quitting and revenge quitting may differ, but they point to the same reality: when employees feel stuck in toxic workplaces and unheard, they check out—quietly or loudly—before walking away.

Echoing this sentiment, an Apple employee commented on a Blind post, “As far as Gen X vs Z vs Millennials, it’s all mindset,” underscoring that disengagement is shaped more by organizational response than by age.