Here at SmartCompany, deciphering workplace neologisms and startup jargon is a daily challenge. It shouldn’t be that way, especially for you, our time-poor readers.
To make running a business — or scanning LinkedIn — a little bit easier, we’ve decided to compile and define some of the key business buzzwords doing the rounds in 2025.
We’ll update this throughout the year. Have a term you’d think deserves a mention? Drop us a line at news@smartcompany.com.au.
9-9-6
Refers to the working calendar of 9am to 9pm, six days per week. The term emerged from China, where some businesses pushed workers to complete gruelling 72-hour working weeks. China is cracking down on the practice, for reasons that should be obvious.
Nevertheless, the 9-9-6 schedule remains a source of fascination on LinkedIn, where the battle between performative productivity and plausible concern for human wellbeing is never truly over.
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Acting your wage
When a worker completes their assigned tasks and does nothing beyond the bare minimum asked of them, they can be understood as ‘acting their wage’. The saying probably emerged the very first time someone rhymed ‘age’ with ‘wage’, but it gained prominence in 2022 on TikTok, where some users challenged the notion that employees should overextend themselves in the workplace.
Coffee badging
If you comply with a return-to-office mandate by rocking up, confirming your attendance, grabbing a coffee, and leaving five minutes later, you might be coffee badging. The derisive term refers to those who technically comply with orders to visit the office (see also: Malicious compliance). It also covers workers who take a very liberal approach to hybrid working allowances.
Yep, just a long black for me, thanks.
Conscious unbossing
The act of rejecting a management role, in order to preserve one’s wellbeing and individual career goals.
Supposedly prominent among gen Z workers reaching the point where professional advancement involves underlings. ‘Conscious unbossing‘ is a play on the phrase ‘conscious uncoupling’, popularised by actor and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow following her split from Coldplay frontman Chris Martin in 2014. See ‘girl mossing’ for more information.
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Desk bombing
The end of COVID-19 restrictions revitalised workplace cameraderie. Unfortunately, many conversation-starved souls were simply too eager to have a chit-chat once back in the office. Anyone who overstayed their welcome at a colleague’s desk, missing all the cues to hush up and get back to their own work, was desk bombing.
Nobody landed on a watch-list because of it, but if you believe the victims, it probably should have.
The Great Resignation
A period of significant job mobility among white collar workers, spanning 2021 to 2023. The COVID-19 recovery, and economic stimulus pumped into the global economy, encouraged many workers to try something new.
While mainly an American phenomenon, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports in the year ending February 2022, 9.5% of employed people changed jobs — the highest reading in a decade. As a result, many workplaces offered post-lockdown perks, like free lunches or extra leave, to keep employees engaged.
Regardless of the actual job mobility figures, it did feel like a certain kind of worker had a great deal of freedom to pick and choose their next role. It also encouraged other workplace ‘greats’, like the ‘great avoidance‘. Not everything is so ‘great’ today, but there was a time…
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Grindcore
Not to be confused with the musical genre of the same name, where bands like Pig Destroyer, Full of Hell, and Wormrot combine elements of hardcore, thrash, and death metal. Instead, this version of grindcore, popularised on the SWE bro side of Twitter, refers to the combination of extreme working hours and personal asceticism.
Another point of difference: grindcore innovators Napalm Death can blast throughYou Suffer in three seconds flat, proving more time spent working is not always better.
Girl mossing
Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso published #GIRLBOSS in 2014, doling out business advice borne of her own entrepreneurial career. The book was an off-kilter companion to Lean In, penned by Facebook’s former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.
But the ‘girlboss’ ethos has faced a critical reappraisal. Its harshest opponents feared the language of feminist empowerment simply papered over structural problems without actually benefiting the vast majority of working women.
Enter ‘girl mossing’, a hashtag describing the exact opposite of ‘girl bossing’. It rejects the idea women must define themselves by their work — and their work ethic.
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Lazy girl jobs
A spiritual companion to ‘girl mossing’, the ‘lazy girl job’ describes a role that provides a comfortable living without the need for extreme hustle and grind. It was coined by TikTok influencer Gabrielle Judge in 2023, who parlayed the concept into a career questioning the corporate grind.
Loud learning
A workplace training budget is useless if employees don’t pursue new skills. Enter ‘loud learning’, the idea that staff talking about learning new skills will encourage their colleagues to do the same. Cayla Dengate, a communications director boasting deep experience at LinkedIn, is an advocate. She says ‘loud learning’ helped in discussions with her boss, who agreed to let her attend lectures on company time. Other advocates believe ‘loud learning’ can open mentoring opportunities — another career win for workers.
Rage applying
Ever had a workday so terrible you fire up a jobs board as soon as you get home? If so, you may have been ‘rage applying’, which describes the act of job hunting when fuelled by spite.
A 2024 survey by recruiting firm Robert Walters found more than half of applications were influenced by toxic workplace culture, with 47% of Australian respondents admitting to firing off multiple job applications in a short timespan. Consider it the other side of the ‘great resignation’, driven not by opportunity, but sheer frustration.
Quiet quitting
Another term to emerge from the burnout-addled year of 2022 was ‘quiet quitting’. It describes workers who are not actively seeking a new job, but have nonetheless decided to give the minimum required effort. Coined by TikTok user and musician Zaid Leppelin, ‘quiet quitting’ became something of a phenomenon, spawning countless thinkpieces about how management can re-engage workers and retain valuable talent.
Crucially, the term emerged as Australia experienced record-high job vacancies (and The Great Resignation), potentially discouraging workers from over-extending themselves for bosses who did not value their contributions. See also: ‘quiet firing’, and the newer ‘quiet cracking’.
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QuitTok
After dabbling in some ‘rage applying’, particularly aggrieved workers might record the act of quitting on social media. This particularly cathartic corner of the internet is colloquially known as QuitTok and provides a glimpse into the lives of employees so fed up with their current employer, they’re willing to forego a rosy reference.
QuitTok also includes workers who sincerely love their field, but, for reasons related to pay, burnout, or both, must pursue a new role.
Workslop
You are currently reading words crafted and assembled by human hands. Cherish that feeling, because workslop — a derivation of AI slop — is only becoming more common.
You may have already encountered notes compiled by a teammate, or a brief sent by a client, so riddled with AI-generated prose that the details actually go missing. That is workslop. It must be rejected with extreme prejudice.
