⚙ Hi {{first_name_tally|Operator}},

How does someone spot the walking dead in an organization?

- Rameel

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Ramp’s Co-Founder & CEO, Eric Glyman is building one of the fastest-growing companies ever. My friend interviewed Eric on ideas like:

There’s a lot to learn from Eric’s founder story 

(Over 37 pages of research and a 120-minute podcast, to be exact).

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The term "Quiet quitting” landed in my inbox three times last week. Once from a panicked founder and twice from VPs wondering if their entire team had checked out.

Quiet quitters are zombies who show up, shuffle through tasks, collect paychecks. They're not wrong, exactly. Just... absent. And in ops, absence is cancer.

More than half the global workforce (Fifty-nine percent in fact per Gallup), statistically speaking, gives zero sh*ts about outcomes.

One of my coaching clients watched their top operator, Sandra, devolve into a ghost. 

Here's what we missed until it was too late:

1. They execute one “thing” perfectly. And nothing else.

Sandra used to fight my client on process docs. Real fights—the kind where she'd pull up three spreadsheets (and prove why the approach would break by Thursday) 

Last week my client asked her to improve their ticketing workflow. She stared at her screen for six seconds. Then: "What specific improvements would you like?"

Three months ago she would've ripped the whole system apart. Now she quietly waits for instructions.

2. They vanish.

12:47 PM, Thursday. My client messages Sandra: "Tuesday work for you?"

"Actually, I have a conflict."

He check her calendar. Gray blocks labeled "Hold" everywhere. They multiply like cancer cells until there's no clean tissue left.

She used to live in conference room B. Now she attends meetings from her desk. Camera off. Muted.

Last week—swear to god—she declined a meeting about her bonus.

Declined.

3. The silence spreads.

Monday standup. He asks about the deployment timeline. Ten seconds pass. Then, in chat: "On track."

Two words that tell him nothing. Two words that used to be twenty like Sandra explaining dependencies, flagging risks, and living in the edge cases.

My client went to such extremes as to pitch the stupidest idea possible—storing passwords in a shared Excel sheet. Watched her unmute.

"Sounds good."

4. They work alone now.

"I'll handle my piece separately."

That's Sandra's answer to everything. Every project gets sliced surgical-clean. Her section. Your section. A wall between.

"I work better alone on that kind of thing”, was her go to answer when asking to collaborate. 

But isolation is the point. When you work alone, you don't have to care if Dave is struggling. Don't have to pretend you give a shit anymore.

What do you actually do?

Here's what doesn't work: "Hey, I've noticed you seem less engaged."

They know. They've made a decision.

So instead we tried: "You hate it here."

Not a question. A statement. Watched Sandra's face change—surprise, then relief.

"Yeah. I do."

First honest thing she'd said in months.

Sometimes you find something fixable. Sandra's manager promised her team lead eighteen months ago. Then forgot. Then promoted someone else.

But mostly they're already gone. LinkedIn updated. Long lunches that smell like interviews.

And maybe that's fine.

Because keeping zombies is worse than losing them. They infect others. Your stars start wondering why they're killing themselves when Sandra gets the same paycheck.

So you make the call:

"Look, you're done here. We both know it. I can write you a recommendation today, or we can pretend for another six months."

Nine times out of ten? Relief. The tenth time? They wake up.

Either way, the limbo ends.

Because watching someone slowly die at their desk is worse than watching them leave.