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How Gen Y Should Talk To Old People At Work
jfruh writes "A lot of ink has been spilled explaining to Boomers and Gen Xers how they can best manage, motivate, and retain talented members of the Millenial generation on the job. But it's a two-way street, and those born in the '80s and later could also use a lesson on how to best communicate with older co-workers, who after all will determine their promotion and pay raises for the foreseeable future. Advice includes: make actual phone calls, mirror the level of formality your co-workers use in e-mails, and for Pete's sake don't ask them things like 'R U going?' in a non-texting medium."
Howz it shakin?
as possible.
I was born in late 1979, I'm not part of generation Y so I don't need to follow such advice. I'm happy not having born a few months later.
Maybe that would also be a solution
Also... Get the hell off their lawns, you young whippersnappers!
Slowly and loudly.
If they have an ear horn, speak directly into it.
Don't communicate like an idiot. What a good idea!
Complement the onion on their belt. Once you have their trust, take them out Old Yeller style.
You treat them as you want to be treated, and don't worry about if they are younger or older.. They are your coworkers, that is all that matters.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I thought using proper English and a little courtesy and respect in writing was required of *all* generations when dealing with business, especially customers and "the boss." Equally silly, I always thought it was only *courteous* to use the phone or even (*shudder*) walk over to someone's office to talk to them!
But I guess the "kids" think it's funny to use text-slang instead, further exposing their ignorance and lack of respect for others.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
If anyone working for me used "text speak" in an email to a client I would fire their ass immediately. No warning. Poof. Get the fuck out of here right now.
Yo. Cialiscat,
As a Boomer (age 59), I'm finding it more important to embrace the future than ask the young 'uns to adopt the past. I think the last time I used a land line phone at work was over three years ago, and that was an exception; it's all Skype and Hangouts now, and I like it better.
I do miss some of the perqs of the past: private offices, beer at lunch...
That said, now get off my lawn!
Keep a level tone, don't use slang they won't understand and nod and smile when they say something racist or conservative.
Have gnu, will travel.
How about having some respect for the knowledge which may be gathered by your elderly counterparts? Not everything can be learned from college or between the pages of a technical manual. I think sometimes new grads tend to feel like they know it all because they typically are working from fresher learning of technical info. Your more senior counterparts are not dinosaurs. They have learned to navigate office politics and interface well with their business partners. Whether you are aware of it or not you can learn a great deal from senior staff. To think otherwise it to cripple your own path.
First, don't call them "old people". Second, don't call "them" anything as a group. Third, use correct written English. No made up words, strange spelling, or text speak.
This is absolutely ludicrous. This happens in *every* generation. Every generation says to their children: "we were better mannered, we didn't have premarital sex, we didn't have teenage sex, people didn't do drugs, we worked harder...". Apparently, they also had shorter memories (and in those case when they actually did work longer and harder (19th century), they had to because the productivity was lousy).
Also, I've noticed that "work ethic" is a shibboleth of religious wackos. Any other, normal, non-sociopathic person simply values high output per unit of effort without feeling the need to make such a fuss about it. It's simple economy.
Ezekiel 23:20
If the bullet points the author laid out are actually useful to anyone for moving up in a company, then that company is not worth working for. Sure, I used to use the phone a lot more than I do now. That doesn't mean I want to continue relying it, especially when the information could more easily be sent by email or chat, or the most horrible of acts, talking face-to-face.
The last point was the only thing I saw approaching sanity. Even so, no one should put in hours just to put in hours. If you're actually accomplishing something, great! Yet I've met plenty of people that claim to work all hours of the night and put in time on the weekends with little to show for it. If I see that, the first thing I'm going to think is not, hey.. there's a "straight shooter with upper management potential". I'm going to wonder why they can't get work done during normal hours like everyone else.
Salutations, spelling, grammar? Really? I have a crazy idea. Keep up with technology. Use your skills, be creative, and most of all.. get the work done. That's a measure of success. That will drive your performance reviews. No boss is grading emails. These tips sound perfect for someone whose goal in life is to be a butt-kissing brown-noser. Oh, but they're tips to get a promotion. Perhaps they make sense after all.
Is this a joke?
I don't see any difference in formality between mails by younger and older people at work. I most certainly haven't seen (and don't expect to see) "R U going?" or similar rubbish in mails.
All of the points sound logical (use proper spelling, email etiquette, being polite...) and obvious to this member of Generation Y.
Oh, except for the last point: Work hard: Baby Boomers have an extremely strong work ethic. As an example, when we graduated college, our rite of passage into the accounting, law, consulting, engineering, and other similar professions was to work eighty hours a week for the first three or four years to prove our worth, learn the ropes, and gain the experience needed to move up professionally. Baby Boomers like people with strong work ethics because it reminds you of us and everyone likes a “mini-me”, or should I say a “mini-them”.
Seriously? Working eighty hours a week is the way to go, and shows strong work ethics? I'd say it would mostly result in being exhausted and delivering bad quality.
...to work eighty hours a week for the first three or four years to prove our worth,..
As a Gen X'er, I saw my Dad bust his ass.
Then get laid off when management made cuts to make their numbers. R&D was ALWAYS one of the first cuts. My father told me "Do NOT become an engineer! Become one of the bean counters."
What did I learn? Busting your ass does NOT prove anything. It will NOT be rewarded. Living to work is stupid: you work to live.
That's why all the Baby Boomers are now a BURDEN on our medical system: all that work and no play made them obese, diabetic, and with heart attacks. They ran themselves into the ground with work.
Even though they worked that hard, they are taking more out of the system than they EVER put in.
And now we have a bunch of self entitled ...
....or maybe more like great uncles. These are people who have managed to stay valuable for many years and have decades of wisdom and experience behind them. They are not stupid, and can see things as they are about to happen before they actually do happen and the patterns of business repeat themselves. Don't just pay attention to what they say. Pay attention to what they DO because to just be dismissive of their ramblings will likely yield to be, well, foolish.
Let me guess 30-50? When you get beyond 50 like me, email becomes a god-send. I can never remember what people tell me on the phone or in person, I can never remember what I read in the email either but at least I can re-read them as necessary. Text chats are useful too but emails are the best.
No thanks. I don't put a greeting on my email unless I want to emphasize that it was sent to multiple people ("Hello everyone,"). Greetings may make the email feel friendlier (stop assuming things are negative), but they take up all the single-line message preview space. When browsing through my list of emails, I'd rather see the first line of content than a bunch of hi's. I shouldn't need to say "Hello Jim" because Jim already knows I'm sending the email to him as I put him in the to field. When was the last time you received an email that wasn't supposed to be routed to your inbox? Never? That's what I thought.
Signatures as a waste of space as well. I'll include one if I need to provide the receivers with more contact information, such as my address or phone, but other than that there's no point. First, they already know who sent the email and my email address because that info is in the email's from line. Second in a business setting, we're using Outlook which already includes my work phone, office number, manager info, etc... when you hover over my email address. There's no need to include that information at the bottom of every email. Putting it there adds more space everyone has to scroll through, especially when you get a large email chain going.
Please stop including redundant info in your emails. It wastes everyone's time including yours. The sooner we drop the above formalities the better.
I was born mid 80's. And I would agree that my generation has a terrible time at communicating...however. I would say that those born in the early 90's have it waaay worse. Those damn kids have no idea what it's like to interact with people outside of their pc's or phones. What's even more scary is the age at which we are giving these devices to children. While I see the benefits there is a fine line to be walked...and sadly there isn't a balance currently. Late 20's and 30 year olds will always be able to interact verbally, but the second an elder speaks to a kid now a days count the number of times you hear the world like come out of their mouth.
Just talk to them like they're human beings instead of treating them differently? I don't know why this article even needs to exist.
I'm 30 and just at the very edge of the gen x-millennial divide. One thing that has been a major problem for me and most of the gen exers and millennials I know that are somewhat intelligent with regard to the boomers is respecting them as a generation. Sure, there are individuals worthy of respect but in my experience they are, as much as any generation can be, the epitome of what is wrong with and killing America. This is true of them, taken as a whole, regardless of whether or not they are liberal, moderate, conservative, etc.
The fact is that when the generations before the boomers handed over the reigns of power starting in 1992, we saw a precipitous decline in the quality of governance in corporate America, governments and everywhere else you looked. Boomers can squawk "correlation is not causation" until they are all entitled to Medicare paid out of my generation's meager earnings, but you cannot deny the *ahem* "correlation" there. Since the WWII and Silent generations have waned in their influence, our society has gone off a fucking cliff.
And you know what the worst part is? I have "conservative" boomer acquaintances who merely find a conservative angle for their entitled attitude. They'll say "I earned my Social Security, you young fucker" and I say back to them that it's mathematically impossible for most of my generation to even have a shot at that, we're still paying and you motherfucker want to tell me how you are entitled to cut of my paycheck because you didn't vote for anyone who was willing to restore the Social Security trust fund LBJ liquidated to fund Vietnam? Piss off! If they got started in 1992, it would probably be fixed by now.
And then they get to tell us how evil we are...
Forget about Gen Y geeks trying to get along with their older counterparts in the IT department. I see this kind of inappropriate informality from TEACHERS in school related communications.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Your elders have already "been there and done that". More often than not, when you ignore their advice, you will discover in the end that they were right.
i'd fire them with no hesitation.
Let's all adjust to a bunch of people that haven't progressed with the time...
Courtesy and respect are good, and asking yourself how a message will look to its recipient is good.
But business etiquette changes! The kind of writing *recommended* in the article would have seemed impertinent 40 years ago. I'm remembering the secretary's manual from which I learned typing in the early 1970s, which prescribed rigid rules of address and epistolary etiquette.
And texting ... I have the same gut reaction to "R U going" that you do. But I have to step back and realize that it's because I've got a stick up my butt. "R U going" is quite clear.
(a) Language always changes. (b) People's language use is basically formed in their early 20s. Ergo (c) part of the experience of growing old is that you will be increasingly surrounded by unfamiliar words and ways of speaking and writing. Being a curmudgeon is too easy.
Every generation says to their children: "we were better mannered, we didn't have premarital sex, we didn't have teenage sex,
My parents were married at 18. I was born 7 months after the marriage.
bloody irresponsable I call it.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The older generation grew up along with technology, younger people grew up with complex technology already developed. The older generation can remember whn you could count the transistors in a computer and I think has a stronger tendency to think of complex technology as a system of simpler components. I think that younger people have a more "functional" view, less interest in understanding the detailed underpinnings.
Put positively, the younger generation as an approach to technology that is more like abstract mathematics - once you know how something behaves you no longer need to understand why it behaves that way. Rather than getting bogged down in trying to figure out how data is sent between phones, they are happy to write an app that takes advantage of that data. This sort of view allows you to write code that takes advantage of the vast array of existing complex systems that are already available.
Put negatively technology is more "magic" to the younger generation - cell phones just work, they are less likely to wonder how the hell someone can "find" your phone to call you when you are in a country that you have never visited before. This can lead to trusting "magic" technology but not understanding its limits. This sort of view can result in writing horrifically inefficient code that is layered on top of other code that you don't understand at all.
Seriously why should my hippity hop new power generation be held back by a bunch of geezers. Old people need to die already.
-Remember if you are > 12 yo, U R 2 old.
I would prefer they did not speak at all, to be honest. Wise words that Gen. Y kids should take a lesson from: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
Just just communication skills - far too many younger people have never been told how to dress for work or for a job interview. Everyone working in an office should own at least one decent suit. Learn when to wear a tie. Cover your tats is you have them. These things are noticed by people who are in charge.
don't ask them things like 'R U going?' in a non-texting medium.
How about in no medium! None whatsoever!! This shit needs to stop!!!
Also, I've noticed that "work ethic" is a shibboleth of religious wackos.
Indeed, and the religion that "work ethic" comes from is the worship of money.
Free Martian Whores!
mirror the level of formality your co-workers use
We're innately built to pursue imitation as the best form of flattery. Just relax and let nature take its course.
"A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Such neurons have been directly observed in primate and other species including birds. In humans, brain activity consistent with that of mirror neurons has been found in the premotor cortex, the supplementary motor area, the primary somatosensory cortex and the inferior parietal cortex."
"The function of the mirror system is a subject of much speculation. Many researchers in cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology consider that this system provides the physiological mechanism for the perception/action coupling (see the common coding theory).They argue that mirror neurons may be important for understanding the actions of other people, and for learning new skills by imitation. Some researchers also speculate that mirror systems may simulate observed actions, and thus contribute to theory of mind skills, while others relate mirror neurons to language abilities."
At most of the largest software companies gen Y ARE the managers. This is the new model unfortunately...this article doesn't make much sense...
manage, motivate, and retain talented members of the Millenial generation on the job.
in the wake of the enron scandal, the recession, and the fact that most of my friends and peers are not only out of work but saddled with 50k or more of unforgiveable debt, the idea of "corporate loyalty" is laughable. If you want to motivate me and retain me, pay me. To me work is work, a means to get paid and do something i genuinely appreciate. im sure any generation can relate to that
beyond the most generic office etiquitte noted by OP, here are a few others:
read your IM's, i use them more religiously than you can imagine to convey important information.
Do not call me. the phone is on my desk and i've an extension, sure, but its far more natural and efficient for me to email or IM you. If you have to call me, keep shit brief. no um's or err's or giggles...just the facts. telephones are incredibly distracting.
try to maintain communications parity. for example: if i email you, email me in response. dont take every IM as an occasion to march down to my cube, its a timewasting distraction.
I dont care about the office politics. dont bring it to my desk.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Didn't Billy Gates, Steve Jobs and Bezos didn't happen? What about Gogglers?
Even in the City of London, a place where everybody used to wear a neck tie and a suite, that is old advise. I have not worn a suit or necktie for 20 years, and when interviewing people for high tech positions the last thing I, and other hiring personnel, was thinking about was the candidate's attire.
As long as people are clean the topic isn't even talked about (in some localities is even illegal to impose a dress code).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Click here to learn this one trick before THEY find out.
When I look around my office most colleagues are at least 35, if any group of people has been hit by the economic meltdown that is 20 somethings.
So if you as a 20 something have a job, don't piss of your older colleagues: they are in control of the situation with a vengeance, not only they are the bosses, but they are also getting most of the well paid jobs.
Younger people have an image problem, behaving like over developed teenagers won't endear them with the old timers holding the reigns of power.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I hate phones. Phones are stupid. I can see using them as a last resort or if something is really important. But if you're just doing day to day communications they're a giant waste of time. Texts are faster, less disruptive, and frequently more productive.
In a text, people get to the point immediately. They don't spend five minutes with rambling irrelevancies and they don't spend another five minutes after the main point with more rambling irrelevancies.
Sometimes you need to get through those rambling irrelevancies just so people can say them and we can move beyond them. But being burdened with them in every single conversation is annoying.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Yeah, they're cool. Not!
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
I was born in 1980. Thus 80's. But i'm not Y, and so many of the things that Y's identify with are not the same things I do. We need a name for the transitional generation between the X's and Y's.
My parents were married at 18. I was born 7 months after the marriage.
bloody irresponsable I call it.
My relatives always said that the second and later kids take 9 months, but the first one can pop out any old time. :)
A generation is 30 years. Gen X, Y, and probably Z are all part of the same generation. If you're 40 today, the next generation is 10 years old and so unlikely to be one of your co-workers. There are basically zero cultural differences due to age between people in the same job in the tech industry, other than some sort of artificial picket fence manufactured by marketing to sell t-shirts to teenagers who haven't figured it out yet.
It's all in your mind, get over it.
If you're younger employees aren't communicating or working properly you're just hiring retards.
According to my mouse pointer and the letters it obscured.
Baby Boomers are just fine, in fact I know several of their parents, even they can use Linux! I call them The Lucky Few". Gnome has mouse "drag and drop" threshold that keeps them from accidentally copying folders and files with their shaky hands...
I've volunteered to teach Computer Literacy for years at Community Centers -- since I was a teen. So, I've got quite a bit of experience as a Gen X'er to hand down to the Gen Y folks, and it's this:
Baby Boomers are the least of your worries. As Gen Y, you must be prepared to deal with Generation Z.
So, get your Z-Day kit in order -- It's like a hurricane kit, but with more shotguns.
Do what you know you have to do. Malls are not safe-houses. The freeways will be tasty flesh bottlenecks.
Check your friends and loved ones for bite marks. Remember, if she's got teeth marks, she's not your grandmother anymore.
I think abbreviating words like 'are' and 'you' is mostly a think of the past. It made a lot of sense with basic T-9 input where typing was painful but these days it's actually harder to type R vs are with gesture typing and predictive input I know a lot of people (probably even my self) that spell better on cellphones than they do on paper.
I think there is also an obligatory XKCD.
People hire GenY kids? Insanity.
brwski
"Because without beer, things do not seem to go as well''
proper business communication? Hasn't every generation gone through adapting to proper langauge at work and slang after work?
By "every generation" you mean "every generation before there were hippies." Because since then, I don't think anyone would claim anything of the sort unless they were pathological liars or wanted their children to never trust anything they said ever again.
The current generation is too well mannered, they accept too much from authority that they shouldn't without protest because the consequences have become way more severe (e.g. Texas arrests and tickets for school rule violations). They aren't stupid enough to believe any of the rest, there is plenty of evidence of teenage & premarital sex, drugs, and fucking off instead of working from the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's. There was plenty of that in the 50's and before, it just wasn't as prominent.
As an example, when we graduated college, our rite of passage into the accounting, law, consulting, engineering, and other similar professions was to work eighty hours a week
I'm a contractor. If you want me to work eighty hours a week, you will be paying me for eighty hours a week.
worldmobilenet.com -- World Prepaid Wireless Internet plans
I'm of the belief that if you text me something like "R U going", you either have a non-touch screen phone with only a keypad or you're borderline retarded.
It's long past time that license plate-style abbreviations in communication should have stopped. There's no reason for it anymore, excepting the keypad-only phones.
Shut up and listen. They've already made all the mistakes you're making now.
I have seen many many organizations when I was consulting. Some were startups filled with people generally of a narrow age range (that of the founders) and old organizations where the bulk of the upper management were boomers. But nearly every organization that I worked with had the same thing happening. They were confronting a wave of technology that was changing everything. The boomers were having serious problems with this; at best they might latch onto a BlackBerry and think that they were leaping into the 21st century. A typical example though was the 20 something salesman who could make technology sing. The result was that he could outsell a 60 something by a significant multiple. The 20 something would pull over to a cafe and copy and paste his way to a great proposal that was sitting on the client's desk 40 minutes after they had met. He might return to the office with a marked up proposal and conclude the deal by the end of the week. The boomer on the otherhand would be lucky to have the proposal ready by the end of the week. So after a few rounds of this the boomer would start to get antsy about the 20 something; so he would play the "Seniority" card. Start trying to change the rules saying that the 20 something can't be flinging proposals all over the place without giving him time to "review" them.
I can give a specific example where a single fresh out of university salesman outsold the other 11 salesman combined. He had been put in a crap area where they thought his average sale would be around $10,000-$30,000. So they put him on a small base salary with a 30% commission. His average sale(he made many) was actually around $500,000 and they refused to pay out the commission. They said it wouldn't be fair to the other salesmen and that he would get the same 6% that they did. Oddly enough he took this for a few years but left in the end.
So what I have seen over and over is a pattern of boomers who seem to think that highly qualified 20 somethings are arrogant whereas their mistreatment of them is not. The beauty of this is that the qualified 20 somethings usually figure out that they are being mistreated and move into organizations filled with other non-boomers who want talent not arrogance.
But the most amusing situation is when the reverse happens. When a young company filled with young people accidentally hires a boomer. Often the boomer has left something like the telephone company or a Nortel and immediately sets to work trying to make the dynamic young company into a remake of their old stodgy company. One of the first symptoms is the previously unused words "Org-chart".
But I have seen a few examples of where young and old worked together extremely well. The typical situation was that you have a boomer who has zero interest in the day to day running of the company and all they care about is money. So they go out and raise the money from their fellow (well capitalized) boomers and let the young people do what ever the hell it is that they do.
But this last if very little different in perception but entirely different in outcome when you have a well capitalized boomer try to run a company of 20 somethings. The usual symptom here is that the boomer is completely incapable of learning the nuances of what is going on. So you have a technology company that should be releasing a new product every 2 months but instead is bogged down by the boomer grinding development to a halt while he deals with another boomer marketing company that will debate for months which shade of blue the background should be.
Now the above experience covers technology. In non technology companies this is where the boomers' capital trumps all. This would be the boomer coffee shop owner trying to be hip and cool, hiring a bunch of hipsters, paying them minimum wage, and driving to wine parties in his brand new leased BMW. No communication problems their, you kiss his ass you find another job.
I understand your mistake. When ur young it shakes, when you grow older it'll swing!
If someone has 5 times more experience(Read: time on the job) than you but is still considered your peer then they might not know the best way to get things done. Experience is not a function of time.
According to the article, generation X, Y and younger don't say please and thank you? Huh? all the young people that I've met say please and thank you. They also use the telephone.
Why are older generation are digital immigrants? Didn't they invent computers and the internet? Television and radio too? Baby Boomers also grew up with technology from crystal radio sets to vacuum tubes to transistors and then semiconductors. My dad told me he got his first transistor radio in 1960, I think. I must be missing something.
I must be working in a different part of the United States of America than Mr. Eric Bloom
With all due respect, where did Mr. Eric Bloom do his research? *scratches head*
By "every generation" you mean "every generation before there were hippies."
How many percent of the population in the hippies period actually qualified as hippies?
Ezekiel 23:20
IF they're your boss THEN you talk to them however they damn well tell you to.
Cartman's definition of Hippie: If you say you want to change the world, but really only smoke pot and smell bad, you are a hippie!
Hornwumpus' addition: If you know any other definition you ARE a hippie.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/opinion/sunday/explaining-twerking-to-your-parents.html?_r=0
-- "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" -- Juvenal
SPEAK UP! YOUNG'UNS! ALWAYS TYPING LIKE THERE'RE TWO CASES.
Stupid filter error tellin' me to not use so many caps but at the same time not forcing me to indent anything or limiting the line length. I'm finishing with a new line in any case.
Speak for yourself. I tell my kids how much drugs I did and how much ass I got. I encourage them they can get as fucked up (literally and figuratively) as they want as long as they invite me along. They're fucking squares, man. Maybe I can adopt kids that like to party.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Thanks, but this is still largely irrelevant for many of us. What I need more often these days is advice on how I (the gen Y) can more effectively manage the Baby Boomers who work for ME. I'd like to help them along before they become victims of "efficiency".
17 inch CRT. Check.
Wired ball mouse. Check.
Pot belly. Check.
Graying hair. Check.
I resemble that remark!
Indeed. Anime will get you branded as a pedophile creep.
Keep it professional and put up soft core furry porn instead.
Don't piss us off
Retire, now. Not when your fancy pension plan fully vests or when you make it to that outdated benefit that was available to you (but not us).
The truth is a lot of baby boomers are waiting to hit their magical retirement age where many of them will qualify for promised benefits. These benefits obviously aren't available to the younger generations so the younger generations aren't as loyal. Meanwhile the baby boomers know they're "almost there" so just do well enough to stick around but obviously don't have the motivation (or sometimes health) to keep going.
And don't think that baby boomers aren't taking advantage of this. I've seen many of them retire early to "cash in" on their promised benefit to only show up the next day as a contractor. Meanwhile the ones that happen to not make it (lay offs) are incredibly bitter and grumpy...as if it was an entitlement... Yet I should treat them with respect and keep my mouth shut, even though I don't have such a golden opportunity as they did anyway? It is this exact inequality that is turning the younger generations cynical. By the time the boomers are all retired, they won't be around to fix their mess and they aren't helping by trying to screw us in the meantime.
Stop spelling millennium with only one N. That is wrong.
"'Your excellency' will do."
Dr. K's response when asked how he should be addressed after becoming Secretary of State.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Kids should be seen and not heard.
Every generation says to their children: "we were better mannered, we didn't have premarital sex, we didn't have teenage sex, people didn't do drugs, we worked harder...". Apparently, they also had shorter memories
The problem with the memories is probably due to all the drugs they were taking.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
I prefer to keep it poppin' fresh like an MC at a phat concert, see. Being formal at work? Ain't nobody got time fo dat!
If getting old was equivalent to getting experienced , then i would agree with you. The truth is, most folk which were older than me when I was a youngling (2 to 3 time my age), did not knew shit, they did not learn from all their year, they were just ensconced in their way. Some people are just getting those opportunity to learn and experience go past them and slide away from them. Many "older" (the majority IMNSHO) folk are not wise, they are just riding the "older folk are wiser" old meme. The few which really DID have experience to give, I learned from. Now I can say without arrogance, many of my older colleague and the newer colleague generation sees me as a problem solver/helper, and i am not even busting my ass.
Older does not mean more experienced.
Get that meme out of your system. Most older folk are just plain old. Not wise. That is not something you acquire automagically with age. Wisdom is something you already had when youw ere young, and willing to cultivate.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Yeah, maybe don't call them old people. They are people just like you. I'm damn sure you don't want to be looked as "young kid" so don't think of them as "old person".
Who's Pete?
Like, you know, these articles always like to lay out GenY (and GenX) as like you know some horrible types of people. But dude/bro remember, unlike yo baby boomer ass self and your gramps. Companies don't show loyalty. They shouldn't expect it either.
And when baby boomer bro and grampa dude be using incomplete sentences and acting like dicks. But not providing any perks like they got (ie: 30 hours, no benefits, or 60 hour contract worker let go at any moment). Don't expect these younger generations to have loyalty back.
***
Sorry... I am not a part of Generation Y. But most people I know who are Generation Y work hard, with little complaint. They've gotten a bum ride. Bad economy, flipping burgers with a bachelors, and are being left with three generations of debt. Few ask for handouts. But many dislike infringement into their personal life. We made it all about the dollar. So their attitude is basically, "I don't trust you. I work. You pay. That's the end of it." And that's not their fault. That's the fault of baby boomers, and gramps.
And if they seem to not care about sending you a decent message. It might be because you're not paying them a decent wage.
For being a brilliant man....
Seriously, this is the right attitude. And you know what, we young'ions have a lot we can learn from those who have more experience. They can tell us how to avoid mistakes, both ones they avoided and ones they failed to avoid. Then we if we're wise, may find ways to avoid those same mistakes. Or we decide to build tools to avoid them and sell them to everyone else.
how to talk to generation X and the generation before that:
"You know what was a really cool generation? the one that didn't shut down concorde"
"You know the blackbird? that was truly built by the finest generation of all. Went to the moon too, lucky s.o.b's"
"How come rally and formula one was super cool when you weren't in charge?"
"Weren't you the guys who managed to spend 10 times more money than the Apollo program took and all you have to show for it is classified prisoners in *redacted*?"
gen x didn't do jack shit - they just skipped a beat and started exploiting gen y to do their it magic beans for them...
I didn't see much in this article that supported the headline. Sending emails instead of texting your boss? In a post-SarbOx world, why would anyone think differently? My impression is that this is an article written for really friggin' dumb kids who don't know how to act in a professional environment. Condescending and patronizing, but in a nice way. Remove the "don't" advice, leaving only the "do" advice, and you have guidelines that would have applied since "Mad Men."
Gen Y'ers actually talking...now that would be a story
I am well past 60. I grew up in a time when behaving in public and respecting your elders was important and expected. You not only deferred to older people, you went out of your way to respect them. I think that change and innovation have trumped experience too much. Many of us older people are regarded by the young as obsolete because we don't know the newest fads and lingo.
The problem you are describing is the Young Turk problem that has been with us for a long time, but it is exaggerated by the illusion that the new is necessarily better, and that recent experiments have always been a success. One success that has been a dismal failure is training business management in business schools. This poisons the minds of sr. and middle management with financialization thinking and they forget that they are providing a service and mistreat their customers and staff.
Like a boot camp for business, having to come up through the ranks rather than being full of yourself via academic and professional degrees, is a source of much of the disconnect as is the fast-paced social and entertainment media that dominates public life.
But the irony is that I don't exonerate my generation, now grey and old, because we *ucked up and created much of the mess. We thought that you didn't have to pay your dues, that having new ideas was better, and now every body pays. I raised four children, now in that cohort born after 1980 and they treat me with some respect not because I demand it from them but because they learned that life is hard and challenging and that my take on it is valuable. They don't ask for much advice from me but they see that what has happened to me informs them, gives them much perspective. They know how to speak to me.
I read the article and I have to laugh a little bit. This sort of "information" for people of my generation was taught to me by my parents at a young age. I have also heard the same ideals throughout my college career. So really, if your parents never taught you to prove yourself to the world by working hard, being literate, or polite then how is that my problem? If a person fails at getting a job because they did not know that it was proper to do a few small things then let them be trampled by someone with a better education.
If someone tries talking to a college professor in this manner you can bet on them treating you like dirt and smugly correcting you.
*If you read the article it is really funny to see the different generations "duke-it-out" in the comments. What an absolute waste of time, effort, and energy.
One of the important skills that seem to be lacking in the past generation or two and particularly college grads is communications. Forget the abbreviations and slang, they are poor at almost any form of communication except for short thoughts. Even when I was in college ( I graduated in 1990), most students hated writing, even if they could compose it on a keyboard. It was bad enough the university implemented a program called "Writing across the curricula . Many had problems articulating an idea at its basic level in a properly configured sentence, let alone handle a subject complicated enough to require multiple sentences and paragraphs. Interpersonal communications with individuals likewise handicapped went well at a basic level. However one of the most important skills a student can possess is being able to put complex thoughts and ideas onto paper or a screen. I was a project manager with a degree in CS. Most of my job consisted of planning and coordinating the work of others. Except for the weekly and biweekly face-to-face meetings virtually all my communications was via e-mail, or written documents. You want a raise? Convince me in a 100 words or less in a clear and concisely written document that you are worth it. I have 20 or more individuals and a set amount for raises that's only large enough that I can give decent raises to 3 or 4 employees. Spread farther and they amount to little more than "Attaboys!" You can be one of the best students in your field subjects, but if you can't write a proper resume you will never get the chance to prove it as it is unlikely to make it past the "round file" in HR.
My boss asked me to come in a little early tomorrow, my response: "I'm having a boil lanced mañana, and if I fail to give at least one mañana's notice they bill me for the appointment..."
Not calling everyone born before 1980 "old people" might be a good start...
Every generation says to their children: "we were better mannered, we didn't have premarital sex, we didn't have teenage sex,
My parents were married at 18. I was born 7 months after the marriage.
bloody irresponsable I call it.
Lucky for you though.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
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If you send me a text like that, you'll get a "govorit Angleskii, perzhalste" in return.
(It means "speak English, please", mangled to suit Slashdot's incomprehensions of non=Latin characters.)
Now, get off my lawn.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
...and tolerance for individuality depends on communal norms. This isn't a GenY/Baby boomer thing - it's a human thing. I am sure there are workplaces where NOT having an edgy wallpaper showing someone getting shot in the head, or yugioh, or whatever, will make that person excluded from the kewl kids' table.
All depends on your ability to read the room. If you are working with mostly boomers, they will expect some conformity. If one boomer works with a company full of genYs (unlikely as that may be), they will be expected to conform as well, in some respect... though how that would work, I'm not sure - the "ironic" fedora is just a hat on a baby-boomer.
As someone from Gen Y, I'm getting tired of being lectured to by aging boomers. In their opinion, my generation is narcissistic and entitled though the boomers, in general, seem to be the most narcissistic of all the generations. If you want to talk about who is "entitled" then lets talk about entitlements. Polling data shows GenY'ers are the most open minded of all voting generations towards entitlement reform while boomers are generally adamant that nothing ever be done to Social Security or Medicare until they go bankrupt (and a good chunk of the boomers I talk to also adamantly deny the programs are in trouble, no matter how obvious the math is). I'm also told my generation is materialistic despite the fact that GenY, which is growing up in the post 08 economic crash, is possibly the most frugal generation since the greatest generation who grew up during depression and war.
The Gospel according to lolcat
Be carefull about accents as paul Graham found it can get you into a lot of trouble - and dont for get to me your all uppity colonials :-)
I have never flipped a burger in my life. I am hopelessly under-trained in that field of human expertise.
If in the other hand if you need a technologist that has worked in multiple countries, a piano player (at quite a decent level) or a film director & producer (credits on request) please let me know.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... people think only short term.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The poignant thing to me is that it was the young baristas who went out of the way to make sure my Starbucks experience was a good one.
It was the people who had executive/management responsibility that struck me as not giving a damn about the customer's experience. They gave me every indication they considered the Starbucks experience more in terms of salary, career advancement, retirement plans, and travel with people like me that was spending a hard-earned $5 for a cup of coffee as just a means to an end. Expendable. Dime-a-dozen. Just the end product of a marketing blitz. Seemed like a kid with a rental car - see how much you can nickel and dime a customer before he leaves. Pissed off. Customer satisfaction is marketing's job. When earning executive salaries, customers don't count. Only thing they seemed to care about was 50 cents extra for sweetener.
I sensed a feeling that suited-and-tied marketing professionals were thought of as being worth quite a bit, but customers are just floor-trash, just something to be exploited as much as they would stand - with the executives running statistics on just how much exploitation people will take before they leave. Like a lab experiment of EE students finding out how much current a wire will take before it melts.
If I had my way, I would have immediately switched the baristas to the executive role, and vice versa - benefits and all. The baristas knew how to build a business. The executives were just tearing it down. They never seemed to teach the psychology of building a customer relationship in any of their high-falutin' business schools.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]