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Older Workers Are Better At Adapting To New Technology, Study Finds (cio.com)
"Don't let the millennial buzz fool you. Older workers handle and adapt to new systems better than younger people," writes CIO magazine. Slashdot reader itwbennett writes: A survey by London-based market research firm Ipsos Mori, sponsored by Dropbox, found that older workers are less likely to find using technology in the workplace stressful and experience less trouble working with multiple devices than the younger cohort.
Millennials "are used to using tech in their personal lives that's pretty darn good," suggests one Dropbox executive, "and that raises the expectations of what tech can be in their professional lives... So younger people will feel frustration at tools that are not up to snuff." Out of 4,000 information workers who were surveyed in the U.S. and Europe, 37% of the 18-34-year-old group reported trouble with multiple devices, compared to just 13% of respondents over 55.
Millennials "are used to using tech in their personal lives that's pretty darn good," suggests one Dropbox executive, "and that raises the expectations of what tech can be in their professional lives... So younger people will feel frustration at tools that are not up to snuff." Out of 4,000 information workers who were surveyed in the U.S. and Europe, 37% of the 18-34-year-old group reported trouble with multiple devices, compared to just 13% of respondents over 55.
She's very proficient at deleting emails.
The twenty year-olds haven't had to learn new technologies and adapt. Ever manage a group of developers under thirty? I have nearly sixty under me, and I think only a couple of them are good at learning new things.
Any "interpretation" of the results is coming from some high-up blowhard at Dropbox, who likely pulled it from his nether regions.
My experience has been that some people are more adaptable than others, and that spans generational lines. But younger people are less likely to have a mental block simply because some new task just happens to involve a computer.
#DeleteChrome
My dad's generation had computers, telephones, and lots more that previous generations didn't - he bought our ZX Spectrum for us.
However, my grandfather was baffled by car seatbelts, anything no wired to a wall, and changing the channel on the television
It's no surprise now that, compared to twenty years ago, the older generations are better with technology. It's not their father's generation, who struggled to keep up, they grew up with all this stuff.
As we go on, the next generation are growing up being taught on iPads, with Kindles in libraries (what are those places?!), mobile phones from the day they are old enough. They won't have trouble adapting.
I call it the "old-people's home" fallacy. My grandmother would have been quite happy playing bingo for the rest of her existence once she retired. But I'm going to need a full-on Internet connection, a bunch of freedom and technology, to operate into my old age. There's no way I'm going to end up in a corner, dribbling, and watching Match of the Day, and it's not even a personality thing.
But are old-people's homes of today actually taking account of that? Not that I've seen. There are 60, 70, 80 years olds out there that are tech literate, can shop online, watch iPlayer, and all the other stuff we younger people do, because they were pioneers and that's stayed with them into old age and now they are the ones being put into homes that still cater only for a previous generation.
Time's change. I have no idea about allotment gardening or crochet or mending mechanical machines. Previous generations did but can't operate a mobile phone. As we go further on, the newer generations will be VR-addicts or whatever and they'll be surveys saying that not enough old people are getting the benefits of VR-space and still cling to their old WWW ways.
It says the old people are less likely to complain, and are happy to put up with shit.
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
The freaking kiddies that think they know everything..
They cant fax anything to save their life.
They dont know how to use their voicemail..
They are confused by the copy machine.
Us old farts, we have EXPERIENCE and we can adapt to new stuff faster. Stuff it in your eye sockets you little snot nosed punks.
There is a reason why I just landed a job kicking out all the kiddies with fresh degrees with my 20 years of experience. I adapt faster and easier because nothing "new" is really actually new. It's a rehash of an older thing passed off as new. Your shiny new chat systems like SLACK? It's basically a copy of an IRC channel, not new technology in any way.
Texting and instant messaging? Kiddies, I was doing BBS messaging before your mother was old enough to breed.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'm constantly shocked by younger people (30) who can't do anything that doesn't involve swiping on gadgets. Most of the 30 people at our company cannot do basic tasks in Windows.
I don't respond to AC's.
First is the data: older workers are better at adapting to new technology.
Second is the guesswork: "Millennials "are used to using tech in their personal lives that's pretty darn good," suggests one Dropbox executive, "and that raises the expectations of what tech can be in their professional lives... So younger people will feel frustration at tools that are not up to snuff."
"one Dropbox executive"...
Never spent a second thinking that it might be that older workers are more patient. Or older workers are more focused. I wouldn't be surprised if older workers could also do a better job than "one Dropbox executive".
You are welcome on my lawn.
We were better than our parents, who couldn't fix the flashing 12:00 on the VCR. Our cohort (plus those within 10 years of our age range) went from dealing with BASIC on Apple II, ZX Spectrum, QuickBasic, etc., DOS, earlier versions of UNIX, all the Windows-es, etc. all the way to the abomination that is Windows 8.
To play Doom, I had to download 6 ZIP files over a 2400 baud modem for a week, unpack everything, and learn how to hack the Config.sys file on my 4 MB DOS machine to free up just the right amount of the right type of memory.
When I bought my first scanner, it took 2 days of resolving IRQ conflicts by flipping DIP switches whose meanings I did not understand at the time to make sure it didn't conflict with my sound card.
Mice required their own drivers.
The current generation is just as smart as we are, if not more so. But they always had UIs that made sense. They did not live through an entire 2 decade long information technology revolution. It shouldn't come as a surprise that they are surprised by alien (and to them, non-sensical and inconsistent) interfaces developed for a captive audience.
Add to this that enterprise software is always purchased during golf games by people who will never use it, and you have a world in which our skills of adapting to horrible and inconsistent interfaces are still useful.
I will now press Alt-H to disconnect :)
Ha, suck it, youngn's! We old farts are better at figurin' shit out, so bite that onion I wears on mah belt!
Now where's that damn new-fangled "sumbit" button doohickey thingy or whatever the hell it's called....Oh shoot, Matlock is on, gotta go.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Most older people have already seen, even used, most, if not all, "new" technology under a different UI.
Most 20 somethings are really good at using their phones, but most have no idea how it works - nor should they have to. People keep calling them 'tech savvy' but it's really a bad phrase. They're highly effective app USERS. You do have those who are really brilliant and actually tech savvy and build their own devices from scratch, but they chose it, or it chose them.
On the other hand, if you grew up with Windows then you either developed some problem solving skills or you were completely baffled all the time - the learned helplessness people. Macs were only relatively better because they narrowed the amount of things that could go wrong by reducing your choices, but there was still plenty that could go wrong. In my office, for instance, you have highly nerdy types of all ages (19 to 62) who have no problem with dealing with anything. On the other hand, outside that group the device problem solving skills seem strongest in the 40 year olds.
So yes, we grew up with shitty tech and because of that when something goes wrong those who learned to deal with it go into problem solving mode instead of bafflement mode.
Getting off track here, but tech problem solvers are really easy to spot - step 1: try it again paying closer attention, step 2: check the options (or man), step 3: [search engine of your choice] it. That solves 99.9% of all issues, and anyone who's actually tech savvy knows those, so I can categorize people pretty fast that way.
We had to walk 5 miles to school in the snow and rain, and it was all up hill ... both ways!
Sorry, there's a tendency for some /. people to insert their lame personal anecdotes into these comments. Here's mine:
I built my first computer from chips on a breadboard- a 6800 processor with 256 bytes of RAM. I programmed it with a hex keypad and it output results on seven segment LEDs. If I wanted alphabetic letters I had to force the normally numeric LEDs to simulate text by specifying each segment that was to be lit or dark. There was no storage. After painstakingly succeeding to enter a program that worked (such as a thermometer or other primitive program) I had to hope the power didn't fail or I'd lose everything.
Yadda yadda. The point is that tech doesn't scare me now that I'm in my 70s. I understand the hardware and the software and I keep a hammer close by in case some device should become annoying.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Old farts have been around long enough to know that they shiny shiny on the surface is really the least of your problems.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I'm mad because I can't control the universe with them.
I'm not upset that they can't control the universe - I just think they stretch the truth too much in their advertising. I understand that advertisers are known to stretch the truth a bit, and I might give them a pass if they only controlled a galaxy cluster, but heck, the ones I've used can't even control this planet let alone this galaxy. Geesh.
I'm left to wonder if in some specific galaxy far, far, away, things get louder when I press the "volume up" button.
Now, those "multi-entertainment-device remote controls" that let me control most or all of my entertainment devices, those I don't have any problems with, at least not with respect to their marketing claims.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Maybe it's only because old IT workers who are still there are the best and most motivated from their generation, others may have moved to other fields or positions (management for example). This natural selection has not yet operated on the newest generation, I guess in 20 years the same study will give similar results.
Wow. Bookeeping on a tablet. That's like digging the Lincoln Tunnel with a spoon.
I don't respond to AC's.
Really, it's a matter of expectations, and Dunning Kruger effect. Throw in a little bit of ego, and fun times await.
Software development today is where it is because of several decades of lessons learned. That being said, there is still a massive gulf between enterprise software and consumer software. The subject of my comment is because I remember when I first played around with setting up Oracle, and how frustrating it was. Over a decade later, not much has changed.
The problem is there is now a very different level of expectation. When computers were older, they were expected to be difficult, because... well.... they were. But nowadays, it's easier to assemble a PC than to build a lego model. In the consumer space, software is generally more accessible than it ever was (although with the way UIs have been going lately, focusing more on being artistic than useful, I'd argue that we're taking a step backwards).
So people now think that computers are easier than ever, when the harsh reality is that computers are actually even more complicated than ever before, because they do more and more behind the scenes, and *someone* has to code that in.
What bothers me the most are hotshot people who look at this complexity and, instead of trying to overcome it, they just take the easiest way out they can, lessons learned be damned. The end result are bullshit like the NoSQL movement, because people consider SQL to be "too hard". Boy are they in for a shock when it comes time to actually query that hodge-podge of JSON to produce reports 'n stuff.
I remember a "team lead" that argued with a developer who rightly refused to use a floating point field to store currency information. The developer had to explain in detail exactly how the floating point format actually worked, and why it would be a really bad idea. It took 2 hours of insistent explanation before the hotshot acquiesced.
....is a millenial try to operate a spirit duplicator machine (a chemical copy machine). You know, the ones that went "KER-CHUNK KER-CHUNK" as they spit out those bad quality purple-ink test forms in school a few decades+ back?
With few exceptions old people can't compete with young people when it comes to profitability.
Um huh, because paying a person a lot less is always the most profitable move. I've often written of my experiences with the millennials. Yes, I was paid much more than them. But I could work rings around them. Plus, I would come in early and stay late if needed. And the work only needed performed once, and was always done on time.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.