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Should Workplaces Be Re-Defined To Retain Older Tech Workers? (wired.com)
rgh02 submitted this article from Backchannel which argues companies "need to work harder and more persistently to attract, retain, and recognize talent" -- especially older talent:
We "elders" know perfectly well that our workplaces are by and large not about us. We don't drive how roles, functions, advancement, and success are seen. Career development options and the hierarchical career ladders everyone is expected to climb are designed for the majority: younger workers. What can be done? There has to be a systems overhaul...
The article suggests restructuring workplaces with "individual contributor tracks" which reward people who don't go on to become managers, as well as things like paid mentoring positions and "phased retirement" programs that create part-time positions to allow a more gradual transition into retirement.
The article suggests restructuring workplaces with "individual contributor tracks" which reward people who don't go on to become managers, as well as things like paid mentoring positions and "phased retirement" programs that create part-time positions to allow a more gradual transition into retirement.
Elderly people (>65 years old) make up 14.5% percent of the population in the US, yet approximately 2.7% of the workforce (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/20/more-older-americans-are-working-and-working-more-than-they-used-to/ ).
Clearly the underrepresentation of elderly people in the workforce needs to be compensated for because of our collective bias and discrimination against them.
Thoughts, Sundar Pichai?
Older workers should adapt with the times, not vice versa. That's the only way progress will be made.
AC because I have a feeling the downmod from some pissed off old geyser is coming...
This is what happens to an old geyser that was famous for years but is now past its prime:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
His kid Strokkur gets all the attention now.
As noted, the problem with most organizations is that there is no technical advancement track. I actually proposed back in the late 90s at one organization that we establish a full technical track that went from entry-level coder all the way up to CTO (with a layer of 'senior technical officers' below the CTO level).
Other organizations -- such as Bell Labs in its heyday -- simply had everyone as 'Member of Technical Staff', with ad hoc organization around research and technical projects.
Sadly, though, most organizations do, in fact, force technical people to become managers to advance, regardless of whether they want to or are suited for it. It's one of the reasons IT remains so dysfunctional throughout most organizations.
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
Most of this is garbage, however the phased retirement is something I've always believed in. I work in at an engineering space orientated firm that has been doing this since pre Apollo days. More often then not people work until the day they retire and 6 months later are back as contractors because they don't know how to do the transition to non working and more importantly the transfer of knowledge didn't happen because nobody wants to pay to have it done. A slower transition both lets people start to enjoy a bit of retirement earlier while they are a year or two younger and allows companies to see where the knowledge is actually lost and adjust.
the problem with is is your hours worked doesn't really show your salary. It becomes a mess from an insurance and overall compensation perspective to institute such a thing. Things that are hard for HR and financial planny typically don't happen. They don't like things that are hard.
When Social Security was created in the 1930's, there was 19 workers for every retiree. In 2030, there will be two workers per every retiree. It's going to get really hard to find enough under 30 people to support an aging society. The IT industry alone will have a 1.5M+ shortage of skilled workers as older workers retire and foreign workers go home.
Eating them, and maybe even spelling a few correctly.
Companies working on embedded systems for aircraft, cars and other road vehicles really care a lot about performance, especially when there are so many different CPU and GPU's on the market, all priced by the core, clock speed and pixel draw rate. If they can maintain interactivity while being able to use a cheaper CPU/GPU combo, they will.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
When I was working for a big consulting firm in 1999 there was a big push at the time to create multiple tracks of "advancement" specifically for the people that had no desire to be anywhere near the line of management.
It worked to a degree, where the "Subject Matter Expert" in their field would be brought in as a tech resource - but like many initiatives it got bogged down by more and more layers of people trying to get a "piece of the pie" and hang on to the billable hours. The loudest people and the ones closest to where the money flows will always be more successful.
The only way us "old farts" can compete is be just as nimble as the younger people and adapt to the game. Anyone who says we can't learn a new language, a new tech or whatever passes as "employably hot" never met one of us who are more than happy to come in and do what needs to be done - and we have the knowledge to Make Shit Happen. I don't need "corporate love" to keep me trained. I am a fucking geek all the way - and when I'm not writing medical interface code, I'm building/flying/racing drones, building robots, taking a plasma torch to metal sheets and building dragons for yard art, to messing with all flavors of IoT boards just for shits and giggles. It's all about attitude and a willingness to learn on your own. If there is a new language or tech I need to know to stay marketable? Then I do it. I don't wait for some employer to train me because sure as fuck if they get a client that has a need? They're not going to pay me to try and learn it - they'll hire someone else with that skill.
Just be adaptable and open to change and you'll always have people wanting to work with you and hire you to do tasks that need to be done. The only thing that is permanent in life is change - and the sooner everyone embraces that instead of whining about it the better off we'll be.
Is ageism a thing? Sure. But know your shit and be willing to eat the occasional effluvia from some corporate suit turd-hammer? You'll always make it work.
I don't bitch. I laugh about it - all the way to the bank.
There are many professions that make little provision for people who don't want to become 'managers'. The classic examples are police, nurses and social workers; if you want to carry on engaging with people, you can't accept promotion. In IT being a contractor often offers the opportunity to stay coding - though at the cost of long term stability in employment. Large organisations may have the space and sense to recognise that the geek over there knows stuff that they need to have on tap, but sadly the temptation is to assume that modern technology renders the knowledge obsolete; outsourcing is an experiment based on this hypothesis...
"AC because I have a feeling the downmod from some pissed off old geyser is coming..."
At least we old geezers know what a geyser is, you young whippersnapper obviously don't.
Why do we need to redefine systems? Treat people as individuals instead of parts of a defined system. Keep the systems loose and flexible.
That's one advantage startups have over established companies: roles can change to accommodate the capabilities of individuals and the changing needs of the company.
So NOT true. Where do you think all those handy-dandy tools that you currently use came from? You are trolling young man.
companies have moved from offices and cubicles to giving everyone one or two meters of desk space sitting face to face and side to side of each other
Can you cite any actual evidence that open offices are more prevalent today?
My experience has been the exact opposite. I worked as a programmer in a bullpen in the 1970s, a cubicle in the 1980s, and a real office ever since. Apple is famously moving in the wrong direction, but I don't think that is typical. I am aware of several companies that switched to quiet offices with walls.
Also, as an old geezer, I have never felt discriminated against, and I have never felt that my age or experience was a handicap. I am open to learning new skills, and often start using new tech before the younglings, but I love it when a 20-something learns about an elegant tool from a more civilized age.
unlink health care from jobs.
That can free up people who are just there for the health care
Older workers should adapt with the times, not vice versa.
Older workers are experienced enough to know that not all change is for the better.
Also, it's tough to make progress if you keep throwing out all the people who learned lessons already, and then spend the next generation of staff learning all the same lessons again.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
adapt with the times
Been there. Seen too many instances of Language Du Jour come and go. I don't want to split the office into the tabs vs spaces warring camps. I don't want to incorporate some state of the art 3D gaming graphics engine into our simple engineering app interface. And I don't need every inter-office communication in PowerPoint.
Have gnu, will travel.
You can pay young people way less and work them to death because they don't know any better. Try that with someone in their 40s and they will say piss off and get a job elsewhere.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Older workers should adapt with the times, not vice versa. That's the only way progress will be made.
As an old fart (look at my #), yes, old farts should adapt, but young squirts need to listen to old farts’ experience.
I'm old enough to remember the boomers parents and young enough to not stare at meat. I assure you the exact same things were prevalent when the boomers parents were their age, and after millennials outgrow their narcissistic years, they'll become the productive ones. And then they'll stare at meat.
By the way, they're staring at the deli because their wife told them to get semi-sharp cheddar but they only have mild and sharp, and their wife yelled at them last time they came home with the wrong cheese.
You don't have a wife, because you're a child, so it'll be a while before you understand things.
If you're a Boomer, it's your fault you can't afford to retire. People my age have enough trouble getting jobs without you keeping them into your 70s. Go sit on an ice floe.
Also, it's tough to make progress if you keep throwing out all the people who learned lessons already, and then spend the next generation of staff learning all the same lessons again.
This is the exact kind of thing managers should be doing. They should be institutionalizing these lessons so that when a decision needs to be made, everyone has ready access to past similar decisions, how they went, and why. Too many times I've seen a new manager join a company only to repeat the past mistakes of previous managers because they ignored the advice of their best workers. Usually the next step is to throw someone under the bus.
There is a better way. That way is the kind of useful value manager types should bring. Sadly they seem more obsessed with scheduling useless redundant meetings that waste everyone's time (most could be replaced with an e-mail) and playing blame games. In too many companies things get done in spite of management not because of them.
I'm 42, so I think I officially qualify as old. Yet, here I am still doing senior-level engineering work. I'm not a DevOps ninja (yet...) and don't code 16 hours a day, but I really enjoy my job. I'm hoping for the day that more employers will see that older workers who are still contributing aren't a drag on the company they work for -- they're the adults that are needed to redirect some of the "bright ideas" and temper them with reality and experience. Unfortunately, we're a society that worships Silicon Valley wunderkinds and 24-year-old CEOs, and even boring old school companies are trying to behave like web startups. So here's my suggestions -- companies shouldn't try too hard; if they do even some of these things they will retain talented older workers:
there are coders who want to code and not do all of BS that managers do?
You would be fighting back too if bombs were ripping through your village for no fucking reason.
This is not supported by evidence. American drone strikes are widely unpopular in the muslim world. But the drone strikes are supported in the villages actually getting bombed.
It is easy to oppose the drones when you live in safe suburb of Karachi or Islamabad. It is much different if you live in Waziristan, where the Taliban forces girls out of school and boys into war. Most people there see the drones as a benefit.
Companies working on embedded systems for aircraft, cars and other road vehicles really care a lot about performance, especially when there are so many different CPU and GPU's on the market, all priced by the core, clock speed and pixel draw rate. If they can maintain interactivity while being able to use a cheaper CPU/GPU combo, they will.
Which is why they're going to completely lose out to Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, just like major phone brands crumbled and fell when the iPhone arrived. We all know it sucks, but after all you're buying the car first and the infotainment center second. My bet that in not so long their self-made junk is replaced by what's essentially an embedded smartphone for when you don't have one connected.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Actually, what prompted this rant is our asking for a Bingo table in the place at the office where the Foosball game went.
Right now I'm literally in Year 52 - How in hell can I get my IT customers to not lose their passwords?
and productivity increases (did you know that if minimum wage kept pace with productivity it'd be $23/hr) why don't we all just work less hours? I seem to remember hearing I'd work less than my parents. I'm working more, and my kids are on track to work more than me. Yeah, I got a bloody smart phone ($225 LG) and that's nice and all, but I also don't drink and smoke (and neither do my kids) which more than makes up for that expense.
Is it just me or are these just new fangled ways to get me to work harder and longer for less?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Indeed! Our young architect shoved every possible layer and service he could into our MVC stack. He's either a feature pack-rat, and/or trying to pad his resume with every buzzword he can.
Most the devs are young and don't know the difference and probably want to pad their resumes also with the gizmos. Thus, development is turned into a typing contest, and young fingers will probably win that one.
My only hope is to convince the suits it's bloat and bullshit, but the architect has so far been out brown-nosing me. I probably lost this round. The suits may realize its bloat a few years down the road, but that may be too late.
I suspect the architect is intentionally trying to get rid of the old people because we know enough to question his judgement. He's using buzzwords to paint us as outdated and using a bloated stack to make it a typing contest between young fingers and old fingers. Clever bastard. He'll probably trim the stack once we are gone.
Table-ized A.I.
with automation and productivity improvements it's going to get hard to find enough work to go around. For example, with Trump & co blocking farm immigration farmers are finally implementing the kinds of labor saving practices (like growing food at waist height so it's easier to pick) that Europe's had for 20 years.
That IT shortage is a lie. I've got a guy at my job with a CS degree from a public University who's doing crap IT work instead of programming for a living. 20 years ago he would have been snapped up a day after graduation. But 20 years ago the H1-B program was in it's infancy.
There's plenty of money to go around. You're being lied to so a small group of lucky assholes can take everything. Not that I know what to do about it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
that young people really have no clue about. Youth doesn't last that long. Enjoy it, because you're on the same train everyone else is.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
athletes are union as well maybe we need that for the places that can people at 35-40?
More often than not in this context, we're not talking about management issues but technical ones. The way you (successfully) institutionalize those lessons is by having people on your staff who have worked with technology for more than five minutes and seen the problems before, so that when they come up again, you can avoid the mistake and educate the less experienced staff about what you're doing and why.
So many times in the past few years, I've looked at failures, sometimes serious ones, in software projects and thought that the only way you could possibly wind up in that position is if your most experienced technical employee was a 26-year-old CTO who thought that moving fast and breaking stuff was a good idea...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The statistics show that younger workers have the highest unemployment rate. So the premise of the article is false.
Older workers should start businesses and employ younger workers. Same as always.
That is Economics 101.
In major projects engineering entry level tasks have become automated (much work actually is off-shored now as well) to the point where the old, expensive guys are laid off and the younger people (who are more familiar with the sophisticated software) are running the great big machines which prevent them from making mistakes. There is very little mentoring left in this field.
Agreed.
Young hubris full of self confidence, with what been taught by some commercially non-functional professor, wants glory and self confidence.
However, while a new set of eyes can be good, and asking questions is the mother of all learning, asking the right questions is most important.
Technological designs are always based on a set of compromises of available resources at its inception, and those circumstances will change with time, for sure. Technological obsolescences are bound to happen. Few things are ever perfect and immune from future improvements.
Geezers may seem dispassionate about changing things, which may be laziness, or maybe for good reasons.
Challenging the status quo is not bad, be prepared with reasoning. Change can be good, marginal, or really bad.
A careful study and analysis of failed projects can also be most enlightening. For every successful project there are many more failed ones.
Human emotions are rarely a reliable gauge of merit of a project, these are not objective enough.
Too much executive power leads to to big errors in judgment.
Older workers are experienced enough to know that not all change is for the better.
The older workers who are capable enough to know that not all change is for the better, and who are able to make that determination, are the ones who move up to either technical architect roles or into upper management. These workers are rarely if ever discriminated against because of their age since their capabilities are easily demonstrated and they likely have hundreds of past coworkers who would beg their company to hire them if they ever needed a job.
The other perhaps two thirds of workers never have their experience turn into the type of wisdom you refer to. They just get set in their ways, spend too much time in a niche role while the industry passes them by, and then never have the drive to catch up again. These are the older workers who complain about age discrimination, and end up transitioning into project or product managers or if they are lucky find a non-tech company with horrible IT hiring practices and stagnate there for a couple decades.
When I am interviewing older workers I am probably guilty of age discrimination because I expect to be more impressed by someone in their 40's than someone in their 20's. If I can determine they switched careers recently then this isn't a consideration, but otherwise if I am similarly impressed by a 25 and 45 year old candidate, the 25 year old is getting hired in a heart beat (unless the job requires management experience). I feel it is more likely the 25 year old is in the process of improving into a much better worker over the next few years than someone who hasn't done it in their last 20 years on the job.
That said I tend to prefer candidates in the 30-60 range since most of the time they do impress me more in interviews than 20 year olds. As you would probably expect because of their experience.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I think you just described why a mix of old hands and new engineers gives the best result.
Following your junior method of just throwing more memory and CPU cycles at the task is not often the best solution.
Both hardware cost and customer satisfaction might run away...
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Very well said.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Old engineering joke:
Henry Ford once balked at paying $10,000 to General Electric for work done troubleshooting a generator, and asked for an itemized bill. The engineer who performed the work, Charles Steinmetz, sent this: "Making chalk mark on generator, $1. Knowing where to make mark, $9,999." Ford paid the bill.
I've worked on many "embedded systems for aircraft..." and spacecraft. Performance has never been a concern (well, since the 1970's) and it's quite easy to stay below the 70% utilization requirements. Think flight simulator without the graphics.
What you seem to miss is we need different kinds of people for the different kinds of jobs at hand.
Yes you can use a group of smart fast thinking young ones for brute force production.
But you also need some more mature engineers for quality control and possible as mirrors for the developers coming up with new and (not always) brilliant ideas for new ways and products.
A smart company will recognise who is ready to move on to a next position, ultimately this include who you'd rather put on a less hours contract to wind down towards retirement.
Or like what happened to me, set up a Learning & Development department for support of freshly graduated engineers.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I looked around and realized that there were no older workers in my position. There are always ways to push people out the door, and they were being used. I even looked at other companies and saw the same.
I decided to get my teachers license (I already had a Masters; so it was a pretty easy process). Yes, I have to deal with middle school kids; but I look at my friends who tried to stick it out and they are doing things like delivering pizzas.
Hilarious answer (and too true).
These people chose to be old. Nobody forced them. Hold people responsible for their decisions.
Damn nanny state.
There's only so much you can write down and reuse - having actual people on hand who know better to help make decisions is far more efficient, in my view.
This is the thing: If you could just distill all the value of a decade or three of good experience into a few pages on a Wiki then every new graduate in a tech field would already have that knowledge and wisdom, but that's not how it works. Training and guidance can help to accelerate someone's progress up the learning curve, but there comes a point where there is simply no substitute for having experienced, skilled, knowledgeable people doing the work.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"you're too young to understand" is possibly the lamest, laziest response. It requires no effort from you and gives you an unwarranted feeling of superiority.
Perhaps you're just too young to understand. :-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I am open to learning new skills, and often start using new tech before the younglings, but I love it when a 20-something learns about an elegant tool from a more civilized age.
Interesting. I'd say the biggest difference between 20-year-old me and 30-year-old me was probably was that 20-year-old me wanted to learn All The Things, while 30-year-old me was a lot more choosey about where limited time was spent.
I find bleeding edge technologies interesting, but I only rarely spend much time on something that is still in its early adopter phase any more. Consequently, I often am a little behind the enthusiastic youngsters in adopting new tech.
However, if you look at how effectively I use the new skills and technologies that I do adopt, or the proportion of the new skills and technologies I adopt that remains useful in the long term rather than quickly becoming obsolete, older me does much, much better than younger me.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Embedded for automotive and other industries is moving towards real-time 3D graphics like Tom-Tom GPS route planners, instrumentation and other types of sensor fusion.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Older workers aren't obsolete, they're just more expensive
Managers need to re-calibrate their measurements
Young managers who fail to do this, or who care more about culture than results, are missing out on a vast talent pool
It's called the Dunningâ"Kruger effect.
Same reason every war since 1918 , Air Force generals think the war can be one with strategic bombing and no boots on the ground.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
"you're too young to understand" is possibly the lamest, laziest response.
And fairly often, it is the kindest response.
Other times, it is just getting you out of the way.
It was a metric shitload of fun when I would demonstrate to the millennial just how much more I knew than they did. It was like the difference between me starting on original Photoshop, and them starting on Creative Cloud. Like it or not millennial, there is something to be said for experience, and us olde fartes had to prove our worth - we didn't get participation trophies.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Shut up. Every generation says the same crap about the next generation (accept for their own spawn who are somehow angels). No generation in America has done more to destroy this country than the Baby Boomers. They will be the first generation to leave this country in worse shape than it was when they inherited it.
Want cheese and breadsticks to go with that fine whine?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Don't worry. Even you will eventually get there ;-)
Interesting. I'd say the biggest difference between 20-year-old me and 30-year-old me was probably was that 20-year-old me wanted to learn All The Things, while 30-year-old me was a lot more choosey about where limited time was spent.
And IMO, this is a good thing because it gives the 20-something exposure and lets them see what they're really interested in, and eventually the realization that they don't know what they don't know, and never will actually know it all.
Just another day in Paradise
You can help an old geyser buy using Viagra. It will work for hours.
But hopefully, not more than four hours.
Just another day in Paradise
Older workers should adapt with the times, not vice versa.
Older workers are experienced enough to know that not all change is for the better.
Also, it's tough to make progress if you keep throwing out all the people who learned lessons already, and then spend the next generation of staff learning all the same lessons again.
You can't stand on the shoulders of giants if you keep pushing them out the door.
Just another day in Paradise
Shame that got down modded - though it is off topic. I've a close friend whose marriage has survived his being an quite senior in IT in a major bank, but he's not top flight.
Sounds good on paper, but how would you represent all this knowledge?
At our office, we're frequently required to capture "lessons learned". That's the good news. The bad news is that in the 35+ years I've been there, I don't recall anyone making use of those files. So yeah, we're damned to repeat our mistakes.
It's just like in mission critical systems, I frequently see single points of potential failure. How many times do we have to relearn these lessons?!?
Just another day in Paradise
You would be fighting back too if bombs were ripping through your village for no fucking reason.
This is not supported by evidence. American drone strikes are widely unpopular in the muslim world. But the drone strikes are supported in the villages actually getting bombed.
Both things can be true at once; every drone killing does represent another chance that people will be radicalized, and there can simultaneously be people grateful that it occurred.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Older works (and I'm one of them) do not need special treatment. The problem with the workplace is that it is NOT family friendly and our birth rates are suffering from it. France and Germany are already dealing with this problem by instituting family friendly policies. America, of course, thinks it knows better than to follow their lead. When everyone is busy slaving their asses off for the whims of the corporate lobbying of the likes of the Koch Brothers, everyone is too tired and exhausted to make babies. Couple this with average wages adjusted for inflation having taken a nose dive over the past 20 years.
Prioritize policies based on family _AND_ GDP (or in reality executive bonuses) and this problem and many others will be alleviated.
We'll make great pets
Shut up. Every generation says the same crap about the next generation (accept for their own spawn who are somehow angels). No generation in America has done more to destroy this country than the Baby Boomers. They will be the first generation to leave this country in worse shape than it was when they inherited it.
Want cheese and breadsticks to go with that fine whine?
In reality you're just an apologist for a narcissistic generation that never really got educated enough to be useful to society. Somehow they faked it until they made it and got into management and they are so incredibly delusional. Sure, there may be some that aren't in this category like the hippies that settled in Boulder, CO but unfortunately, the majority are this way. I went to a Beach Boys concert not that long ago and the amount of trash baby boomers left for the cleanup crew was amazing. I overhead talk about a Weird Al concert from the previous night and they said the trash was considerably less. Sorry, but a lot of the baby boomers are indeed short-sighted idiots that concocted schemes like mortgage backed securities with bad assets and what not. Disclaimer: I'm not a millennial
We'll make great pets
Been there. Seen too many instances of Language Du Jour come and go. I don't want to split the office into the tabs vs spaces warring camps. I don't want to incorporate some state of the art 3D gaming graphics engine into our simple engineering app interface. And I don't need every inter-office communication in PowerPoint.
This, a thousand times, this. One of the problems is everyone wants to make their innovative mark on this field. All of those are for the most part used up unless you're in very specific incubators in Silicon Valley.
We'll make great pets
Age discrimination is the biggest group affected in the work place and it's mostly about health costs and does not just affect tech workers. This means you will be terminated with predjudice almost exactly at your fiftieth birthday and then will almost be never be hired by a corporation, especialy tech related, thereafter. Of course Wall Mart and Mickey D's would take you. And your and your peers will never be mentioned in large media outlets, so sad.
Shut up. Every generation says the same crap about the next generation (accept for their own spawn who are somehow angels). No generation in America has done more to destroy this country than the Baby Boomers. They will be the first generation to leave this country in worse shape than it was when they inherited it.
Want cheese and breadsticks to go with that fine whine?
In reality you're just an apologist for a narcissistic generation that never really got educated enough to be useful to society. Somehow they faked it until they made it and got into management and they are so incredibly delusional.
Well, the offer still stands
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And every new generation says the same crap about their parents. We all do the best we can, and we all come up with imperfect solutions to the difficult problems of our generation. And thirty years from now, your kids will be saying the same thing about you.
Well, the offer still stands
Declined. But you're first in line to go into the nursing home. Just think about who is going to be wiping your ass when you get there. Hope you enjoy that thought. When you whine about that let me know, I'll bring you some cheese if you even have any teeth left. Cheers!
Negative. Unless I'm completely incapacitated by a stroke, and cannot perform the act, I'm exiting this world on my terms. So rejoice in my eventual demise.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Right now I'm literally in Year 52 - How in hell can I get my IT customers to not lose their passwords?
By not making them 14+ random characters that they have to change every 90 days.
Just another day in Paradise
Of course, but that's not a policy that I control. I keep telling retired people who never take their computers out of the house to write down their passwords and keep them in a place they know. Still, there have been many occasions when I have to sit there waiting for the customer to thrash through every possible hiding place in the house for her list of passwords.
It was mostly an attempt at humor. That aside, be careful what you wish for...all of those calls are keeping you and other IT folks employed.
Just another day in Paradise
Yup. Just like every other new generation. We like to remember ourselves like we are now, only younger, but that isn't the case. We used to be very much like the Millennials, back when we were the new generation.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Some of us old farts aren't interested in starting our own business. That requires its own skill set.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I've been in my current job for twice as long as any other job I've had in my life. However, when I was interviewing, one of the things I always said was, "if you have a tech track and a management track, I'm on the tech track."
Not everyone should, or wants to be a manager. There are far toom many people who REALLY, REALLY SHOULD NOT BE A MANAGER. On the other hand, those folks may be really good at what they do.
Do you *really* want the manager who really knows the systems in an "emergency" meeting that runs on for hours, while a new hire who doesn't have anywhere near the experience as the manager, never mind they don't know the systems deeply yet, try to deal with the disaster?
If you think it should work that way, congratulations, here's your MBA, now get out there and destroy your company, too.
Well, the offer still stands
Declined. But you're first in line to go into the nursing home. Just think about who is going to be wiping your ass when you get there.
Likely a robot, designed by someone before millennials got their hands on it. (Don't need an anal appendectomy because wipe #3 was misprogrammed!)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Unfortunately, the 20 somethings seem to have issues understanding they don't know everything, instead railing against "procedure" and "rules".
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
There's one thing I'll tell you: the current system was not created by millennials. You need to blame its problems on earlier generations. (BTW, would you care to guess how many Boomers are tech-illiterate? I'd guess more than half.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The other perhaps two thirds of workers never have their experience turn into the type of wisdom you refer to. They just get set in their ways, spend too much time in a niche role while the industry passes them by, and then never have the drive to catch up again. These are the older workers who complain about age discrimination, and end up transitioning into project or product managers or if they are lucky find a non-tech company with horrible IT hiring practices and stagnate there for a couple decades.
This isn't limited to tech. It's all ranges of employment. I've seen plenty of older individuals who are not managers constantly complain about every change saying the "Old way worked just fine." They fail to understand the problems inherent with the old way, typically scalability with regard to company growth. If these individuals are lucky then they are identified and then they get excised from any projects to change aspects of their job because their participation is more or less pointless since they fail to accept the flaws with the old method. They are then forced to accept the new method.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork