Millennials, baby boomers and Gen X ..

stickyfiddle

digitalscream said:

stickyfiddle said:

stickyfiddle said:

Good take from Simon Sinek, as usual.

As a millennial (1984) in a corporate environment I can confirm everything he’s saying.

1) so many of my peers are entitled jerks whose are simply full of shit

b) everyone is addicted to their phones, including senior people

c) the senior-senior partners are constantly talking about engaging with millenials in the workforce (because we about half the workforce) but they have no idea what that means. All we really want is technology that is appropriate to the work we have to do and the conditions in which we have to do it, which means a fast laptop that isn’t ha,strung by insane data security policies, and a smartphone that is setup for work stuff that we don’t have to pay for. Of course us on the lower half of the ladder get neither of those...

I should add a d) to this... my peers who are not entitled jerks are among the most hardworking and talented people I know and it's genuinely painful when one gets sick of the corporate shit and leaves.

It's the weird thing, really - every generation prior to the millennials has changed the workplace environment to suit themselves as they rose through the ranks. It makes sense, because that way nobody experiences a massive culture shock.

This generation, though, seem to insist that everything be arranged to suit them; or, perhaps conversely, management seem to be obsessed with the idea of re-arranging everything to suit them, leading to the new generation of workers feeling entitled to such treatment.

I don't see anyone insisting on anything where I am. It's 100% the bosses who are telling us they want to do things to help, but then not doing what would actually be of benefit. 

But the key thing about this generation is we've grown up with rapid improvements in tech, which can both lead to and require bigger, faster change than previous generations ever had to deal with (or were able to take advantage of).

What changed in an average office between 1920 and 1980? Maybe more typewriters and typists, but probably very little for people doing the work. From 1980 to 2000 things were getting quicker, with basic computers enabling word processing and a bit of spreadsheet work for ease of calculation. But since 2000 we now have superfast internet everywhere, everyone has email via laptops and smartphones, you can videoconference with 8 different people in 5 timeszones across 4 countries without even a 1-second delay.  Every single one of those things is a total paradigm shift. 

My standard working week looks something like:

Sunday - review and analyse a 20MB financial model in Excel, then prep and send a 10-page pdf to a client 200 miles away. 
Monday - fly to Oman for a meeting with another client, having skimmed 500 pages from a lawyer in London on the flight.
Tuesday - meet with Sunday's client to prep for negotiations for a deal with a team split across Germany, France, Japan and the USA 
Weds - Kuwait, for a workshop with a third client, confirm their questions, mail those to a team in the UK and get them working on it to have answers in the morning
Thursday - follow up meetings with the Kuwait client, using the responses from London from the previous day. Then fly home, and clear out any issues with clients 1 & 2 via email from the airport lounge.

I realise that's a bit more hardcore than a standard 9-5 job, but I wouldn't be able to do any of it without decent IT, which I'm not *really* provided with. But moreover, it would have been completely impossible to work like that even 10 years ago.

maltingsaudio

Yes the technology thing is amazing, what a shame the days of having to call the office from a piss ridden phone box twice a day, the fax machine running out of paper, being scared to go into the typing pool to have your letter typed etc are long gone. And with that we’ve lost the ability to do our daily task as quick as possible and relax until the office can get hold of you, fiddle expenses by getting your mate to write out your petrol/restaurant/hotel receipts, and if a crisis breaks out they rarely had to be sorted in an hour like today, a day or two was usual for the worst!

Ravenous

randella said:

Cool.  Has anyone got any amusing stories about millenials who work their absolute bollocks off until god-knows what time, like all the ones at my place do?

Now you mention it we have had an intake of twenties programmers (mostly guys but not all) and they're excellent. They're bright individuals, most work brilliantly in teams, and most of us older duffers are struggling to keep up.

Annoying.

Sporky

[Anecdata warning]

We hired some graduates recently. One was taken on as he had an engineering degree and lots of CAD experience, and we need someone to pump out M&E layout drawings and schematics. Our Director of Fulfilment (awful job title, I know) thought it'd take about 3 months to get him up to speed.

2 weeks in he'd completed the two standard qualifications for the industry on his own (slightly quicker than I managed it, and I'd been doing it for ten years when they came out; most people take six months or so) and done a full set of accurate drawings for a live project, including some calculations by hand that most people use an online calculator for. All the way through he'd gone off and found out how to do the industry-specific stuff on his own.

Problem now is that we can't feed him work as fast as he can clear it, so he may be partly on loan to my team to help with design verification.

I know he's just one chap and not a representative sample, but his level of getting-shit-done is downright inspiring.

randella

Ravenous said:

randella said:

Cool.  Has anyone got any amusing stories about millenials who work their absolute bollocks off until god-knows what time, like all the ones at my place do?

Now you mention it we have had an intake of twenties programmers (mostly guys but not all) and they're excellent. They're bright individuals, most work brilliantly in teams, and most of us older duffers are struggling to keep up.

Annoying.

Hahaha, yep.  Bastards

Problem is, as the ever-wise @Sporky alludes to, it's all anecdotal.  From this random assortment I can glean that things are much the same as when I was younger and first in the workplace.  Basically, in this country you start work at 16, 18, or 21-ish and don't have a clue besides a vague notion that you're to do what you're told, and remain passably civil while you're about it.  If you still haven't got the jist by 17, 19, or 22-ish, then there's a problem.

In my early days I can think of two guys I worked with at the same junior level as me.  One was an absolute fucking joker who thought JavaScript was 'rubbish at the top of the page' and routinely deleted it from files whenever he saw it, whether said files were his or not.  I tried to lock him out of Sourcesafe (it was the 90's!) but that didn't help.  No idea where he is now, not in IT would be my guess.  Another fella went the other way; got some fancy-dan sketch in the City for a bit, and now lives in a palace on the Cheshire Plain (for the uninitiated, the right part of Cheshire = $$$$$).

I'm somewhere in the middle.  Comparatively well-off, I live in a nice house paid for by a well-remunerated and interesting job.  If you'd have seen me in the first three months of my first proper paid employment, you'd have laughed out loud at anyone who told you that's where I'd end up.

Teetonetal

Simply depends who you get and how good you are at recruiting. In the usa we've had some horror cases. In Europe we've found mainly really good people and 2 that were awful.

There is definitely a section of melenials who want to live vs work. I've seen some awful CVs from a retention point of view. People flitting from job to job and country to country often with big travelling gaps between work. Some are highly qualified but as a firm we need consistency. Generally my job takes 6 months to a year to learn.

ThePrettyDamned

Fretwired said:

Serious take on millennials ...

That was very good. I can relate to a lot of that...

Teetonetal said:

Simply depends who you get and how good you are at recruiting. In the usa we've had some horror cases. In Europe we've found mainly really good people and 2 that were awful.

There is definitely a section of melenials who want to live vs work. I've seen some awful CVs from a retention point of view. People flitting from job to job and country to country often with big travelling gaps between work. Some are highly qualified but as a firm we need consistency. Generally my job takes 6 months to a year to learn.

I'd argue that's true for a lot of jobs - I've been in mine for about 7 months and I'm still learning a lot. 

I have a friend who flits a lot - he has found it hard to get a long term job recently, but previously he found it very ease to score temp work. Power to him, but I couldn't live like that! 

strtdv

I assume that every generation has those who feel entitled and are generally wasters and those that are hard-working. I'm pretty sure that's not a "millennial" thing.

The living at home until your 30's thing is probably a reflection on the jobs market/income vs housing costs, and also I think partly because a lot of millennials do seem to spend money differently than previous generations (with an emphasis on experiences rather than a great compulsion to own a house).

(I say this as a 30 year old who has been a homeowner since I was 26, but I think I'm more of an exception rather than the rule)

TTony

stickyfiddle said:

What changed in an average office between 1920 and 1980? Maybe more typewriters and typists, but probably very little for people doing the work.

Do you really believe that?  Do you really believe that WW2 (for just one example) had no significant impact on the working environment?

It's easy for us to look at ourselves and think that we're at a cutting edge of change so sharp and radical that nothing like it has ever been seen before, but, I'd suggest that just about every generation has gone through a similarly sharp and radical change.  It might not seem much to us, now, from our perspective, but at the time, it was - I'd wager - just as earth-shattering as our experiences today.

Previous changes have been generated by events like WW1/WW2, or the '29 crash & subsequent depression, or (for the UK) by the end of the empire, or (etc).  Social change.  The nose-in-the-phone generation might believe that there was no change pre-tech, but that's a little blinkered, probably because all they see/recgonise/value is tech.

As for tech change, I agree that the internet has changed things considerably, but it's largely - IMHO - in terms of doing more or faster, rather than doing a lot better.  Looking at your "typical week", there's a lot of activity going on, but, to be blunt, "so what"?  There's also a lot of wasted time and effort in travel, and whereas you're jumping on and off planes, that's really little different (other than in distance travelled) from jumping on and off trains, in and out of cars, or on and off a horse.  

If the internet had really changed things, you'd be VR conferencing, not travelling.

Biggest change in the working environment since the '80s?  

I think one was tech related (the introduction of the PC) and one was social related (the end of "job for life").  But that's probably because I lived through those and experienced them, so they're the main things that I saw the effect of.

Re the millennials?  They've grown up being told that they're special, so of course they have a sense of entitlement now.  Society generally seems to treat children as miracles to be protected and deified rather than the continuation of something that's happened for millennia.  

thecolourbox

digitalscream said:

stickyfiddle said:

stickyfiddle said:

Good take from Simon Sinek, as usual.

As a millennial (1984) in a corporate environment I can confirm everything he’s saying.

1) so many of my peers are entitled jerks whose are simply full of shit

b) everyone is addicted to their phones, including senior people

c) the senior-senior partners are constantly talking about engaging with millenials in the workforce (because we about half the workforce) but they have no idea what that means. All we really want is technology that is appropriate to the work we have to do and the conditions in which we have to do it, which means a fast laptop that isn’t ha,strung by insane data security policies, and a smartphone that is setup for work stuff that we don’t have to pay for. Of course us on the lower half of the ladder get neither of those...

I should add a d) to this... my peers who are not entitled jerks are among the most hardworking and talented people I know and it's genuinely painful when one gets sick of the corporate shit and leaves.

It's the weird thing, really - every generation prior to the millennials has changed the workplace environment to suit themselves as they rose through the ranks. It makes sense, because that way nobody experiences a massive culture shock.

This generation, though, seem to insist that everything be arranged to suit them; or, perhaps conversely, management seem to be obsessed with the idea of re-arranging everything to suit them, leading to the new generation of workers feeling entitled to such treatment.

Do you resent this simply because you couldn't do it back then or because you disagree with it in principle?

TTony

digitalscream said:

Well, I'm pretty sure that's turned into an entirely new problem. 20-25yr olds - mostly girls - living at home until they absolutely explode, disavow their parents, chuck around things like "I've been mentally abused by my dad/physically beaten by my mum for 18 years..." and similar, but end up pretty much scrounging off everyone else around them.

Wasn't it always that way?



Different words, different ages, same process

digitalscream

thecolourbox said:

digitalscream said:

stickyfiddle said:

stickyfiddle said:

Good take from Simon Sinek, as usual.

As a millennial (1984) in a corporate environment I can confirm everything he’s saying.

1) so many of my peers are entitled jerks whose are simply full of shit

b) everyone is addicted to their phones, including senior people

c) the senior-senior partners are constantly talking about engaging with millenials in the workforce (because we about half the workforce) but they have no idea what that means. All we really want is technology that is appropriate to the work we have to do and the conditions in which we have to do it, which means a fast laptop that isn’t ha,strung by insane data security policies, and a smartphone that is setup for work stuff that we don’t have to pay for. Of course us on the lower half of the ladder get neither of those...

I should add a d) to this... my peers who are not entitled jerks are among the most hardworking and talented people I know and it's genuinely painful when one gets sick of the corporate shit and leaves.

It's the weird thing, really - every generation prior to the millennials has changed the workplace environment to suit themselves as they rose through the ranks. It makes sense, because that way nobody experiences a massive culture shock.

This generation, though, seem to insist that everything be arranged to suit them; or, perhaps conversely, management seem to be obsessed with the idea of re-arranging everything to suit them, leading to the new generation of workers feeling entitled to such treatment.

Do you resent this simply because you couldn't do it back then or because you disagree with it in principle?

Who says I resent it? I find it annoying, sure, but the inflated sense of entitlement relative to capability that's coming into the workplace now has little effect on me and hasn't for a few years now because I've taken a lot of steps to insulate myself from such idiocy.

It's lovely that some folk here are working with the talented amongst the new generation, but believe me...that's far from the whole story.

Sporky

TTony said:

If the internet had really changed things, you'd be VR conferencing, not travelling.

I once drove from Guildford to Yeovil to discuss upgrades to the video conferencing system in the room at Yeovil.

I have a compatible VC codec on my laptop. On my desk.

On the upside I was about £60 up on the mileage allowance and had a nice day listening to Spotify in the car.

On the downside the coffee was crap.

jonnyburgo

Sporky said:

[Anecdata warning]

We hired some graduates recently. One was taken on as he had an engineering degree and lots of CAD experience, and we need someone to pump out M&E layout drawings and schematics. Our Director of Fulfilment (awful job title, I know) thought it'd take about 3 months to get him up to speed.

2 weeks in he'd completed the two standard qualifications for the industry on his own (slightly quicker than I managed it, and I'd been doing it for ten years when they came out; most people take six months or so) and done a full set of accurate drawings for a live project, including some calculations by hand that most people use an online calculator for. All the way through he'd gone off and found out how to do the industry-specific stuff on his own.

Problem now is that we can't feed him work as fast as he can clear it, so he may be partly on loan to my team to help with design verification.

I know he's just one chap and not a representative sample, but his level of getting-shit-done is downright inspiring.

Bet he hasn't got a girlfriend though, the big nerd.

Sporky

jonnyburgo said:

Bet he hasn't got a girlfriend though, the big nerd.

No idea, but you're right about the big bit - he's about 8 feet tall.

Lovely chap too.

randella

Sporky said:

jonnyburgo said:

Bet he hasn't got a girlfriend though, the big nerd.

No idea, but you're right about the big bit - he's about 8 feet tall.

Lovely chap too.

Hahaha, no calling him 'nerd' to his face then

Sporky

I doubt there'd be any serious consequences, he really is awfully nice. But it'd be mean, and I shouldn't  be mean to people who aren't in my own team.

m_c

We've got a pair of apprentices at work. One actually works, whereas the other one is very much like that video. If it doesn't involve minimal effort, he goes in a strop and does everything he can to avoid doing it.

Gagaryn

I work with millennials. They are a pain in the arse. One is actually ok. But anecdotally, they area a pain in the arse.

Gary, age 50.

VimFuego

I mostly work with annuals and a lot of perennials. TBH they are a lot less hassle than the roses, right bunch of flowers they are.