How Gen Y Should Talk To Old People At Work 459
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."
How other gens should talk to gen Y at work. (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe that would also be a solution
So basically... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't communicate like an idiot. What a good idea!
Re:as loudly (Score:4, Insightful)
As a millennial, I offer this advice: don't fucking have anime as your desktop wallpaper, don't have an interest in Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh. If you're older than 12 and still playing with that shit, your coworkers will think you're a wimpy bitch as best and a creepy pedophile at worst. Seriously, guys, we're grown men here.
-- Ethanol-fueled
How about (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Silly me (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:How other gens should talk to gen Y at work. (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, I don't know what generation I belong to, but when I hear "boomer" I think a type of submarine, when I hear "X" I think ecstasy, and when I hear "Y" I think Y-chromosome. But what's with all the labels? How about just "in a professional environment, act professional"?
Backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:So basically... (Score:3, Insightful)
how is it that common standards make so much sense for html, programming languages, engineering but not for human communication?
HTML and other standards do change but usually to add clarity or features.
I can see the value of changes to language which increase clarity or make it more concise (for example sharing a common vocabulary of "patterns" can increase your teams design and programming effectiveness. )
But arbitrary slang which the other person is unlikely to understand or which doesn't have a clear and common meaning- not so much.
Re:Work Hard? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Baby Boomers are a burden now. (Score:5, Insightful)
...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 ...
Re:So basically... (Score:3, Insightful)
Who uses "U/R" in professional communication, that's not working in marketing?
The next guy to be fired.
Re:So basically... (Score:1, Insightful)
how is it that common standards make so much sense for html, programming languages, engineering but not for human communication?
Because life is dirty and language is organic.
Oh, and, those HTML standards you're talking up so much?
Everyone ignores them.
I ignore them. Web developers - even while claiming to love them - ignore them. Microsoft ignores them. Mozilla ignores them. Apple ignores them. Google ignores them.
Re:Backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
+1. I remember when business was mostly done on the phone, and it was a really inefficient medium. So inefficient that you needed specialist employees whose job was placing calls... Every now and then I end up in contact with an industry that is still mostly phone-based (e.g. movers) and I'm reminded what that was like.
Phone is good when you have something sensitive or open-ended and/or you really need to sound someone out, hear their tone of voice, pauses and so forth. Interestingly, I've noticed that I and most folks set those calls up with an e-mail or text - we don't just cold-call. That feels rude now.
I've also noticed that not all of my fellow senior colleagues have adapted to e-mail well. Messages should be short and clear and not waste the recipient's time.
Beer at lunch, that was good.
Re:Whatever happened to merit? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a problem, or maybe it was the 'point' of the work hard mindset.
That if you work hard at where you're at, you can be seen as 'you best fit here' so the bosses will pass you over for promotion because they figure your replacement will be worse.
But to be honest, everyone should agree and realize it's not your merits that get you jobs and promotions. It has always been and always will be WHO you manage to befriend, and WHO'S family you were born into.
Re:Whatever happened to merit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Acting like a dick never works, and insisting that people with 5x your experience do things "your way" is about as dicky as you get.
Brett
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:as loudly (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not concerned (Score:5, Insightful)
I was born in 1959 and this article is shit.
Use the phone
Fuck no. Use email for work - we want a trace for fucks sake.
Return email etiquette: When you receive an email from a Baby Boomer, reply using a similar format. If they begin with “Hi Joe” in every email, then you return every email with “Hello Eric”. If they end every email with a letter-like ending such as “Best wishes”, “Best”, “Thanks”, or another equivalent, return your emails with the same courtesy.
Oh fuck, I bet this guy top-posts.
Discuss technology at an appropriate level: As you read this, note that it’s coming from a life-long techie, former CIO and current CTO of a company I started. It’s easy for Gen X’ers and Gen Y’ers that grew up using technology to technically overpower those who did not grow up on technology. We are digital immigrants and you are digital natives. There is a difference.
WTF? People older than me invented all this shit! I don't have to be worried abot some kid blinding me with anything other than bullshit.
Work hard: Baby Boomers have an extremely strong work ethic.
Is this guy delusional? Work to live, don't live to work.
Re:So basically... (Score:5, Insightful)
"language never stands still, it constantly evolves, there is no standard"
Stop whining.
True, language never stands still. It constantly evolves. But if you think there is no standard, you're exactly the kind of idiot TFA was referring to.
Re:as loudly (Score:2, Insightful)
Grown men who play with children's toys are creepy. An occasional animated show is fine; making it the center of your life is weird.
Re:So basically... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Baby Boomers are a burden now. (Score:5, Insightful)
If i had not already posted a bunch. I would mod this up as MUCH as i can.
I think most of the gen x and y people. Myself included looking at our parents. The so called 'baby boomers and greatest generation(HA)'. Saw how the 50+ work hour weeks wrecked them, heard how they lamented how they did not have the time they wanted for themselves. Or how they could not spend the time they wanted to their family.
And thought. No, I, won't do that to myself.
Re:Work Hard? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not concerned (Score:5, Insightful)
It's always rich when they use "extremely strong work ethic" to explain away the advantages that came to living in the post war years. As if we wouldn't work hard too if we had at least some reasonable prospect of retiring or getting a holiday bonus. We'd be incredibly rich working hard, if we were competing against the 3rd world and a bunch of bombed out 1st and 2nd world nations as well.
Or the fact that they could work a summer job and pay for their college education, assuming they chose to get one in the first place. As recently as the '80s, the government was paying 90% of the cost of attending a public school. Not to mention that they shipped most of the jobs that didn't require a college degree overseas or had so many applicants that a B.A. became a standard screening filter for even the most menial jobs.
Re:So basically... (Score:4, Insightful)
> language never stands still, it constantly evolves, there is no standard
Yes there is. The standard is "don't look like an idiot". This may mean different things but most people would agree that writing emails like "R U going today?" on a regular basis in a business environment would qualify.
> the world changes. deal with it
No. Anyone writing emails that can't spell out three-letter words is going to look like an idiot even in the future. Sorry, but I don't see that changing.
Re:as loudly (Score:5, Insightful)
Grown men who play with children's toys are creepy.
You almost have a point there. I mean, the average age of game players is 30 years old [theesa.com], so by that definition, if you're a gamer, you're creepy.
An occasional animated show is fine; making it the center of your life is weird.
An occasional football/baseball/basketball/foosball game is fine; making it the center of your life is weird.
An occasional movie is fine; is fine; making it the center of your life is weird.
An occasional book is fine; making it the center of your life is weird.
An occasional opera is fine; making it the center of your life is weird.
Eating the occasional meal is fine; making it the center of your life is weird.
An occasional comic book is fine; making it the center of your life is weird.
Collecting the occasional stamp is fine; making it the center of your life is weird.
Playing the occasional guitar is fine; making it the center of your life is weird.
Anything is weird if you take it to some crazy extreme. Who are you to be the gatekeeper of what hobbies are weird and which ones aren't, based on some arbitrary scale of weirdness?
Re:as loudly (Score:2, Insightful)
You sound like like an ass kissing yes-man. This post sounds like an overcompensation for serious esteem issues, I suppose your behavior does get you some small level of head patting from your betters, but we still all recognize you as a worthless lickspittle. It's not like your kind is rare you know. We know how you treat people when we're not around to keep you on your leash. Consider this your warning.
Yes, I'm significantly older than you and am definitely at the top of your food chain, You would do well to grow up and develop a better attitude. You don't sound like you were raised very well, probably because your father was from a long line of lickspittles and he passed on his craven "values" to you.
Comically, the captcha is "achieve". Something you will never do,
Re:Copying Email Formats - No Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
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 don't care if someone has a salutation or signature on their email -- I can usually skip the bookends without too much trouble -- as much as I detest it when I get mails with subjects including the words: "message, memo, note, about, re:, from, email, etc." as in, "subject: a note from Bob Smith re: inventory". Really? It's from Bob Smith? How would I have known? It's a note? So, not a box of chocolate or a flaming bag of dog poop contained digitally therein? That's good, I suppose. "From"? "Re"? Don't get me started. The only necessary, non-redundant word in the entire subject: "inventory". And if I'm reading it on some tiny smartphone screen, it probably got cut off! Arg.
On the other hand, I have vowed to myself that no one will ever get a positive review, recommendation or reference from me if they repeatedly write "noone" or other similarly annoying and readily detectable misspellings. Don't they ever wonder what the squiggly line is all about? I think the lack of curiosity implied here is what really hurts my wiener the most. Same goes for anyone using txt-speak in a medium without a 160 (or fewer) character limit. And punctuation, caps and paragraphs exist for a reason. If it takes me twice as long as it should to figure out what someone means, I'll be spending that extra time thinking how much I hate them. And if it's cc'd to a whole department, that time loss and irritation multiplier gets . . . multiplied.
Whole companies aren't immune from the plague, either. I worked at a firm where the annual employee evaluation form had checkboxes in the "reason for salary increase" section that included the option: "Merrit". I think everyone would agree with me that that's a bit of a red flag.
And for the sake of disclosure, in case you hadn't already guessed it, the most frequent criticism of my communication style is "long-winded". Followed by "pompous jackass".
Re:So basically... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not concerned (Score:5, Insightful)
Who is this "they" that shipped the jobs overseas. The unemployed older workers deemed too old to "fit" into what companies have become?
The biggest problem there wasn't generational, it was cultural in a perverted sense. MBAitis took over the corporate suite. Simultaneously, open trade was also promoted by the government through trade agreements, mind you the economy would have stagnated without it. The result though was that jobs moved to the least cost producer...that is if you counted cost like yer basic dickless MBA, i.e., cost is the means of production NOW. It didn't account for experience, the ability of the company to be a company 5 years from now, happy workers willing to go above and beyond the call because the company was willing to go above and beyond the call, etc.
In short, MBAitis means getting yours now because you are more important than any cogs in the wheel, your company means nothing to you because you'll find another, your company's product means nothing to you, pride of workmanship means nothing to you, you are merely a cost-benefit analysis abstracted into a shell of a person with a depth of near nothing.
After working with youngins and oldins for nearly 40 years, there isn't a generational problem (in general), but there is a management problem.
Re:as loudly (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, in case you puerile dorks haven't yet figured this out - In the corporate world, the world in which I work(so I know a few things), perception is very important, especially because chances are your boss is an older geezer than you are who was raised properly with manners.
When you get hired, you embrace the corporate culture. I know that sounds a lot for you social-retards to handle, as you're the ones playing music loudly on your phone in public and performing other obnoxious habits. Chances are, you think the real world is like the movie The Social Network and your parents didn't instill any discipline in you and let you do whatever the fuck you wanted to do in public. You were the kid whose parents let him run around the restaurant and randomly kick other diners in the shins, and then your yuppie-asshole dad explained it all away by telling angry partrons some dumb shit like, "he's just exploring."
If somebody has Anime on their desktop or plays Pokemon without shame, it means that chances are they are one of those compulsively nose-wiping snots I described above. I am a millenial, albeit an older one, but I understand those things because I was properly raised. When I was a kid, anybody who was playing with action figures in the fifth grade was laughed at, because by then cool kids like me were listening to Kriss-Kross and going to dances with girls. Get with it, kids.
-- Ethanol-fueled
So ad-hominems, jumping to conclusions, unjustified judgmental attitude, heavy reliance on strawmen . . . I don't think you're nearly as mature as you think you are. Unless you don't count maturity and rationality in the list of proper raising and development.
Re:Not concerned (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever you like - but if you wanted promotion by a boss in that generation . . .
Promotion?
That would imply not being laid off as soon as the chief executive's bonus isn't as big is it wanted.
That would imply being permanently employed, rather than a zero-hours temp who is motiviated to work by the "promise" of a permanent job.
It would also imply that the old farts are retiring, so people can move up.
Take a look at what's happening to employment-population ratios by age group. Employment of the over 60s is skyrocketing (i.e.: they're not retiring), the 50-plus group is holding its own, and as for the twenty- and thirty-somethings... it's not a happy story.
Promotion? Delusion. Promotion happens by getting a job somewhere else, if at all.
Re:as loudly (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah yes, holier than thou rhetoric. Perhaps corporate culture should focus more on results and not perception and appearance? You might make more money that way.
When I get hired, I enter into an agreement to do a specific set of tasks in order to receive a specific amount of money. If the work gets done correctly, in a timely fashion, I get paid. Otherwise, I don't and am fired. I have embraced nothing. This is the difference between an employee and a slave. A slave is forced to embrace the cultural whims of his master in order to gain a pittance for living expenses..if he's lucky.
If corporate culture routinely uses unsubstantiated opinions of minor traits to differentiate potential employees, I am not surprised our economy is in the shitter. How can such irrational people make good products and thus any money if the only skill they have and prize in new hires is social favoritism and conformity?
Re:How other gens should talk to gen Y at work. (Score:4, Insightful)
Would be nice if employers adhered to this mantra, too. But no, they make people work in demeaning open-plan offices, require them to attend purile team building sessions and generally treat their workforce like children. It's no wonder employees have contempt for them.
Re:Not concerned (Score:4, Insightful)
You're old enough to be my dad, but I agree - I hate using the phone. For several reasons. The first is that in a highly technical environment, it is easier to follow along in an email. It is more precise. Second, in the technical world, you may have to deal with people who have very strong accents more than half of your time. I know it is a personal failure, but I have a very difficult time with exceedingly heavy accents of all kinds. Not to mention, a long of the clients I work with are in departments overseas, so I am trying to decipher what is being said through both a very heavy accent *and* an awful phone connection.
As for the email stuff... "mimic the other person's behavior" has less to do with "how to deal with the elderly people at least 30 or years old" and more to do with "how to be a slick salesman snake type person" or "how to be a sociopath". People care more about the content and efficacy of your email than fucking salutations (though, for fuck's sake, can we get back to inline quoting and commenting?!).
Most importantly of all is that Gen x/y are not "digital natives". This is an idiotic parroted line of bullshit that needs to die. This is no different than idiots who talk about how technologically inclined children are, because they can use an iPad by the age of three. Simply watching netflix on ten different devices doesn't make you a technological-fucking-anything. This goes not just for five year olds today, but also millennials, gen x/y and baby boomers. There are highly technical people in all groups (the most used elements of today's technology was developed by the oldest among us -- many so old that they're not even alive any more!) and highly ignorant people in all of the groups. I mean, shit, I know far more gen x'ers and gen y'ers who don't know a lick of code, couldn't build their own computer, couldn't avoid a virus on their machine for the life of them . . . than I know who *can* do those things.
Of course, I guess I'm not part of this discussion, anyway, because I was born in 1977 -- so I am too old for GEN Y (1980+) and too young for GEN X (up to 1975).
Re:Not concerned (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone in their thirties, my advice to those in their twenties would be to put the fucking phone down, log out of facebook, and try doing some work. It goes a fuck of a long way toward, you know, staying fucking employed.
Re:as loudly (Score:5, Insightful)
What exactly did his desktop background disrespect? Why does it concern you? it's his desktop background, not yours.
Disliking portrayals of violence isn't uncommon, and it concerned me because I sometimes have to see it when I work with him.
There is obviously a scale. The plain, default blue background at one end, and something like pornography / gore at the other. In a normal office the violent film clip isn't far over my boundary line, but at a school it would be. At school, something gothic with skeletons is just a bit odd, but I'd choose something else at the hospital.
Essentially, I'm judging someone else by comparing their behaviour to mine.
Re:as loudly (Score:4, Insightful)
Because, as the song says, "high school never ends" and "all that matters is climbing up that social ladder".
Work is basically a LARP where you play a role to get the gold. You might not actually be a lvl 1 Office Drone, but you damn well better learn to pretend. And it makes sense, from viewpoint of efficiency: no one there knows you, at least not initially, but they know what to expect from an Office Drone.
Life is pretty surreal most of the time. Don't get upset about it, just enjoy the implicit comedy.