How Gen Y Should Talk To Old People At Work

jfruh writes "A lot of ink has been spilled explaining to Boomers and Gen Xers how they can best manage, motivate, and retain talented members of the Millenial generation on the job. But it's a two-way street, and those born in the '80s and later could also use a lesson on how to best communicate with older co-workers, who after all will determine their promotion and pay raises for the foreseeable future. Advice includes: make actual phone calls, mirror the level of formality your co-workers use in e-mails, and for Pete's sake don't ask them things like 'R U going?' in a non-texting medium."

Re:Baby Boomers are a burden now.

[Anonymous Coward]

My grandfather busted his ass and died at fifty five of a heart attack. My father busted his ass and died at fifty five of a heart attack. I'm taking it easy. If I still die at fifty five of a heart attack, at least I won't have wasted thirty years trying to impress some crusty old MBA halfwit with 80 hour weeks.

Re:Silly me

[Anonymous Coward]

Forcing people to talk to you on the phone for something that could be handled over email is not only NOT courteous, it's downright rude. Don't force people to conform to your schedule.

Re:How about some respect for ancient knowlege

[mcgrew]

How about having some respect for the knowledge which may be gathered by your elderly counterparts?

Youth have always been indestructible and all-knowing, in their own minds at least. All generations when young. I was in the Air Force before I started college in 1976, so I was ten years older than most of the students by my Junior year.

One class, I don't remember the subject of the class but I do remember an insolent eighteen year old punk saying the instructor, who held a Master's degree and was about 40, was ignorant.

"Kid," the instructor said, "I've forgotten more than you've ever learned."

Re:as loudly

[xaxa]

The hell do folks' personal gaming interest have to do with their professional life?

Once they put it on their work computer's desktop it gets noticed.

One of my colleagues has a screengrab from a film; a huge gun against someone's head. I didn't much like seeing that. I'm not going to complain about it, but I think it's a bit disrespectful and immature.

An anime/manga background isn't disrespectful (hopefully!), but think about what impression you want to give to colleagues beforehand. That's all.

Re:Not concerned

[hedwards]

Yes, but most of the regulatory changes happened during the '80s and early '90s. A period during which the young folks didn't have a say.

If folks your age were too stupid to realize that free trade agreements were a bad idea or that the government has to actually tax people in order to pay for services, that's not really our fault. You guys will get to retire with most of the Social Security you were promised. And chances are substantially better that you'll have some sort of pension to go with it.

These days, pensions are rare, I can't remember the last time I even saw a job posting that even promised something more than a 401k match.

The whole, I got mine, now to hell with you attitude of older voters has done an incredible amount of damage to the ability of the young folks to make a decent living. We work harder than you folks did for less. And we get less and less each year as inflation continually outpaces wage improvements. And folks on social security get COLA even when the inflation is negative.

Seniority being the key word

[EmperorOfCanada]

I have seen many many organizations when I was consulting. Some were startups filled with people generally of a narrow age range (that of the founders) and old organizations where the bulk of the upper management were boomers. But nearly every organization that I worked with had the same thing happening. They were confronting a wave of technology that was changing everything. The boomers were having serious problems with this; at best they might latch onto a BlackBerry and think that they were leaping into the 21st century. A typical example though was the 20 something salesman who could make technology sing. The result was that he could outsell a 60 something by a significant multiple. The 20 something would pull over to a cafe and copy and paste his way to a great proposal that was sitting on the client's desk 40 minutes after they had met. He might return to the office with a marked up proposal and conclude the deal by the end of the week. The boomer on the otherhand would be lucky to have the proposal ready by the end of the week. So after a few rounds of this the boomer would start to get antsy about the 20 something; so he would play the "Seniority" card. Start trying to change the rules saying that the 20 something can't be flinging proposals all over the place without giving him time to "review" them.

I can give a specific example where a single fresh out of university salesman outsold the other 11 salesman combined. He had been put in a crap area where they thought his average sale would be around $10,000-$30,000. So they put him on a small base salary with a 30% commission. His average sale(he made many) was actually around $500,000 and they refused to pay out the commission. They said it wouldn't be fair to the other salesmen and that he would get the same 6% that they did. Oddly enough he took this for a few years but left in the end.

So what I have seen over and over is a pattern of boomers who seem to think that highly qualified 20 somethings are arrogant whereas their mistreatment of them is not. The beauty of this is that the qualified 20 somethings usually figure out that they are being mistreated and move into organizations filled with other non-boomers who want talent not arrogance.

But the most amusing situation is when the reverse happens. When a young company filled with young people accidentally hires a boomer. Often the boomer has left something like the telephone company or a Nortel and immediately sets to work trying to make the dynamic young company into a remake of their old stodgy company. One of the first symptoms is the previously unused words "Org-chart".

But I have seen a few examples of where young and old worked together extremely well. The typical situation was that you have a boomer who has zero interest in the day to day running of the company and all they care about is money. So they go out and raise the money from their fellow (well capitalized) boomers and let the young people do what ever the hell it is that they do.

But this last if very little different in perception but entirely different in outcome when you have a well capitalized boomer try to run a company of 20 somethings. The usual symptom here is that the boomer is completely incapable of learning the nuances of what is going on. So you have a technology company that should be releasing a new product every 2 months but instead is bogged down by the boomer grinding development to a halt while he deals with another boomer marketing company that will debate for months which shade of blue the background should be.

Now the above experience covers technology. In non technology companies this is where the boomers' capital trumps all. This would be the boomer coffee shop owner trying to be hip and cool, hiring a bunch of hipsters, paying them minimum wage, and driving to wine parties in his brand new leased BMW. No communication problems their, you kiss his ass you find another job.

Re:Seniority being the key word

[Animats]

I can give a specific example where a single fresh out of university salesman outsold the other 11 salesman combined. He had been put in a crap area where they thought his average sale would be around $10,000-$30,000. So they put him on a small base salary with a 30% commission. His average sale(he made many) was actually around $500,000 and they refused to pay out the commission. They said it wouldn't be fair to the other salesmen and that he would get the same 6% that they did. Oddly enough he took this for a few years but left in the end.

As the CEO of Avis once said, "That's what you want to happen, stupid."

Something similar happened to Ross Perot at IBM. He was on commission, and one year he made more than the CEO of IBM. Then IBM imposed an annual cap on commissions. He hit his cap in late January, and wondered what to do with the rest of the year. So he started EDS and became a billionaire.

Re:Not concerned

[Phrogman]

The whole generation thing is BS anyways. I was born in 1959. I don't fit that generation or the one after it very well at all. I like computers, am quite computer literate, I play computer games (mostly MMOs), I read SF and Fantasy. I have a smart phone, I use the web in a variety of ways on a daily basis.
I get very tired of being lumped into a generation that somehow doesn't get it or something just because of my age.

Now, I don't sk8, I don't use text speech abbreviations, I can usually spell, I have owned various game systems but got rid of them because I don't like playing them as much as computer games, but I get tired of being treated like I am from the Middle Ages too :P