Am I The Only Boomer Who Hates This ?

[sturbridge]

In my experience, I'm not seeing etiquette being all that much worse. In the 80s when I started, there used to be fights and throwing of file cabinets and pinup girl calendars on the wall, in engineering. All of this stuff now would be cause for dismissal.

I hate wearing suits. Some time in the 90s I declared to myself that I would never voluntarily wear pantyhose for work again. So glad I've never had to since.

I never really understood the whole face time thing. I worked at a company a few years ago where the CEO would be ballistic that the software developers were not in at 8am "because it didn't look good". Of course, he still expected them to work all night for a customer critical issue and be on call even for less than critical issues. You can't have it both ways.

So yes I think you're a cranky old man, and I say that as someone who is 56.

Oh and loyalty? Yeah in the first few years of my career I saw layoff after layoff of good, productive individuals just to make the stock go up that quarter. People who had missed their kids activities to be helpful at work. You get loyalty from me, when you provide me with some loyalty in return.

 

[bssc]

At our Megacorp, our SVP, dressed like a homeless guy and used to shave once a week or so. The rest of us dressed the same which was fine with me since I hated spending money on suits. Ditto flexible hours. The joke was he did so well, he got promoted and moved to New York. He has to wear suits now.

 

[Hamlet]

We're not all that enamored of you either.

You don't need to like us X-ers, but you better be nice to the millennials, since they'll be changing your bedpans, generationally speaking.

I'm worried about the generation being born today. I can already tell that they are going to be trouble.

 

[marko]

My take is that the Millennials don't want to get their hands dirty. They expect the work to get done by 'someone else' and want to sit around 'brainstorming'. Trophy for showing up.

Sooner or later the work will stop getting done (by the boomers?) and the whole thing will grind to a stop. IMHO.

 

[MRG]

Dear Lord.

Help us, we have become our parents!

 

[JoeWras]

Dear Lord.

Help us, we have become our parents!

Yep. Every generation has this realization. Here's ours.

 

[RobbieB]

I hate formal dress and I always will.

Fresh out of school, first job, everyone wore suit & tie. Three pc (vests) were the fashion. Gag me with a spoon.

When I finished it was slacks (jeans on Friday) and the Co. logo knit shirt. Comfy casual. You had to buy the shirts (own dime) or wear a stiff dress shirt.

I bought the Co. shirts -

 

[rodi]

I hate formal dress and I always will.

Fresh out of school, first job, everyone wore suit & tie. Three pc (vests) were the fashion. Gag me with a spoon.

When I finished it was slacks (jeans on Friday) and the Co. logo knit shirt. Comfy casual. You had to buy the shirts (own dime) or wear a stiff dress shirt.

I bought the Co. shirts -

My best friend from grade school graduated from Berkeley in architecture... She was interviewing and all the firms were very formal dress. She interviewed with an new software company that was developing a cad program - and took the job... her main criteria for taking the job - she could wear Grateful Dead t-shirts to work. That started a long career in software (vs architecture). Hardly a millenial - she's my age and this happened in 1983 or so. Formal dress was a big deterrent to her.

 

[aja8888]

My take is that the Millennials don't want to get their hands dirty. They expect the work to get done by 'someone else' and want to sit around 'brainstorming'. Trophy for showing up.

Sooner or later the work will stop getting done (by the boomers?) and the whole thing will grind to a stop. IMHO.

No, the "work" will probably be done in India.

 

[Trueace]

I see your point. The thing is, the MOST talented and disciplined people you're better off not restricting and let them do things their way. But I suppose those are very few and far between. Like Steve Jobs said though, "you hire smart people and get out of the way." If you're overly restricting them they're probably going to leave because in part you're impeding them and they know they can do it better and want to work under their own rules etc. The problem here though is there aren't so many of those people. All these lax rules, less structure probably isn't the best for the majority of people even in IT / Engineering etc.

 

[naggz]

"The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them".
Peter the Hermit in A.D. 1274


"What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"
Plato, 4th Century BC


"When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint".
Hesiod, 8th century BC


"We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self control."
Inscription, 6000 year-old Egyptian tomb

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”
Socrates 469 – 533 B.C.E

 

[Danmar]

Agree with Midpack and Navy. Things change, get over it.

 

[marko]

No, the "work" will probably be done in India.

Well, in my particular example (SIL's company) the work is getting done by the boomers while the Millennials sit around brainstorming about how to get things done.

She works for a small-ish company (60 people) and the new management brought in a whole set of "fresh faces". Several "do-ers" like SIL have quit in the past year as the kids spend their time texting and having meetings. The work piles up while they say "gee! the work is piling up! let's brainstorm this!" Meanwhile the 25 year veterans are working overtime to get the work done.

Management thinks everything is fine as the Millennials come in late, get coffee, have a few meetings, go out again for coffee, have lunch, call another meeting, go to the gym, video conference with another division and then go home, complaining about how hard they're working.

SIL quit two weeks ago over this. Of course this is a poor management and supervision issue but...guess who the management is! Two Millennials.

 

[marko]

"The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them".
Peter the Hermit in A.D. 1274


"What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"
Plato, 4th Century BC


"When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint".
Hesiod, 8th century BC


"We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self control."
Inscription, 6000 year-old Egyptian tomb

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”
Socrates 469 – 533 B.C.E

And all these examples are from civilizations, cultures and societies that collapsed and no longer have any world stage relevance.

 

[DrRoy]

I'm good with the dress code, or lack thereof. The rest of it is less changed at my megacorp. I use flexible hours on occasion. As long as all the work gets done. There has been nothing but more of it per person as time went on.

 

[Golden sunsets]

I agree completely, not just about your job but about the world in general!

When I was a kid (I'm 68), young people were supposed to be respectful of their elders, too. Where on earth did that go?

Maybe I'm nuts, showing my age, or just a cranky old gal.

I'm 68 as well. In my first job, the hierarchy was so rigid that when the boss walked into the communal work room( we were federal bank examiners on site at any given bank) we were all expected to stand up, not speak unless spoken to and if male have our suit jackets on. We departed for the day only after being told to leave and were in our seats by 8AM each day. In my DD's world, in a NYC corporate office, getting in before 10 is a novelty. I'll never forget when DS was in college(an Ivy) that he felt that "Due Dates" for papers or assignments were "just suggestions" or guidance.


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[Slow But Steady]

I am a chemical engineer who worked in the plant. About fifteen years before I retired they decided we had to wear fire retardant clothing to walk to the control room. After that I wore blue nomex coveralls every day. You could go to any meeting with anyone in the plant wearing blue nomex coveralls. It was great!

 

[target2019]

Out with the old, in with the new. There's an old guy I work with, about same age as me. He has objections to many things in the workplace, can't accept things are different than he prefers. The workplace is moving away from autocratic to progressive behaviors.

 

[Dawg52]

Out with the old, in with the new. There's an old guy I work with, about same age as me. He has objections to many things in the workplace, can't accept things are different than he prefers. The workplace is moving away from autocratic to progressive behaviors.

I have no problem with being out with the old. I'm retired!

 

[Chuckanut]

Go back and watch the YouTube videos of SpaceX landing their first booster rocket on land, and then the first landing on the barge out in the Atlantic ocean. It's full of young millennial faces, the people who accomplished this amazing feat. It gives me hope for the future.

Better yet, watch the RTF (return to flight) launch currently scheduled for Monday.

 

[Amethyst]

Way back when starting school, I questioned the need for rules about when you could use the bathroom, the exact manner in which to proceed along the hallway, etc. My older sister explained, in a most un-PC manner, that those rules were for "the bad kids and the dumb kids."

I see your point. The thing is, the MOST talented and disciplined people you're better off not restricting and let them do things their way. But I suppose those are very few and far between. Like Steve Jobs said though, "you hire smart people and get out of the way." If you're overly restricting them they're probably going to leave because in part you're impeding them and they know they can do it better and want to work under their own rules etc. The problem here though is there aren't so many of those people. All these lax rules, less structure probably isn't the best for the majority of people even in IT / Engineering etc.

 

[JoeWras]

Go back and watch the YouTube videos of SpaceX landing their first booster rocket on land, and then the first landing on the barge out in the Atlantic ocean. It's full of young millennial faces, the people who accomplished this amazing feat. It gives me hope for the future.

And they won't hire anyone "old." Oops, that's a whole 'nuther issue. Nevermind, this is a retirement forum so we don't care about hiring.

 

[growing_older]

Go back and watch the YouTube videos of SpaceX landing their first booster rocket on land, and then the first landing on the barge out in the Atlantic ocean. It's full of young millennial faces, the people who accomplished this amazing feat. It gives me hope for the future.

Or you can look at any old video from the space race and see entire rooms of engineers (rocket scientists) in their 20's. There's no dispute that young people can be competent and do amazing things.

Well, in my particular example (SIL's company) the work is getting done by the boomers while the Millennials sit around brainstorming about how to get things done.

I'm good with casual work clothes and flexible hours (to a point) and even occasional work from home days. What I see is the younger engineers want to spend a lot of time discussing any problem before addressing it. They are slavishly devoted to collaboration tools so every job must be broken down into tasks that take no more than a day, then a ticket for each task is entered online and tracked. Partway through a task, any new ideas are written on their own tickets and entered into the system. A lot of time is spent writing and discussing the tickets. Also a lot of time is spent in meetings or talking over the open workspace just socializing. I know what everyone did every weekend and how most of them feel about any political or trendy topic. As a result, progress is very very slow and the backlog of tickets are endlessly increasing. Everyone congratulates themselves on the transparent communication and has lots of meetings to discuss what to do better next time, although they rarely implement any of the suggestion besides making new tickets for them. Documentation is never written, because everything is supposed to be recorded in the tickets.

As an older engineer, this is a very frustrating way to work. Between the endless discussions covering the same things discussed last week, there are always people out of the office, coming in late, leaving early, many of them both come in late and leave early and think that is "flexible hours" so even getting together for a meeting can take days.

Fortunately, I like what I do, and the people are good even if their work habits are strange to me. When we really need something done, the older engineers are assigned to "just take care of it" which we do without all the tickets and generally write some documentation, too. As a short-timer, I'm fascinated to observe the exotic attitudes, but I'm not all that hopeful for general productivity. A few stars can do amazing things, but the majority of the average contributors are very ineffective.

 

[Chuckanut]

And they won't hire anyone "old." Oops, that's a whole 'nuther issue. Nevermind, this is a retirement forum so we don't care about hiring.

I certainly won't deny the prejudice against hiring older workers. I have known a number of 50-somethings who faced it. They ended up draining a lot of their retirement resources, working much lower paying jobs, and collecting SS at 62 because they had to do so. Very sad

But, my point remains that there a a lot very talented young folk out there.

 

[audreyh1]

I don't have a problem with casual dress. However, I don't think it's too much to ask to wear a shirt with a collar, and trousers other than jeans.

The funny thing is the Millennial t-shirt and jeans has become almost like a required uniform for them. Where you never see a variation thereof. And don't forget the standard issue grey hoodie.

T-shirt and jeans is what I wore to work almost every day in the 90s, and I was an engineering manager!