Thursday, September 18, 2008

Idiots

Boomer: "There's a lot of books talking about how to manage Gen Y/Gen X slackers. That means there's a real problem there."
Me: "There's a lot of books about UFO's too. Does that prove there's UFO's?"

The notion of a Baby Boomer, the original "Me Generation", the generation that elected Ronald Reagan because he promised them more "Me! Me! Me!", talking about how younger people are self-indulgent narcissistic and lazy is just rich. For the record, most Boomers who were in the engineering field are no longer in the engineering field because they were self-indulgent, narcissistic, unwilling to take direction (they view it as a personal insult to their competence), and unwilling to commit the give and take needed to develop consensus in a team environment (it is always their way, or they blow up the project). They view everything as being about them personally. They have no sense of proportion and are unable to compromise. They are unwilling to solicit information from others because they feel that makes them look "weak", they'd rather do things wrong than ask a question. Given that all major engineering designs now are too large to design solo, an unwillingness to work in teams pretty much disqualifies them from modern-day engineering. Or modern-day politics, I might add -- did my description above describe an awful lot about what has happened to Washington politics over the last 18 years as the Boomers took it over?

As for the so-called "slacker" generation, they're happy to work in teams. They've been working in teams since kindergarten and know what it takes. They have a sense of proportion. They don't get their knickers out of whack because their particular pet architectural concept did not get chosen by the rest of the team as the basis of the new product, they know it's just a job, and that the other design might not be as good for some definition of "good" as their design but it's good enough, so they pitch in and make it work. (Most of engineering of complex systems is about "good enough" -- if you try to make a product "perfect", it never gets released, at least not in a timely manner that puts you in the marketplace in a competitive timeframe). They have no problem with asking their elders for suggestions or advice when you ask them to do something, and then they're happy to run with your suggestions in creative ways that result in a better product than you expected. They have exactly the same loyalty to their employer that their employer has toward them -- i.e., none, if someone approaches them with a better offer they'll leave and take it -- but that's just a recognition of reality in the modern workplace, where anybody's job can be outsourced to India or China at any given time so (shrug) gotta take what you can get before that happens. They are "lazy" in that their job is not their life and they're not going to spend 20 hours a day at work if they can avoid it, on the other hand the fact that the job is not their life is also why they have the sense of proportion that allows them to work in teams without blowing the project up. (If you don't know what "blowing the project up" is, it's hard for me to describe it, but I once came into a situation where for two years a particular project important to the company's future was caught up in an endless cycle of criticism, bickering, fault-finding, and accusations. Twelve months after that we had our first prototype of the new product, but I had to "blow up" the team and put it back together again with the proper mentality to get a product out the door to make that happen, starting from scratch with "What do we want to do, and what do we need to do in order to make it happen?" and ruthlessly droning that message over any attempt to fall back into the previous behavior -- and getting rid of people who just didn't "get it").

So what do I make of Boomers who whine about how they can't manage Gen Y types? Well, my first impulse is to hand them a mirror. My second impulse is to tell them that the problem isn't the Gen Y types. The problem is them. They confuse Gen Y types attempting to reach consensus with them as personal insults and argumentation. They view Gen Y types asking for information as whining. Their notion of "criticism" is "That sucks", and then when a Gen Y type attempts to solicit information about what sucks about his design so that he can re-do it correctly, they view it as laziness ("he wants me to do his job for him!") and insubordination ("he refuses to re-do his design correctly!"). The problem is that they're behaving exactly like a Boomer generation politician in Washington D.C., pursuing a politics of egoism that has nothing to do with actually getting a product out the door. The Gen Y types I deal with are team and results oriented. They simply aren't built to put up with bullshit of that type without turning surly and looking for another job. But if you yourself are team and results oriented, they will happily produce some of the best product you've ever seen for you. So for Boomers who whine that Gen Y types are hard to manage -- err, look in the mirror, dude. Because the problem isn't the Gen Y "slacker". The problem is a self-centered egotistical "manager" who sucks.

-- Badtux the Manager Penguin

10 comments:

  1. "The problem is a self-centered egotistical "manager" who sucks. "
    Exactly, and this is not a Boomer (or Gen X, Y, A, B, or C) problem. It is human nature. So, enjoy your righteousness while you can. Your kidlets, or your neighbors', are going to be branding you a clueless, decrepit, self-absorbed, f***tard before you can blink.

    Cheers,
    The Boomer Penguin

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  2. Boomer: "There's a lot of books talking about how to manage Gen Y/Gen X slackers. That means there's a real problem there."

    Me: "There's a lot of books about UFO's too. Does that prove there's UFO's?"


    LOL, in my experience, most Boomers will answer that "Yes".

    One thing we have in common is an intense dislike of the Boomer generation. So many of them are selfish, good-for-nothing pigs.

    I have the pleasure of working with many teenagers in my capacity as volunteer photographer for a local communuity theater, and I find them to be excellent company. Granted it's hardly a random sample. Theater kids are generally more driven to succeed, smarter, and more talented than most. But they work in groups very well, they take direction very well, they're serious when they're working and fun when they're relaxing. So, here's to hoping the Boomers were a once-in-a-century phenomenon. I just wish they hadn't done such a through job trashing the world these kids will have to live in.

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  3. Hi,
    I've been reading your blog for a while and enjoy your perspective. As someone born in 1946, a leading edge Boomer if you will, I'd just like to point out something that I've never seen mentioned when Boomers are cursed with being "the worst generation eva". Boomers were raised by "the greatest generation eva" who frankly were really awful parents. The amount of rebellion exhibited by us is in large part a by-product of their tender loving care. Something to consider, n'cest pas?

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  4. And that's another thing that irritates me about many boomers. They're always looking for someone to blame, rather than saying "okay, this is broke, how do we fix it?" They view admission that their solution did not work as an admission of personal weakness. It's all about them. That's another reason why few boomers are left in the software engineering field, they're more interested in finding someone to blame for the failure of a project than in saying "okay, this project isn't going anywhere, what do we need to do to get the wheels back on it?".

    Moving forward on any project whether engineering, political, or otherwise requires being solution-oriented, not blame-oriented. Dilbert is a comic strip, not a manual for how to conduct your life. And it requires the ability to be dispassionate about judging solutions. Discarding a solution merely because it doesn't comport with your ideology is a Boomer thing. Discarding a solution because it just plain does not work... not so much. Thus why there's a real chance we're going to elect a President in November where we have eight years of proof that his economic policies do not work, because we're all about blame, not solutions, nowdays. And admitting that the past eight years' economic policies are broken would eliminate the ability to blame someone else for the problem and require evaluating other people's solutions, which the egotistical boomer generation simply cannot do. It's always "my way or the highway" with them...

    When did we become a nation more concerned with finding someone to blame than with solving problems? Hmm...

    - Badtux the Boomer Penguin (trailing edge)

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  5. Loved your post. If I may, I'd like to add that many Boomers will not accept 'defeat'. My Boomer boss in the PA gov spent years trying to overturn what EPA, DOJ, and the Commonwealth decided because it wasn't what he wanted. Oh yes, he was outvoted in a consensus meeting.

    Mold

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  6. Wait - Boomers? They're still around??? I thought we had them all ground into fiber supplement years ago. You mean it's possible that I may have to waste even one single minute of my life pretending to care what Baby Boomers think about anything? Man, that's depressing.

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  7. This is a huge struggle that we're having in academic medicine right now; the Boomers are reaching retirement age but they're not quite trusting enough of Gen X folks to turn the reigns over.

    I'm blessed with a senior practice partner who has come to terms over the last decade with the idea that this Gen X idea of work-life balance isn't a bad thing for anyone. In fact, he's tried it himself a little and he likes it. I'm grateful for that because it means that he doesn't think I'm lazy when I demand time away from work- though a decade ago he might have thought differently than he does now.

    Change is so painful for people.

    -The Generation X Doctor Princess

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  8. After reading this and then seeing this opinion piece in the local paper has got me wondering what is going to happen if McCain wins.

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  9. An excellent post.
    Too bad most of the people who need to read this never will.

    ReplyDelete

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