"I am not a cat"
to me there seems to be a bit of a funny phenomena going on... boomers will eventually give up...
BUT I think younger folks who grew up on their phones also arent really all that tech savvy... like i heard many younger folks dont even know what a directory... or folder is on a pc...
certain generations grew up with XP...
certain generations grew up with MS-DOS
both of these are generally ok? and so I'm expecting some kind of brain drain... but the younger folks arent taking up the slack
True that.
Growing up through xp and dial up was good value to figure things out.
I also grew up in a trades time and think we will lose much more on the manual labour experience side of things. A lot of good value from the old fellas there
I work in IT at a school and all the students just shrug thier shoulders when I ask them "where did you save the file?".
They are too used to using the "Open recently" section.
Or, everything is just in the Downloads folder.
Productivity could double today if boomers understood that most meetings could be avoided by a well worded email.
Meeting etiquette people. Agenda ahead of time. Attach all relevant files. Send your slide/presentation ahead of time.
Source: millennial
Productivity would go up ten-fold if Millenials understood a 2 day back and forth email exchange could be avoided with a 2 minute phone call.
Source: Gen X.
That’s why I schedule a meeting/call to discuss the issue and follow it up with a email with decisions and actions as soon as it looks like a email chain is going to blow out.
When necessary. When you have long email chains covert multiple disparate topics/concepts with multiple people contributing there often isn’t an option.
You can easily have twenty long emails going back and forward discussing complex concepts and problems with members of the chain using different language for the same concept or not understanding the context of what is being discussed.
A meeting with a clear agenda, being effectively chaired and with documented decisions and actions can absolutely save time.
Hi Arthur,
About our conversation this morning, just wanted to confirm you wanted me to flush out the drivers and defragmentate the ram?
Just let me know if you need anything else.
Rueben.
Way faster than an email chain.
Gen Z are incapable of remembering stuff so I put everything in writing. I have staff (under 25) who will swear black and blue I never advised them of something. I love pulling out the email chain and proving them wrong.
Are you who came up with the records compliance requirement to delete all emails after 3 months?
Because we definitely don't need institutional knowledge.
except it's never 2 minutes. It interrupts whatever you're doing and now you have to deal with something that isn't a higher priority than what you were working on before so overall loss of productivity.
there is a time and place for a phone call. But most things boomers and gen x think need to be addressed now now aren't that important.
You know, it's funny, because there are heaps of email chains I have with ppl that would be easier to avoid with a call. But literally any time I try to call they're in a call, in a meeting, or not at work. Fkn painful.
You don't need to like it.
We are talking about productivity.
A LOT of wasted time and effort goes in to sending and reading email conversation over days, when a simple conversation via phone would get the job done.
I'm constantly telling my staff to pick up the phone and sort something out with a quick conversation rather than email. The customer and I want it done today, not in 3 days' time.
Sometimes it's appropriate to have email records to cover your arse. Other times people are not focused enough on getting a timely outcome.
If time is wasted it's because you're not putting all the necessary information and asking the right questions in your initial email. You need to be more efficient.
I'm not going to take time out of my project delivery work to answer your call, send me an email and I'll decided on its priority relative to my other work.
We have an unwritten rule of anything more than two email exchanges becomes a 5-10 minute phone call for on the spot solution or alignment followed up with a concise email confirming the agreement or actions. Solves time sensitive issues quickly and clearly
PowerPoint is not well regarded for information transfer. 20 years after this was widely discussed, it’s still used as a crutch.
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/14/magazine/2003-the-3rd-annual-year-in-ideas-powerpoint-makes-you-dumb.html
I'm completely surprised our executives are dumb for wanting info in PowerPoint form. /s
It's almost like you might link your full briefing in the ppt if they want the detail. Most execs don't.
You’re telling me
>can’t access file
>Dave
Isn’t a professional and efficient email?
Source: I get this often, especially if I’ve sent a mix of links, files, and resources in a single email.
From what I understand Gen Z are almost as bad because everything works and they expect social media to answer all their questions rather than using a search function (this is what I have experienced and read online).
I have students / interns with me at work and their first instinct is to ask me the answer to their question rather than looking for it themselves even 3 weeks in to having me as their supervisor where I have directed them to look first. As I've said to them multiple times, the point isn't to know the correct clinical answer at this point, it's to know where to look to find the answer.
As for baby boomers, the first 75% of them have already passed 65 and retired.
I only had to show our boomer/X gen once how to use Teams, Zoom etc. They took notes and printed the slide deck I made showing the steps, then took it to every video meeting they had and just followed the steps one by one.
It's our zoomers with no problem solving skills to speak of, that think they know so didn't listen, that seem to have trouble figuring out which camera, speaker or mic they are using.
Closely followed by the other millennials who also weren't listening but have some problem solving skills, so usually work it out eventually. Usually, while the boomers are trying to hold up their notes to the camera for them and reading the steps.
Meanwhile, the slide deck is linked at the top of the team, and the summary sheet showing the camera/speaker/mic config for the issued devices was posted directly above the meeting link.
Signed a Millenial who trains people how to use Teams as part of their job.
Counterpoint: we’ll be onto the sixth concurrent version of Teams in a standard corporate PC environment.
Go to work tomorrow and check how many versions of Teams are sitting on your computer. I’m up to three!
IDK, there's a lot of boomer DBA's running some pretty important oracle DB's out there. I got no love for that work, and I don't know who's going to take it on. It's gonna be a mess.
Explaining isnt the worst bit. The worst bit is when you finally get on the meeting and Boomers computer is crackling cutting in and out then he just vanishes.
Although, in saying that. It was actually really helpful to my career progression. We would have meetings with a barrister or someone who is exoensive and hard to get a meeting with and the Boomer would drop out. Id be the only one in the meeting and Id just make decisions.
After the meeting Id fill in the Boomer bosses. I basically started taking their jobs.
It is very noticeable in engineering. The thing is that not much knowledge is documented, the information is passed on from senior engineer to graduate engineer. Most of the knowledge is with the boomers mainly due to the fact that they have been doing the role for 30+ years, the one that I work with are extremely knowledgeable and I would be on struggle street if I didn't have them at work, basically it would take me 2 weeks to do what they could do in a few days. The millennials never stuck around for more than a few years because the only way you can get a decent pay raise is to change companies. So we are left with a vacuum in the middle. I think the ones that learn the most from the boomers before they retire are the winners. In engineering at least
>The millennials never stuck around for more than a few years because the only way you can get a decent pay raise is to change companies.
This is so hugely problematic isn't it. Not casting any blame on the employees, the corporations did this to themselves by not valuing and developing existing talent.
I agree, I was fortunate to be trained by a mob of old school engineers that goes back to 1st principle. You don't need to go 20 years to understand.
Things are complicated now but going back to 1st principle makes me get clarity.
Nowadays things are more complicated, and compartmentalized to black boxes, it is too much for a single person to understand from ground up.
I am glad I was trained by the old guys. I am not that pessimistic about the future, someone will figure it out, and make a hell of a lot of money while doing it. Good for them (in advance)
Similar problem with architecture.
When I left my first job I was a grad with 5 years experience. I asked for a pay rise of $5,000. Nothing outrageous. Would have put me at $72,000.
I was told they couldn’t pay me that at this point in time and we’d discuss it at my mid-year review. Same response at the mid-year review.
So I left. My direct manager tried to convince the directors to give me what I was asking so that I would stay, but they still said no.
I was the first of the mid-level experienced graduates to leave that office. When we (7 in total from an office of 19) left there was a severe skills shortage in the middle. It was all experienced seniors and inexperienced recent grads. It hurt them for the longest while. Eventually my direct manager left too because he was doing the work of an experienced grad and his senior role. He was pissed that the directors let so many good grads leave when it could have been avoided by giving a modest pay rise.
It’s a common tale in architecture.
I work alongside data engineers and have noticed this too. The problem is the engineers complain about nothing being documented but then don’t make any efforts to document anything themselves because “they’re engineers and it’s not their job”….. so the knowledge is lost as more of the older lot leave and the new ones come in. Then the new engineers are under pressure to deliver the same service without any resources or comprehensive training about the business. The solution to the knowledge loss is to document before they retire.
Most engineers are evaluated on other metrics. I have yet to see "good documentation" being part of those evaluations.
If you spend meaningful time, not only creating documentation, but also keeping it up to date as things evolve, you fall behind in areas of responsibility that *are* measured.
That's one reason why so many Private industry people bag the public service - the Public Service typically HAVE to document anything (IT wise) before they do it, so it takes a hell of a lot longer for any change to happen.
Mainly because of procrastination tbh.
> don’t make any efforts to document anything
How are they supposed to type with their pointers?
Off the top of my head I can think of 5 old guys I worked with, all with the same typing pattern. Each time I showed them voice to text, they loved it on their mobile phones and iPads, but would never try it at work. One of them even had double carpal tunnel from poking his keyboard.
If you want it documented… do it. They won’t.
In what world is it not an engineer's job to document things?
Is this a software engineering phenomenon?
In mechanical engineering it's absolutely the engineers job to document things
Every industry is becoming this way, and it's because employers treat staff like shit or the conditions are so bad because they refuse to hire the requisite number of staff for the workloads, then complain people keep moving on. People don't leave good jobs
Here's to hoping when some of these boomers finally retire some of those 'good jobs' finally become available.
> The thing is that not much knowledge is documented,
Hahaha, so true, I've had to ring on-call engineers at 3 in the morning to fix a critical issue, the newer guys get really annoyed because a lot of these thing's have poor documentation.
Employers complaining that employees don't have the skills they need, while at the same time not providing training for staff.
Business calling for the government to increase imigration to fill the skills shortage.
Australians will need to continually spend money private education courses to meet the ever increasing requirements for business.
Right wing political parties arguing for cuts to welfare payment to force the unemployed into unfavorable working conditions.
or
Start funding TAFE again & give employers tax cuts (or other incentives) if they provide professional development for staff.
Educate employers that the award wage is the minimum legal compensation, and that they need to offer more than the minimum to attract skilled workers.
When more business owners realise that in Australia it's more profitable to own the land a business is on than to run the business, we can all just rent empty shops to each other & win capitalism.
>Employers complaining that employees don't have the skills they need, while at the same time not providing training for staff.
I am about to resign for this very reason.
Gone for several promotions, the GM says I lack X (I don't, I've done the role I'm applying for before and have years of demonstrated experience in X).
Ask ok, can you please tell me how I can bridge this perceived gap.
Nothing. Last time the same role came up I applied again and they shelved the role because "no quality applicants". So instead of just promoting me they're about to lose me.
Cool cya. Going to a competitor for the role you refuse to give me.
Fun game isn't it.
Scored high on every metric for a job I applied for (they didn't have positions in the location, but are doing another round in may they will call me for) but current job "oh, this application wasn't as strong. Do you have the experience?"
Did you read my CV? I have more experience than you in a different environment...
So I'm a product manager/Category Manager.
They said I don't have product knowledge.
The company I work for quite often bemoans a competitor outselling them.
I MADE THE PRODUCTS THAT ARE OUT SELLING THEM.
It would be hilarious if it wasn't so aggravating.
Unfortunately if you have a shit manager and you’re good at what you do, you can sometimes be more useful to them in what you’re doing right now than what you actually want to be doing.
Shit managers kill work morale. Leaving one is the best thing anyone can do.
>> Nothing. Last time the same role came up I applied again and they shelved the role because "no quality applicants". So instead of just promoting me they're about to lose me.
I had a similar experience at a previous employer.
I asked what I needed to be doing to move into the next phase of my career (architecture). They said something like “nothing, you’re doing great. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
But when I asked for a pay rise and said I feel I am ready to move into an Associate type role they said “you’re skill set isn’t quite there yet. Keep working at it.”
When asked they did not provide any specifics on what skills I was lacking or areas I needed to develop. Just “keep working at it”.
When I asked to do some training courses they said yes, but I’d have to take annual leave to attend and they’d pay half the cost seeing as I’m the one who’d ‘keep the product’ if I ever left their office. I declined - I was happy to wear the cost but not the annual leave loss. That was just petty.
I've been directly responsible for a 18% jump in sales in the last year and it just gets waved aside because the office I work for hates retail (Melbourne office is singing my praises).
Waiting on the contract come through and I can't wait to leave.
Note: I’m Gen Z.
My current job is probably the first time I’ve had a manager (she’s a few years older than me) who has been actively advocating for further learning/PD opportunities for me, totally unprompted. She’s also generally a great advocate and I see she invests in her staff to make life easier for our team in the long-run.
I’m fairly new to the organisation so it’s not yet my place to start demanding for PD (everything is outsourced and, thus, paid) so it’s been a big boost in my confidence and desire to stay there and meet them halfway, in a sense.
Of course, if it’s empty promises I’m not afraid to move to another area/organisation that has demonstrable and concrete PD from the get-go.
>Employers complaining that employees don't have the skills they need, while at the same time not providing training for staff.
This is such a huge thing cuz reality is, vast majority of jobs dont require people to waste years in education which is outdated or does not reflect actual working procedures, time would be far better spend learning on the job where you learn what is ACTUALLY going on, not dumb theory
I think OP is suggesting on the job training
The way boomers talk about employment
"Oh I started at company x at the bottom and worked my way up, got exposure here, a promotion there"
Most corporations now are "efficient" that they don't want cross skills or training up an existing employee for a new role... to them it's just moving the problem
This is exactly the issue I’m looking to address I my new job. Cross skilling seems to be a big focus so I’m scratching my head figuring out how exactly we develop and implement it all without me having a meltdown in the process.
Baby Boomers are not a different species, there is no step change here.
You're right that the ratio of working age to total population will decline and that can lead to a shortage of people to do work ( manual or intellectual) , that's why almost all rich countries encourage migration of working age people from poor countries to fill the gap. Some let them stay legally ( such as Australia, a lot of the EU) , others send them home ( Eg Middle East, Singapore) some let them stay in legal limbo (Eg USA).
Eventually this will cease to work ( I have no idea when) and we'll have to get more efficient and/or work out what tasks are really necessary for a comfortable 1st world existence and what are not. Ideally the works could split into countries or regions that work to meet the needs of those with different preferences on what's important.
I think it's more a case of having more people doing useful stuff, like teaching kids, looking after old people, producing food, and making sure we have electricity.
We need to get better at choosing what needs to be done, not necessarily attempting to automate some tasks to free up resources for less critical activities . That's how companies make decisions.
That's the case until it isn't.
I know in my circles multiple people have moved overseas recently to start lives with families elsewhere. Most of that group are doctors but now my software engineer friends are talking about it.
The inflow will beat the outflow, so the numbers won't be obvious but the cultural change and potentially knowledge loss will hurt.
Might not happen, just something I'm hearing talk on
It's just a nice, round number that is far enough away, yet not too far, to be able set as a goalpost. Mark my words, we'll see this replaced with 2035 or 2040 from next year onwards.
Honestly, how many boomers are actually still around in the workplace?
They seem to be pretty rare where I work. With the exception of two senior executives and one curmudgeon, pretty much everyone else I know of is Gen X or Gen Y, with some Gen Z starting to show up.
So many of the boomers were able to retire at 60 or earlier.
Only boomers I have seen working still are:
- Experts on some kind of old system or technology. Even then it’s only when something breaks and no one else can fix it.
- Poor people who need the money to top up the pension. But often it’s crap min wage jobs
- Social reasons. Like to get out of the house and still do something. Still usually only part time or casual and for low pay
That's assuming they all retire. We've got a 73yr old on our team that's a disaster but refusing to retire because she doesn't want to be stuck at home with her husband.
Yeah, when you hear that she is incompetent at work but keeps going because she doesn't want to be home with the husband, no one assumes that the *husband* is the problem.
More efficiency as people question why they are doing things in such a bizarre, useless way (such as print document, sign document, scan document). The orgs that will benefit will be the ones that reward (not punish through downsizing, etc) the workers for removing useless processes as the workers will do it themselves so they can then perform more meaningful work. So many boomers doing things to either keep themselves in a job or because they can't be arsed using technology is a huge sink of resources and money that could be giving younger people massive raises.
It’s not like we’re approaching some monolithic edifice where people ceased to be born after 1964, the whole generational thing is merely a societal construct.
Every year some people retire and some people enter the workforce, I don’t see why the end of a generation being within working age makes this different to any other time.
It's been interesting reading through this thread as a 58yo not quite boomer (on the cusp) who is retiring this month (yes that's early thank FIRE)
my whole career has been in IT so I've seen the change over an extended period
all those people saying how boomers can't use teams - well I gotta tell ya gen x is just as bad
and people saying how old timers who manage/program tech don't document well I've done a shitonne of docco over the years that just gets ignored for long enough to be misplaced when we move from and internal repository to a wiki and then to jira/confluence or some other similar thing
one thing that I didn't see much discussion on is how we who are retiring spent 40+ years doing ALL OF THE JOB - there were very few specialties - we specced the hardware - planned the architecture - unboxed and racked the equipment - wrote the scripts - dealt with the vendors - ran the databases - troubleshooted the network - dealt with security - recovered from hackers attacking - dealt with buggy operating systems / server code / vendor applications - stayed all through the night because the support technician was 12 time zones away - I could go on...
nowadays everyone has a specialty/silo and a view that "that's not my job"
my job was always "whatever is required"
no problem
truth be told we really do doco for ourselves since it becomes a repository for the exact correct syntax command with the correct flags n stuff for purpose whatever
and then there is handover stuff - the new guy isn't going to find doco on stuff I haven't encountered - anything I could have anticipated has already been sorted
Absolutely this. There is one guy on the team who flat out refuses to use Git so we are stuck using Subversion. But he's 65 so it's just waiting out the clock.
Naw, it's just changes what the barriers are. The young ones will hate your insistence on git instead of the new tool, and be waiting for you to retire.
I’m in remedial building.
A lot of what I do is learned by decades of experience.
Government seems focused on ever increasing mostly useless red tape.
Many of my colleagues are aging out or in my case leaving 5 years earlier than intended.
Things will still get done.
The best engineers and specialist trades are older experienced boomer types.
I learned way more off them than I ever did at tafe.
The building commissioner in NSW seems to be actually encouraging it.
I read comments he made chuckling off at us as we’ll soon be buying a boat and leaving the industry.
Funny thing is all the extra useless red tape is encouraging just that.
Any young girl or guy I encourage you to learn from the older ones, especially in the specialist trades.
Combine that with your regular training.
Productivity will increase. Not sure about quality.
If there's any stickler for inane details that matter it's the boomers.
They get buvger all done, but what they do produce is generally great quality.
Get them out of the workforce already, so many talented "underlings" stifled by nepotism unable to demonstrate their low cost yet efficient skillsets and leadership skills to pave a way to a better Australia while old foggy Joe blogs tries to figure out where the power button on their laptop is
Congrats on retiring, I'm sure you've worked hard to get to that point so good on you for getting a fair go. I've resorted to investing in medical stocks as a millennial so hopefully your next decades will be my future wealth fund. Its a bit morbid when you think about it
I previously worked for a government department that was taken over by another department and all the old leaders were replaced by new young private sector types.
Everything went to shit and we basically spent days thinking "well I don't know what to do cause all the people that knew this stuff have been fired or fled".
I'm happy to help some old exec with Teams if it means I can get access to 40 years of expertise and memory.
The cool thing is you’re next in line to be educated by the next generations, and have them waiting for you to retire while they roll their eyes at how useless you are with whatever the latest technology will be.
A tale as old as time.
I run my own business…..
Ironically I’ve had to teach the younger gen re stuff too
No one cares when I retire 🙄
Although the younger gen I employ will need to find new jobs when I do,so they aren’t going to be thrilled cos I pay my staff very well
Most of the boomers I have worked with in engineering couldn't design something to save their life, couldn't manage a project budget or program to save their life, think bullying is the answer to getting performance out of anyone, are racist and sexist, and are hated by their entire team. They have their jobs literally only because they have long, flashy CVs that win projects, but can't actually deliver anything. They won't learn any modern tools, workflow, systems, or software and won't train or pass any knowledge on. I welcome the generational transition wholeheartedly.
Looks like we're having a team meeting here :)
My favourite is "that's how we did it back then"... yeah and it's been like 30 yrs since. One guy is so stubborn to have everything printed out so he can spend hours marking up and talking shit on engineers who did the design. I swear guy spends 50% of time talking shit about others.
This is where I personally believe AI will take over for a lot of jobs that we don’t have experienced people to do. Jobs that CAN be taken over by AI will fully be taken over around this time imho.
However, we’re gonna start lacking things like uni professors etc and that’s gonna be a huge burden on future education and training.
Train an AI to teach and you’ll save hundreds of thousands that the single professor would cost over a career.
The world is a very interesting place right now and I’m curious and cautiously optimistic about it
On the plus side though, consider that eventually AI will act as a kind of persistent data that you can converse with. They will be trained with data continuously, alongside us and learning from our work. It will hit a point where you'll often just talk to the AI instead of a senior engineer - the AI will be like a senior engineer - not wrt reasoning, but with the information. Humans will still be around because we can reason. There will either be less of us though, or, work just changes in a way that still needs lots of humans, whatever that looks like. But I can't help but see one person being able to do the work of 10, even hundreds perhaps, in certain industries.
The flip side of an experience drain is an opportunity for change and growth. One of the reasons the boomers were so successful is that younger people were given senior opportunities because there was pretty much no one else who could fulfil the roles in the 60s and 70s because there were so many of them. Essentially the people who will be most influential over the next 30-50 years will probably occur during this period due the baby boomers finally leaving.
The "how-to" part is going to be replaced via Ai - then the true value of someone's mind is the "why-should" we develop the idea in this way.
Physical labour will exist until tech catches up, that's a cycle that will forever follow - in turn, the more aspects and considerations an individual can account for will be a more desired trait, you have the tools to do the work, just need the right brain to action them.
On that same front, adhd peeps are going to be stupidly productive with a neurallink device that gives them answers on the go - while near-future consequences blind peeps will be having a horrid time adjusting, moreso as the experience needed means having a flexible frame of mind to understand different contexts and circumstances to produce a multifaceted answer for any given situation.
All the boomers left at my work are overpaid morons, can't wait for them to leave. Decades of bad habits, lazy attitudes and reluctance to learn new skills, software and technology that has made younger generations far more productive. Not to mention, new regulations... Mechanical design engineering, medical field btw
Our boomer manger at work sits in the office talking with the other manger all night and he only pops his head out to "check on stuff" refuses to use a computer or anything but yet all the other managers that are younger are expected to be on a computer and forklift in one week I have seen him on the floor for about 30 mins Total his favourite thing is starting something tells someone to come see him and then tell them to finish it
I work in IT and I think it will be the opposite. There’s a lot of older rusted on people there that refuse to learn the new stuff, but have secured high up positions.
The experience drain has been evident in Engineering for some years . Obviously not all are tarred with the same brush but lack of common sense , experience , drive , sense of entitlement . etc etc is evident .
I guess thats why many Boomers hang around in the workforce on contract or part time for many years after the retirement age .
Generalisations, but they are more willing to take a risk and design something in-house. They have a better understanding of practical engineering.
Many younger engineers seem to want to outsource thier job or trust software tools explicitly. The number of times I see FEA results without any details about the mesh or model validation, really frightens me. They old saying junk-in-junk-out must not be taught in university anymore.
The last fkn boomers left in my industry complain about change, whinge about doing work, and moan that 'if they'd just leave me alone for 5 more years I'll be retired.'
That last one happened a few months ago. And there is no loss there. At my last job, they spent more time going to super seminars and talking all day about/trying to scrimp and save so they could retire one or two years sooner. Very unproductive and wasted everyone else's time in the meantime.
And after 20+ years in the industry, there is a definite loss of knowledge in some areas, but also shit loads of 'how tf did you not know this by now?!' Moments. It'll balance out.
I work in banking and 50% of my colleagues at my retail branch are part-timers, waiting it out til retirement. One of them has been talked out of retiring already because the staffing situation sucks.
When they do retire, I am positive the bank will decide to remove at least half of their roles so we won’t receive 1:1 replacements. We’re already stretched thin in-branch, staying late more often than not, and all that means is customer experience gets worse and employee workload gets bigger.
lol no. I think I’ve had overtime approved 3 times, only for “big” things (flooding, staffing disaster leading to 2 people managing a branch that’s meant to be staffed by 8, a couple of us stayed late to accommodate others getting to go to staff Christmas party that started before the branch closed which in itself was so stupid).
It’s essentially expected to stay as late as we need to, and if we don’t get everything done on time clearly we aren’t managing our time well /s
Good riddance. Boomers are not only occupying important positions that they are severely incompetent for, they are so jealous that blocking development and ruining careers of worthy employees
It's very easy to deride boomers, until you realise that many of your beloved actors, musicians, authors and subject matter experts are boomers.
I think a flash point is not boomer retirement, but boomer death, because that's when elections will begin to swing very differently.
Meanwhile there is a grave concern about a shrinking tax base and who will pay for boomer age care.
I think universities were still very good until circa 2015, so there may be another flash point in ~40 years unless universities return to a pursuit of universal truth and a culture of being open to competing ideas.
I think the biggest concern is that alot of older people not all but they tend to hold onto there knowledge of the position and won't share what they know as a means to hold power our head honcho is 72 years old but refuses to retire and because of all the other heads are also old they won't retire him but he also refuses to share even what he does some people believes he just clocks in and out because every policy change or overall decisions are made by people lower then him and he just signs it off.
Prediction: Productivity will double in 2030 due to time saved from not having to explain how to use Microsoft Teams.
“You’re still on mute Dave…”
“Click there. There. On the print button. Yes, print. Now press print. Print!”
“NO NO, don’t hit that…. Dave’s gone”
"I am not a cat" to me there seems to be a bit of a funny phenomena going on... boomers will eventually give up... BUT I think younger folks who grew up on their phones also arent really all that tech savvy... like i heard many younger folks dont even know what a directory... or folder is on a pc... certain generations grew up with XP... certain generations grew up with MS-DOS both of these are generally ok? and so I'm expecting some kind of brain drain... but the younger folks arent taking up the slack
True that. Growing up through xp and dial up was good value to figure things out. I also grew up in a trades time and think we will lose much more on the manual labour experience side of things. A lot of good value from the old fellas there
I work in IT at a school and all the students just shrug thier shoulders when I ask them "where did you save the file?". They are too used to using the "Open recently" section. Or, everything is just in the Downloads folder.
I mean everything is still in my downloads folder hahaha
“Dave, your camera is pointed at your… never mind.”
Dave, everybody’s dead. Everybody’s dead, Dave.
>Dave, everybody’s dead. Everybody’s dead, Dave. Peterson isn't, is he?
Bloody Dave 🤦🏻♂️
People doing a bird beak thing with their hands in the hope that Dave will see them
Productivity could double today if boomers understood that most meetings could be avoided by a well worded email. Meeting etiquette people. Agenda ahead of time. Attach all relevant files. Send your slide/presentation ahead of time. Source: millennial
Productivity would go up ten-fold if Millenials understood a 2 day back and forth email exchange could be avoided with a 2 minute phone call. Source: Gen X.
I won’t remember that conversation in 2 months. Emails win every time and I’ll be able to refer back to it in a year.
That’s why I schedule a meeting/call to discuss the issue and follow it up with a email with decisions and actions as soon as it looks like a email chain is going to blow out.
So our productivity hack is to combine both an email and a phone call 🥲
When necessary. When you have long email chains covert multiple disparate topics/concepts with multiple people contributing there often isn’t an option. You can easily have twenty long emails going back and forward discussing complex concepts and problems with members of the chain using different language for the same concept or not understanding the context of what is being discussed. A meeting with a clear agenda, being effectively chaired and with documented decisions and actions can absolutely save time.
Hi Arthur, About our conversation this morning, just wanted to confirm you wanted me to flush out the drivers and defragmentate the ram? Just let me know if you need anything else. Rueben. Way faster than an email chain.
And forward it on to show why I'm right. If it's not in writing it never happened. Used this many times, sometimes for events a decade old.
Gen Z are incapable of remembering stuff so I put everything in writing. I have staff (under 25) who will swear black and blue I never advised them of something. I love pulling out the email chain and proving them wrong.
You can always put the discussion in writing right after the phone call.
I don't need you to remember it in 2 months. Not everything requires record keeping. I need to get a job done NOW.
Are you who came up with the records compliance requirement to delete all emails after 3 months? Because we definitely don't need institutional knowledge.
Institutional knowledge is important, but there are better ways to retain it than using your inbox as a filing cabinet.
except it's never 2 minutes. It interrupts whatever you're doing and now you have to deal with something that isn't a higher priority than what you were working on before so overall loss of productivity. there is a time and place for a phone call. But most things boomers and gen x think need to be addressed now now aren't that important.
“Now now”? Spot the South African
You know, it's funny, because there are heaps of email chains I have with ppl that would be easier to avoid with a call. But literally any time I try to call they're in a call, in a meeting, or not at work. Fkn painful.
If only Millennials, boomers and other gen X understood that the 2 minute phone call could be avoided with a single teams or slack message
If only teams wasn’t a buggy mess
Bugger off, I'm Gen X and hate speaking on the phone!
You don't need to like it. We are talking about productivity. A LOT of wasted time and effort goes in to sending and reading email conversation over days, when a simple conversation via phone would get the job done. I'm constantly telling my staff to pick up the phone and sort something out with a quick conversation rather than email. The customer and I want it done today, not in 3 days' time. Sometimes it's appropriate to have email records to cover your arse. Other times people are not focused enough on getting a timely outcome.
If time is wasted it's because you're not putting all the necessary information and asking the right questions in your initial email. You need to be more efficient. I'm not going to take time out of my project delivery work to answer your call, send me an email and I'll decided on its priority relative to my other work.
I communicate and remember much better with text words than mouth air and ear holes. Some things which suit one type of person don't suit another.
We have an unwritten rule of anything more than two email exchanges becomes a 5-10 minute phone call for on the spot solution or alignment followed up with a concise email confirming the agreement or actions. Solves time sensitive issues quickly and clearly
Gen X workers I've come across actually make the Boomers seem hard working and progressive. Source: Millenial that manages multi-generation teams
Oh sadness. No longer going to be able to sit and watch boomers battle it out with millennials. - gen x/y.
Now if only I could get people to read my slide pack so I don't need to baby step them through it in the meeting.
PowerPoint is not well regarded for information transfer. 20 years after this was widely discussed, it’s still used as a crutch. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/14/magazine/2003-the-3rd-annual-year-in-ideas-powerpoint-makes-you-dumb.html
I'm completely surprised our executives are dumb for wanting info in PowerPoint form. /s It's almost like you might link your full briefing in the ppt if they want the detail. Most execs don't.
You’re telling me >can’t access file >Dave Isn’t a professional and efficient email? Source: I get this often, especially if I’ve sent a mix of links, files, and resources in a single email.
Productivity will increase when they realise we don’t all have to be present in the same building. Let me wfh Rob. Jeeezus.
From what I understand Gen Z are almost as bad because everything works and they expect social media to answer all their questions rather than using a search function (this is what I have experienced and read online). I have students / interns with me at work and their first instinct is to ask me the answer to their question rather than looking for it themselves even 3 weeks in to having me as their supervisor where I have directed them to look first. As I've said to them multiple times, the point isn't to know the correct clinical answer at this point, it's to know where to look to find the answer. As for baby boomers, the first 75% of them have already passed 65 and retired.
I only had to show our boomer/X gen once how to use Teams, Zoom etc. They took notes and printed the slide deck I made showing the steps, then took it to every video meeting they had and just followed the steps one by one. It's our zoomers with no problem solving skills to speak of, that think they know so didn't listen, that seem to have trouble figuring out which camera, speaker or mic they are using. Closely followed by the other millennials who also weren't listening but have some problem solving skills, so usually work it out eventually. Usually, while the boomers are trying to hold up their notes to the camera for them and reading the steps. Meanwhile, the slide deck is linked at the top of the team, and the summary sheet showing the camera/speaker/mic config for the issued devices was posted directly above the meeting link. Signed a Millenial who trains people how to use Teams as part of their job.
As will happiness and morale of non boomer employees for the exact reason you mentioned.
Counterpoint: we’ll be onto the sixth concurrent version of Teams in a standard corporate PC environment. Go to work tomorrow and check how many versions of Teams are sitting on your computer. I’m up to three!
I work in IT younger people (pre 25) are nearly as bad as boomers in computer literacy.
And their actual literacy is appalling. I have to teach university grads about sentence structure and how to draft basic letters.
IDK, there's a lot of boomer DBA's running some pretty important oracle DB's out there. I got no love for that work, and I don't know who's going to take it on. It's gonna be a mess.
I had to train my new lead before I left and all the time mainly went to showing them how to use Office and internal systems properly
Explaining isnt the worst bit. The worst bit is when you finally get on the meeting and Boomers computer is crackling cutting in and out then he just vanishes. Although, in saying that. It was actually really helpful to my career progression. We would have meetings with a barrister or someone who is exoensive and hard to get a meeting with and the Boomer would drop out. Id be the only one in the meeting and Id just make decisions. After the meeting Id fill in the Boomer bosses. I basically started taking their jobs.
It is very noticeable in engineering. The thing is that not much knowledge is documented, the information is passed on from senior engineer to graduate engineer. Most of the knowledge is with the boomers mainly due to the fact that they have been doing the role for 30+ years, the one that I work with are extremely knowledgeable and I would be on struggle street if I didn't have them at work, basically it would take me 2 weeks to do what they could do in a few days. The millennials never stuck around for more than a few years because the only way you can get a decent pay raise is to change companies. So we are left with a vacuum in the middle. I think the ones that learn the most from the boomers before they retire are the winners. In engineering at least
>The millennials never stuck around for more than a few years because the only way you can get a decent pay raise is to change companies. This is so hugely problematic isn't it. Not casting any blame on the employees, the corporations did this to themselves by not valuing and developing existing talent.
I agree, I was fortunate to be trained by a mob of old school engineers that goes back to 1st principle. You don't need to go 20 years to understand. Things are complicated now but going back to 1st principle makes me get clarity. Nowadays things are more complicated, and compartmentalized to black boxes, it is too much for a single person to understand from ground up. I am glad I was trained by the old guys. I am not that pessimistic about the future, someone will figure it out, and make a hell of a lot of money while doing it. Good for them (in advance)
Similar problem with architecture. When I left my first job I was a grad with 5 years experience. I asked for a pay rise of $5,000. Nothing outrageous. Would have put me at $72,000. I was told they couldn’t pay me that at this point in time and we’d discuss it at my mid-year review. Same response at the mid-year review. So I left. My direct manager tried to convince the directors to give me what I was asking so that I would stay, but they still said no. I was the first of the mid-level experienced graduates to leave that office. When we (7 in total from an office of 19) left there was a severe skills shortage in the middle. It was all experienced seniors and inexperienced recent grads. It hurt them for the longest while. Eventually my direct manager left too because he was doing the work of an experienced grad and his senior role. He was pissed that the directors let so many good grads leave when it could have been avoided by giving a modest pay rise. It’s a common tale in architecture.
I work alongside data engineers and have noticed this too. The problem is the engineers complain about nothing being documented but then don’t make any efforts to document anything themselves because “they’re engineers and it’s not their job”….. so the knowledge is lost as more of the older lot leave and the new ones come in. Then the new engineers are under pressure to deliver the same service without any resources or comprehensive training about the business. The solution to the knowledge loss is to document before they retire.
Who’s meant to document the knowledge? Do they all want a telepathic EA?
Most engineers are evaluated on other metrics. I have yet to see "good documentation" being part of those evaluations. If you spend meaningful time, not only creating documentation, but also keeping it up to date as things evolve, you fall behind in areas of responsibility that *are* measured.
oh yeh about that, most boomers don't document anything and they're not about to start now, good luck out there :)
That's one reason why so many Private industry people bag the public service - the Public Service typically HAVE to document anything (IT wise) before they do it, so it takes a hell of a lot longer for any change to happen. Mainly because of procrastination tbh.
> don’t make any efforts to document anything How are they supposed to type with their pointers? Off the top of my head I can think of 5 old guys I worked with, all with the same typing pattern. Each time I showed them voice to text, they loved it on their mobile phones and iPads, but would never try it at work. One of them even had double carpal tunnel from poking his keyboard. If you want it documented… do it. They won’t.
In what world is it not an engineer's job to document things? Is this a software engineering phenomenon? In mechanical engineering it's absolutely the engineers job to document things
management dont care, they dont see what they dont know, they get paid big bonuses either way
Every industry is becoming this way, and it's because employers treat staff like shit or the conditions are so bad because they refuse to hire the requisite number of staff for the workloads, then complain people keep moving on. People don't leave good jobs Here's to hoping when some of these boomers finally retire some of those 'good jobs' finally become available.
> The thing is that not much knowledge is documented, Hahaha, so true, I've had to ring on-call engineers at 3 in the morning to fix a critical issue, the newer guys get really annoyed because a lot of these thing's have poor documentation.
Employers complaining that employees don't have the skills they need, while at the same time not providing training for staff. Business calling for the government to increase imigration to fill the skills shortage. Australians will need to continually spend money private education courses to meet the ever increasing requirements for business. Right wing political parties arguing for cuts to welfare payment to force the unemployed into unfavorable working conditions. or Start funding TAFE again & give employers tax cuts (or other incentives) if they provide professional development for staff. Educate employers that the award wage is the minimum legal compensation, and that they need to offer more than the minimum to attract skilled workers. When more business owners realise that in Australia it's more profitable to own the land a business is on than to run the business, we can all just rent empty shops to each other & win capitalism.
>Employers complaining that employees don't have the skills they need, while at the same time not providing training for staff. I am about to resign for this very reason. Gone for several promotions, the GM says I lack X (I don't, I've done the role I'm applying for before and have years of demonstrated experience in X). Ask ok, can you please tell me how I can bridge this perceived gap. Nothing. Last time the same role came up I applied again and they shelved the role because "no quality applicants". So instead of just promoting me they're about to lose me. Cool cya. Going to a competitor for the role you refuse to give me.
Fun game isn't it. Scored high on every metric for a job I applied for (they didn't have positions in the location, but are doing another round in may they will call me for) but current job "oh, this application wasn't as strong. Do you have the experience?" Did you read my CV? I have more experience than you in a different environment...
So I'm a product manager/Category Manager. They said I don't have product knowledge. The company I work for quite often bemoans a competitor outselling them. I MADE THE PRODUCTS THAT ARE OUT SELLING THEM. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so aggravating.
They just don’t want to promote you, and will keep finding excuses to do so. I’ve been in the same situation. Just leave and don’t look back.
Unfortunately if you have a shit manager and you’re good at what you do, you can sometimes be more useful to them in what you’re doing right now than what you actually want to be doing. Shit managers kill work morale. Leaving one is the best thing anyone can do.
Employees join companies but leave managers.
>> Nothing. Last time the same role came up I applied again and they shelved the role because "no quality applicants". So instead of just promoting me they're about to lose me. I had a similar experience at a previous employer. I asked what I needed to be doing to move into the next phase of my career (architecture). They said something like “nothing, you’re doing great. Just keep doing what you’re doing.” But when I asked for a pay rise and said I feel I am ready to move into an Associate type role they said “you’re skill set isn’t quite there yet. Keep working at it.” When asked they did not provide any specifics on what skills I was lacking or areas I needed to develop. Just “keep working at it”. When I asked to do some training courses they said yes, but I’d have to take annual leave to attend and they’d pay half the cost seeing as I’m the one who’d ‘keep the product’ if I ever left their office. I declined - I was happy to wear the cost but not the annual leave loss. That was just petty.
Then they’ll come begging asking you ‘what will it take to keep you or for you to come back?’ Or promote someone else who can do it cheaper.
I've been directly responsible for a 18% jump in sales in the last year and it just gets waved aside because the office I work for hates retail (Melbourne office is singing my praises). Waiting on the contract come through and I can't wait to leave.
Note: I’m Gen Z. My current job is probably the first time I’ve had a manager (she’s a few years older than me) who has been actively advocating for further learning/PD opportunities for me, totally unprompted. She’s also generally a great advocate and I see she invests in her staff to make life easier for our team in the long-run. I’m fairly new to the organisation so it’s not yet my place to start demanding for PD (everything is outsourced and, thus, paid) so it’s been a big boost in my confidence and desire to stay there and meet them halfway, in a sense. Of course, if it’s empty promises I’m not afraid to move to another area/organisation that has demonstrable and concrete PD from the get-go.
>Employers complaining that employees don't have the skills they need, while at the same time not providing training for staff. This is such a huge thing cuz reality is, vast majority of jobs dont require people to waste years in education which is outdated or does not reflect actual working procedures, time would be far better spend learning on the job where you learn what is ACTUALLY going on, not dumb theory
I think OP is suggesting on the job training The way boomers talk about employment "Oh I started at company x at the bottom and worked my way up, got exposure here, a promotion there" Most corporations now are "efficient" that they don't want cross skills or training up an existing employee for a new role... to them it's just moving the problem
This is exactly the issue I’m looking to address I my new job. Cross skilling seems to be a big focus so I’m scratching my head figuring out how exactly we develop and implement it all without me having a meltdown in the process.
Funeral and undertaking industry gonna go up
Most of the new developments I've drove past are over 55 communities. They're raking it in.
Health care is absolutely essential in the future before you bury them.
The graveyard is full of irreplaceable people.
Baby Boomers are not a different species, there is no step change here. You're right that the ratio of working age to total population will decline and that can lead to a shortage of people to do work ( manual or intellectual) , that's why almost all rich countries encourage migration of working age people from poor countries to fill the gap. Some let them stay legally ( such as Australia, a lot of the EU) , others send them home ( Eg Middle East, Singapore) some let them stay in legal limbo (Eg USA). Eventually this will cease to work ( I have no idea when) and we'll have to get more efficient and/or work out what tasks are really necessary for a comfortable 1st world existence and what are not. Ideally the works could split into countries or regions that work to meet the needs of those with different preferences on what's important.
Yeah its either insane immigration or automation. And until we have fully functional humanoid robots, immigration is all we have,
I think it's more a case of having more people doing useful stuff, like teaching kids, looking after old people, producing food, and making sure we have electricity. We need to get better at choosing what needs to be done, not necessarily attempting to automate some tasks to free up resources for less critical activities . That's how companies make decisions.
I can't wait to see the massive boost in productivity when the old geezers at my work finally retire
If it takes too long, I think we'll see more Aussies leaving this country. The lifestyle can be good but everything has its price limits
Unlikely, there isn't really much else where to go, at least in the numbers you're implying.
That's the case until it isn't. I know in my circles multiple people have moved overseas recently to start lives with families elsewhere. Most of that group are doctors but now my software engineer friends are talking about it. The inflow will beat the outflow, so the numbers won't be obvious but the cultural change and potentially knowledge loss will hurt. Might not happen, just something I'm hearing talk on
Now I understand why most corporate have a vision 2030. Looks like they are desperately waiting.
It's just a nice, round number that is far enough away, yet not too far, to be able set as a goalpost. Mark my words, we'll see this replaced with 2035 or 2040 from next year onwards.
How do you think boomer revolution started! 😁
Honestly, how many boomers are actually still around in the workplace? They seem to be pretty rare where I work. With the exception of two senior executives and one curmudgeon, pretty much everyone else I know of is Gen X or Gen Y, with some Gen Z starting to show up. So many of the boomers were able to retire at 60 or earlier.
That’s my point what left will be going or gone. Some of those gone do return as consultants though ….
My point is that it has already pretty much happened, and we appear to be doing just fine without them.
Only boomers I have seen working still are: - Experts on some kind of old system or technology. Even then it’s only when something breaks and no one else can fix it. - Poor people who need the money to top up the pension. But often it’s crap min wage jobs - Social reasons. Like to get out of the house and still do something. Still usually only part time or casual and for low pay
That's assuming they all retire. We've got a 73yr old on our team that's a disaster but refusing to retire because she doesn't want to be stuck at home with her husband.
Lucky bloke
Hahahahaha he's happy to stay home and mind the grand kids.
Yeah, when you hear that she is incompetent at work but keeps going because she doesn't want to be home with the husband, no one assumes that the *husband* is the problem.
I'd say they're both at fault there. He's the domestic one, and she's the workaholic. Both have issues.
More efficiency as people question why they are doing things in such a bizarre, useless way (such as print document, sign document, scan document). The orgs that will benefit will be the ones that reward (not punish through downsizing, etc) the workers for removing useless processes as the workers will do it themselves so they can then perform more meaningful work. So many boomers doing things to either keep themselves in a job or because they can't be arsed using technology is a huge sink of resources and money that could be giving younger people massive raises.
One thing for sure is the retirement age will be extended by the time of 2029
That’s worth discussion
It's 67 now. At some stage I guess it will be bumped up.
It’s not like we’re approaching some monolithic edifice where people ceased to be born after 1964, the whole generational thing is merely a societal construct. Every year some people retire and some people enter the workforce, I don’t see why the end of a generation being within working age makes this different to any other time.
It's been interesting reading through this thread as a 58yo not quite boomer (on the cusp) who is retiring this month (yes that's early thank FIRE) my whole career has been in IT so I've seen the change over an extended period all those people saying how boomers can't use teams - well I gotta tell ya gen x is just as bad and people saying how old timers who manage/program tech don't document well I've done a shitonne of docco over the years that just gets ignored for long enough to be misplaced when we move from and internal repository to a wiki and then to jira/confluence or some other similar thing one thing that I didn't see much discussion on is how we who are retiring spent 40+ years doing ALL OF THE JOB - there were very few specialties - we specced the hardware - planned the architecture - unboxed and racked the equipment - wrote the scripts - dealt with the vendors - ran the databases - troubleshooted the network - dealt with security - recovered from hackers attacking - dealt with buggy operating systems / server code / vendor applications - stayed all through the night because the support technician was 12 time zones away - I could go on... nowadays everyone has a specialty/silo and a view that "that's not my job" my job was always "whatever is required"
Since nobody else has said it yet and even though I'm just a random internet stranger who hasn't made use of it, thanks for doing the documentation
no problem truth be told we really do doco for ourselves since it becomes a repository for the exact correct syntax command with the correct flags n stuff for purpose whatever and then there is handover stuff - the new guy isn't going to find doco on stuff I haven't encountered - anything I could have anticipated has already been sorted
Ideally we have less of the constant barriers to change and hearing about how ‘we tried this or that back in the day and it didn’t work’
Absolutely this. There is one guy on the team who flat out refuses to use Git so we are stuck using Subversion. But he's 65 so it's just waiting out the clock.
Naw, it's just changes what the barriers are. The young ones will hate your insistence on git instead of the new tool, and be waiting for you to retire.
Torvalds wrote git in 2005 and it's basically just a DAG but I take your point. I'm hoping to be long retired if I do make it to 65!
Nice I like that
Millenials will finally get all they want.
And they might not like it!
Or have a place to keep it
I’m in remedial building. A lot of what I do is learned by decades of experience. Government seems focused on ever increasing mostly useless red tape. Many of my colleagues are aging out or in my case leaving 5 years earlier than intended. Things will still get done. The best engineers and specialist trades are older experienced boomer types. I learned way more off them than I ever did at tafe. The building commissioner in NSW seems to be actually encouraging it. I read comments he made chuckling off at us as we’ll soon be buying a boat and leaving the industry. Funny thing is all the extra useless red tape is encouraging just that. Any young girl or guy I encourage you to learn from the older ones, especially in the specialist trades. Combine that with your regular training.
I feel like after 5 years in the role , most jobs don't get much more benefit from experience.
Depends on the job. Things like law, medicine, science, most government roles absolutely benefit from more years in the role.
Productivity will increase. Not sure about quality. If there's any stickler for inane details that matter it's the boomers. They get buvger all done, but what they do produce is generally great quality.
Get them out of the workforce already, so many talented "underlings" stifled by nepotism unable to demonstrate their low cost yet efficient skillsets and leadership skills to pave a way to a better Australia while old foggy Joe blogs tries to figure out where the power button on their laptop is
If it’s any consolation I’m the last of the boomers(64’) and have already retired, so go hard I suppose??
Congrats on retiring, I'm sure you've worked hard to get to that point so good on you for getting a fair go. I've resorted to investing in medical stocks as a millennial so hopefully your next decades will be my future wealth fund. Its a bit morbid when you think about it
Haha, it’s better to worry about your own health rather than others.
I previously worked for a government department that was taken over by another department and all the old leaders were replaced by new young private sector types. Everything went to shit and we basically spent days thinking "well I don't know what to do cause all the people that knew this stuff have been fired or fled". I'm happy to help some old exec with Teams if it means I can get access to 40 years of expertise and memory.
I’m always educating boomers te tech If anything productivity will increase & we can all enjoy a 4 day work week
The cool thing is you’re next in line to be educated by the next generations, and have them waiting for you to retire while they roll their eyes at how useless you are with whatever the latest technology will be. A tale as old as time.
I run my own business….. Ironically I’ve had to teach the younger gen re stuff too No one cares when I retire 🙄 Although the younger gen I employ will need to find new jobs when I do,so they aren’t going to be thrilled cos I pay my staff very well
Most of the boomers I have worked with in engineering couldn't design something to save their life, couldn't manage a project budget or program to save their life, think bullying is the answer to getting performance out of anyone, are racist and sexist, and are hated by their entire team. They have their jobs literally only because they have long, flashy CVs that win projects, but can't actually deliver anything. They won't learn any modern tools, workflow, systems, or software and won't train or pass any knowledge on. I welcome the generational transition wholeheartedly.
Are you working in the same "team" as I am? This comment is scarily accurate.
Looks like we're having a team meeting here :) My favourite is "that's how we did it back then"... yeah and it's been like 30 yrs since. One guy is so stubborn to have everything printed out so he can spend hours marking up and talking shit on engineers who did the design. I swear guy spends 50% of time talking shit about others.
Some older Gen X fit into this category too. Think your Duttons, Morrisons, that generation.
This is where I personally believe AI will take over for a lot of jobs that we don’t have experienced people to do. Jobs that CAN be taken over by AI will fully be taken over around this time imho. However, we’re gonna start lacking things like uni professors etc and that’s gonna be a huge burden on future education and training.
Put on apple vision pro and one single professor can teach 1000s of students
Train an AI to teach and you’ll save hundreds of thousands that the single professor would cost over a career. The world is a very interesting place right now and I’m curious and cautiously optimistic about it
On the plus side though, consider that eventually AI will act as a kind of persistent data that you can converse with. They will be trained with data continuously, alongside us and learning from our work. It will hit a point where you'll often just talk to the AI instead of a senior engineer - the AI will be like a senior engineer - not wrt reasoning, but with the information. Humans will still be around because we can reason. There will either be less of us though, or, work just changes in a way that still needs lots of humans, whatever that looks like. But I can't help but see one person being able to do the work of 10, even hundreds perhaps, in certain industries.
Yeh so many don’t see where it’s heading - changes will be exponential
Yeah, software engineers will rule the world essentially if they train an AI smart enough to do so.
They will just import university professors.
Brodie yappin again
This was the topic for my thesis.
Didn’t Peter Costello introduce “part time retirement” in the early 00s? Anyone know what happened to that?
They retired the idea I think due to the a whole pension issue
I'm seriously worried about the airline industry for this reason
The flip side of an experience drain is an opportunity for change and growth. One of the reasons the boomers were so successful is that younger people were given senior opportunities because there was pretty much no one else who could fulfil the roles in the 60s and 70s because there were so many of them. Essentially the people who will be most influential over the next 30-50 years will probably occur during this period due the baby boomers finally leaving.
The "how-to" part is going to be replaced via Ai - then the true value of someone's mind is the "why-should" we develop the idea in this way. Physical labour will exist until tech catches up, that's a cycle that will forever follow - in turn, the more aspects and considerations an individual can account for will be a more desired trait, you have the tools to do the work, just need the right brain to action them. On that same front, adhd peeps are going to be stupidly productive with a neurallink device that gives them answers on the go - while near-future consequences blind peeps will be having a horrid time adjusting, moreso as the experience needed means having a flexible frame of mind to understand different contexts and circumstances to produce a multifaceted answer for any given situation.
All the boomers left at my work are overpaid morons, can't wait for them to leave. Decades of bad habits, lazy attitudes and reluctance to learn new skills, software and technology that has made younger generations far more productive. Not to mention, new regulations... Mechanical design engineering, medical field btw
Our boomer manger at work sits in the office talking with the other manger all night and he only pops his head out to "check on stuff" refuses to use a computer or anything but yet all the other managers that are younger are expected to be on a computer and forklift in one week I have seen him on the floor for about 30 mins Total his favourite thing is starting something tells someone to come see him and then tell them to finish it
Immigration, sadly.
I work in IT and I think it will be the opposite. There’s a lot of older rusted on people there that refuse to learn the new stuff, but have secured high up positions.
The experience drain has been evident in Engineering for some years . Obviously not all are tarred with the same brush but lack of common sense , experience , drive , sense of entitlement . etc etc is evident . I guess thats why many Boomers hang around in the workforce on contract or part time for many years after the retirement age .
Generalisations, but they are more willing to take a risk and design something in-house. They have a better understanding of practical engineering. Many younger engineers seem to want to outsource thier job or trust software tools explicitly. The number of times I see FEA results without any details about the mesh or model validation, really frightens me. They old saying junk-in-junk-out must not be taught in university anymore.
The desire to trust implicitly software tools without validation is indeed scary .
The last fkn boomers left in my industry complain about change, whinge about doing work, and moan that 'if they'd just leave me alone for 5 more years I'll be retired.' That last one happened a few months ago. And there is no loss there. At my last job, they spent more time going to super seminars and talking all day about/trying to scrimp and save so they could retire one or two years sooner. Very unproductive and wasted everyone else's time in the meantime. And after 20+ years in the industry, there is a definite loss of knowledge in some areas, but also shit loads of 'how tf did you not know this by now?!' Moments. It'll balance out.
Lol, experience my a**, there is no job that is not replacable.
I work in banking and 50% of my colleagues at my retail branch are part-timers, waiting it out til retirement. One of them has been talked out of retiring already because the staffing situation sucks. When they do retire, I am positive the bank will decide to remove at least half of their roles so we won’t receive 1:1 replacements. We’re already stretched thin in-branch, staying late more often than not, and all that means is customer experience gets worse and employee workload gets bigger.
Do they pay you for having to stay back?
lol no. I think I’ve had overtime approved 3 times, only for “big” things (flooding, staffing disaster leading to 2 people managing a branch that’s meant to be staffed by 8, a couple of us stayed late to accommodate others getting to go to staff Christmas party that started before the branch closed which in itself was so stupid). It’s essentially expected to stay as late as we need to, and if we don’t get everything done on time clearly we aren’t managing our time well /s
So we might have a drain if people who can use vhs tapes and rotary phones. I'm not worried.
There entirely replaceable. Edit; high performing entities confirmed I used the wrong instance of there / they’re / their. Now fixed.
I'm not so sure about that. Every boomer I know knows the difference between 'their' and 'they're '.
> Now fixed. I hate you.
There their. It’ll be ok. In this years performance review I’ll strive to tell management I added value by correcting grammar.
So are you with that level of grammar.
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It's not as bad as it's made out to be. Have a look here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Australia
Good riddance. Boomers are not only occupying important positions that they are severely incompetent for, they are so jealous that blocking development and ruining careers of worthy employees
It's very easy to deride boomers, until you realise that many of your beloved actors, musicians, authors and subject matter experts are boomers. I think a flash point is not boomer retirement, but boomer death, because that's when elections will begin to swing very differently. Meanwhile there is a grave concern about a shrinking tax base and who will pay for boomer age care. I think universities were still very good until circa 2015, so there may be another flash point in ~40 years unless universities return to a pursuit of universal truth and a culture of being open to competing ideas.
Have you forgotten about all those 40-55 year olds who will be 45-60 in 5 years?
I think the biggest concern is that alot of older people not all but they tend to hold onto there knowledge of the position and won't share what they know as a means to hold power our head honcho is 72 years old but refuses to retire and because of all the other heads are also old they won't retire him but he also refuses to share even what he does some people believes he just clocks in and out because every policy change or overall decisions are made by people lower then him and he just signs it off.