Old people in the work place

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shroomiin

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It's about time businesses flush out all the old technology-incompetant employees and replace them with fresh blood, don't you think? For a couple reasons...

Their incompetance creates extra work for the help-desk crew, as they open tickets for routine tasks which any normal user can handle. They are not slick with technology, so they can't leverage it to their benefit for increased productivity like a young person could. I'm pretty sick of hearing the old "sorry, in my day we used a calculator, I'm not good with computers" BS. How many times can you say you don't know how to use a computer when you use one daily.

If it were up to me, these people would be out the door immediately... replaced by a harder working more efficient crew.

:)
 
Flash forward 40 years, you will be the person spoken of in a post like this. Feels good, eh?
 
Well if you are going to make broad useless generalizations like that, you need to do it for both sides.

All the new 'young' people are lazy, entitled shits, and will spend most of their time 'working' on facebook/twitter/anything other than actual work. This is what I see from all the young people coming in, and I'm only 30.


How about if someone isn't fulfilling their role in the company, or refusing to stay up to date in their field (especially a tech one), then they get the boot. Regardless of if they are old or young. Trust me some people are just lazy fucks, but I guarantee you there are more of them joining the job market now, than leaving it....
 
Hahaha, yeah I have to agree with you there Biz.

My perspective was that the younger people just entering the work force have something to prove, so they will bust ass... at least that's how I felt when I first started. Whereas the older people have settled into their routine and do just enough work not to get fired.

Take a line from office space, "If I work harder and the company makes a couple more sales, I don't see another dime. Where's the motivation, Bob?"

It just seems like everyone over the age of ~50 is absolutely useless when it comes to computers... and they are just plain ignorant. They don't want to learn, they just want to keep saying they are no good with technology.
 
shroomiin said:
My perspective was that the younger people just entering the work force have something to prove, so they will bust ass... at least that's how I felt when I first started. Whereas the older people have settled into their routine and do just enough work not to get fired.
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You are the minority of younger folks. I'd also say the "do just enough not to get fired" is equally, if not more, applicable to the young'ins.

Remember the 20/80 rule applies no matter where you work or who you work with, "20% of the people do 80% of the work, and 80% of the people do 20% of the work."
 
I know plenty of older folks who actually make an effort to learn computers and generally are pretty good with them. Though I will admit that many of them pretty much shit a brick the first time they used Windows 8. It's like, "You're old and took the time to learn computers? TIME TO LEARN AGAIN! :cool:"
 
shroomiin said:
and they are just plain ignorant. They don't want to learn, they just want to keep saying they are no good with technology.
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I'm genuinely not trying to be a grammar nazi or a prick with this, but I must step in here and ensure that you understand the distinction between "ignorant" and "willfully ignorant". The way you've structured your statement, it seems that you feel those two things are one and the same, a common mistake I see in the usage of the word "ignorant".

Be aware that some of those "old people" you're pissed about may be ignorant of the shit you take for granted, but it doesn't mean they aren't willing to learn. Also, I'd bet high dollars some of those old-timers you claim are "absolutely useless when it comes to computers" know much MUCH more about business processes that are very important than the mythical busting-ass youngsters you describe.

Also, as ManofGod referenced. YOU will be that technology-incompetent person in another couple of decades. Don't even attempt to delude yourself into believing otherwise. My mother-in-law worked at IBM for 40yrs and knows shit I can't even begin to comprehend about mainframe systems yet she struggles with shit like toolbars in IE10.

I'm 33 btw and an applications developer and I can tell you my lead developer (only 10-15yrs my senior) is like a fucking code Jedi. He has forgotten more than I will likely ever know, but he has problems with things that I consider "basic level shit" like hotkeys and device drivers.

Have some respect for your elders, kid. It'll be your ass in that seat sooner than you think.
 
Its no harder for an old person to learn how to use computers then it is for a young person.

If they don't know how to use a computer then it is because they are lazy and deliberately don't want to learn.

Their is no reason why you shouldn't know how to use a computer, if you don't then you have to be actively trying not to learn.

Baby boomers are the laziest generation ever, they have worked the least out of any generation.
 
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I haven't noticed much difference in the work place in terms of younger people knowing how to use a computer better than an older person. I do all of the training for new employees and so far everyone seems to only barely know the basics most of the time. There is only one person in the office so far that actively refuses to learn new things and she is in her late 20's.
 
Spazturtle said:
Its no harder for an old person to learn how to use computers then it is for a young person.

If they don't know how to use a computer then it is because they are lazy and deliberately don't want to learn.

Their is no reason why you shouldn't know how to use a computer, if you don't then you have to be actively trying not to learn.
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Your first statement is wrong, as is your second statement. The first part of your third statement is partially wrong, but the second part is partially true based on some observations. I'm guessing you're a pretty young person ;)

Read this.

TL;DR: "Younger people typically learn to use computers in close co-operation with other people and we should not expect elderly to learn this demanding skill themselves. Some age-related challenges were also found, for example, difficulties in using the mouse for pointing. However, these difficulties can easily be alleviated by careful design"
 
Spazturtle said:
Its no harder for an old person to learn how to use computers then it is for a young person.

If they don't know how to use a computer then it is because they are lazy and deliberately don't want to learn.

Their is no reason why you shouldn't know how to use a computer, if you don't then you have to be actively trying not to learn.

Baby boomers are the laziest generation ever, they have worked the least out of any generation.
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Lol aren't most our parents part of the baby boomer generation? :p
 
shroomiin said:
It's about time businesses flush out all the old technology-incompetant employees and replace them with fresh blood, don't you think? For a couple reasons...

Their incompetance creates extra work for the help-desk crew, as they open tickets for routine tasks which any normal user can handle. They are not slick with technology, so they can't leverage it to their benefit for increased productivity like a young person could. I'm pretty sick of hearing the old "sorry, in my day we used a calculator, I'm not good with computers" BS. How many times can you say you don't know how to use a computer when you use one daily.

If it were up to me, these people would be out the door immediately... replaced by a harder working more efficient crew.

:)
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One would think that, being as young and sharp as you are, you would realize this message is not Operating System related.

And not to be a grammar Nazi, but spell check is pretty easy to use, even for those old farts that you want fired.
 
My mom worked for AT&T for decades. She was constantly learning new stuff, and she kept up with technology. This grey-haired old lady looking not much unlike the old woman "Maxine" from the Hallmark cards could explain the inner workings of long haul broadband communications and relate it to crochet. When she retired she had *just* finished taking some Cisco classes.

For her retirement I got her a full-blown gaming rig of the day, all decked out, loaded up some games on it, like Unreal Tournament, and shipped it to her. My brother who was living near her set it all up and parked her in front of it, and we did a little UT deathmatch.

That damned woman shot her own son in the back with a flak cannon. I heard my brother on the speakerphone just explode laughing.

No retired old lady should know WASD as well as she did. None.
 
Personally as a medium buck person myself, I enjoy the old timers for the simple fact that I love to reminisce about the times before all this Facebook, Twitter, and Cloud crap. Don't get me started on how Captcha's single handily destroyed the Internet.

There is so much more to hate now then to love. I feel like a child with Windows now. Whatever happened to the plug and pray? The fear of restarting your machine? The manual installation of drivers through Device Settings? The joy of getting a virus through one of the million holes in Windows and spending 8 hours to fix everything and that feeling of accomplishment?

There's nothing to do anymore. Your best troubleshooting is "Let Microsoft Diagnose your problem for you." Sad thing is 9/10 times it works goddamn it! It doesn't even tell me what it did so I can learn.
 
Liger88 said:
There's nothing to do anymore. Your best troubleshooting is "Let Microsoft Diagnose your problem for you." Sad thing is 9/10 times it works goddamn it! It doesn't even tell me what it did so I can learn.
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Your "troubleshooting" must be quite different than mine. I get more jobs from people who broke their own computers "Letting Microsoft Diagnose your problem for you" vs times I've been in situations where its actually fixed anything.
 
My experience is that I see old curmudgeons who refuse to move out of the mainframe days of computing, and I also see young hot-shots who think they know shit until they end up screwing something up.

I'm going to be entering the "old fart" over-50 phase in a few years, but I stay on top of all the latest technology trends in my field, and I'm not stupid or arrogant enough to think I can just walk in and up-end a system that has been working smoothly for years.
 
maw said:
My experience is that I see old curmudgeons who refuse to move out of the mainframe days of computing.
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Funny thing is though that there are some good opportunities in mainframe development these days as the boomers retire. The other thing that's happening as well as that as time moves forward, you're going to start seeing older people that have spent all of their lives with ever changing technology. I'm 46 and have grown up around technology and since the late 70's and have move from one thing to the next. It's just how it works and I think you'll start to find older folks that find it easier to adapt to new things because it's how they grow up.
 
heatlesssun said:
I'm 46 and have grown up around technology and since the late 70's and have move from one thing to the next. It's just how it works and I think you'll start to find older folks that find it easier to adapt to new things because it's how they grow up.
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Yup, that's me. I grew up in and around technology and I work in the IT field, so I have zero problems adapting. I see other people who like me are, ahem "of a certain age" who barely know how to turn a computer on, and they learn just enough to get what they need to get done.

But you know what? Unlike me, their lives do not revolve around technology, just like mine does not revolve around plumbing or gardening.

I also see people in their 20's who think that just because they figured out how to take shitty pictures on their smartphones and post it to facebook that makes them technology geniuses.
 
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