Late in my career I had to take a course for senior staff called "The Multi-Generational Workforce." The instructor, a mid thirty-ish woman, spent a great deal of time harping on how older workers/baby boomers placed entirely too much emphasis on being on time. She explained those younger than us didn't have that time hang up, technology had done away with worrying about the clock. They had lived their entire lives with 24 hour gas stations/convenience stores, DVRs, shopping on line, electronic banking, etc., and weren't programmed/constrained to see time as an issue.
In the class was a USAF colonel who sat straight faced during her spiel, then politely raised his hand. When called upon, he asked her if she'd every served in the military. She seemed bemused by the question, and replied with a smirky, smart ass, "Nope." He simply said, "I didn't think so. I don't have time to waste listening to this horseshit." With that he walked out
I'm well into my 4th decade as a software engineer. In general, my take is if you were an asshole as a young guy, you'll be an asshole as an old guy. It is possible to lose assholeness but it is pretty darn rare. I'd rather work with the gray hairs because of two reasons - they have been through some shit in the past and aren't likely to flake out when things get tough and we have shared experiences. I remember once we had received a bunch of new equipment at the loading dock and I grabbed a broad shouldered young lad to help me with it. "C'mon Dan, we got to move refridgerators". The Dire Straits reference went over his head. Had to explain the song and video to him and had a laugh over it.
In general the kids are fine. Oh there are a few odd ducks - the Me/We/Them crowd, the comfort needers and the diversity clowns. The Me/We's are okay if they can do the job - if they can you just ignore them and them cook. If they can't well they get the I-40 shuffle and are gone. For a time the comfort thing was in style. "I am emotionally f-ed up HR. I need my dog to comfort me". It was fine for awhile until some chicks Lab barfed up half a mole in aisle. Pretty gnarlly - Head was still on and its little mole eye hole thingys staring in death. The issue was the clean up. Miss Emotional expected La Señorita the Guatemalan cleaning lady to clean it up. La Señorita felt that wasn't in her sphere of responsibilities and had a clip board checklist to prove it. Pretty good screeching match ensued with La Señorita prevailing in the end [rightly so IMHO]. That wounded the comfort movement but Spider Guy killed it. Some jackhole decide he wanted to bring his tarantula for emotional comfort. About every female in the joint objected and that was the end of the whole thing. We have also had some issues on occasion with diversifiers. We work with people from all over the world and no one really cares - the issue crops up when someone is hired on to work on X but feel that they want to do Y and feel that the umbrella of diversity makes this acceptable. "No way Jose - you can do stuff on the Aztec Business Working Group on your own time no get to work on Project X or hit the street".
My biggest worry is that the young guys may have a long term competency issue. I don't know what to do about it either. When I was a new hire, if I hit a snag and couldn't figure something out I could: think it through and do some trial and error, go down the hall and ask the old guy if he had seen it before - chances are he had and that he had good advice on the ramifications of the solution or you could go to the company library and get a phyiscal book and study some. The main point is you stopped and had to think the mother through thoroughly. As time passed, I became the old guy down the hall and the kids would ask me stuff. When internet searches readily available they came to me less and less. Google almost always had the answer - someone else had hit the issue, fought through it, documented it for the world to leverage. A big time saver to be sure but at what ultimate cost? Does the kid really understand the core of the issue and its resolution? Maybe/Maybe not. Modern product schedules are insane. More than likely they don't know why the suggested fix worked nor do they have the time to know. It is worse now as they have an AI plugin in the IDE they use. The AI watches, monitors and suggests. I have an exemption where I don't have to use the IDE and I don't. The youngsters have to do so and it is really quite amazing. The White Shoe Boys are demanding a tripling in productivity and I think they will get it eventually. My worry is what happens when I am dead and buried and the current young guys are the old guys? Will solutions still be found, put in Google for the AI to pickup? Or will the whole thing collapse like the movie Idiocracy? "Why come don't this work? Dood - it no work!"
