7 ms·

I changed my business recently to a situation where I deal with alot of millenial aged college graduates. For all the talk of this generation "growing up with t

I changed my business recently to a situation where I deal with alot of millenial aged college graduates. For all the talk of this generation "growing up with the internet", I am consistently surprised by how poor their non social media skills are. Things like copying files from a thumbdrive to a computer, filling out a spreadsheet, adding a header or footer to a document - sometimes it is quite shocking. I graduated from High School in 1994 and had some computer classes leading up to that. I learned how to type a letter in wordperfect. I learned how to save it to my floppy disk. I learned how to use a spreadsheet to make a budget. What has happened that we don't teach these basic things any more? Social media is important as a medium but basic job skills are really being left to the employer to teach. Of course, it could be the kind of young person I am contracting. But they are finance majors, political majors, and so on.

EamonnMR 7y ago
Growing up with the social implications of the internet isn't the same as growing up with PCs. Smartphones are now what people know how to use and you don't interact with them the same way you interact with a desktop PC. Files? What are files. There was a time before technical literacy and now we're in a time after it. It was fun while it lasted.
- shoo 7y ago
  Smartphones offer a much more user friendly, accessible way of doing common tasks, but there is a much higher barrier of entry to go from "software user" to a hobbyist "software creator". Compare to microcomputers that might be sitting in primary school classrooms 25-30 years ago, where you turn the machine on and seconds later you're staring at a command line that directly interprets BASIC.
  - conjectures 7y ago
    I worry this will have an effect on equality of opportunity in the not-too-distant future. There will be some parents who understand this, and some who don't - or can't afford to do anything about it. It's a big swath of options those people will miss out on.
    - shoo 7y ago
      > There will be some parents who understand this, and some who don't In some ways it is easier to understand (software / IT is perhaps more widely understood to potentially be a good career, given the success of tech companies as businesses & the financial success of many of their employees) but also harder to understand -- there are fewer obviously "tinkerable" computer systems in people's day to day lives. > or can't afford to do anything about it I agree that wealthier families generally have access to more opportunities to set their children up to have successful careers (e.g. private tutoring, wider choice of schools, able to support children to focus on careers with high initial investements of time and capital vs needing to leave school to help out on the family farm, etc). This has been true for a long time and will continue to be true in future. But, I reckon that it is much more affordable to buy hardware & software required for a "tinkerable" hobbyist computer lab these days than 25 years ago: what cost $2000 in 1995 might only cost $200 today (esp if you buy second hand hardware and install linux) while also giving far superior hardware performance and better tools for creating software.
      - whichquestion 7y ago
        Wealthy individuals and their children are probably more likely to have social connections to others with capital who are willing to assist them as well. A raspberry pi 4 kit with 2GB of RAM can be as low as $60 now!! Tinkering with computers can be inexpensive. For those who want it, there is a cornucopia of tinker-able machines out there. Many smart phones have terminal apps you can download. There are also a lot of websites out there that’ll let you do something akin to tinkering. It seems to me that, in many cases, it’s a matter of getting people’s attention or interest in tinkering with their computers than access to tinker-able machines.
        spikej 7y ago
        Also, you can pick up an old computer from a thrift store or craigslist for really cheap -- much cheaper than a pi.
        7y ago
  - walshemj 7y ago
    Its also a barrier to working in a professional job in a lot of cases.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- slightwinder 7y ago
  Millenials did not grew up with smartphones, but PCs. Well, at least if their familiy could afford them. But having access to the same tools, does not implicate to use it for the same tasks. Kids would use them for fun, work comes later. And it seems people take it for given that digital natives not only have no fear from technology, but also are on the same basic level as a proper trainied worker, because magic?
dorchadas 7y ago
I'm a high school teacher, so focusing on a younger age group that your demographic, but they absolutely don't teach kids these things. The only class we have with a computer is a typing class that lasts 12 weeks where they essentially play games online (the teacher is also a nutjob; anti-vaxer and flat-earther!) These kids type their entire papers on their phones and save it via Google Drive. It's not surprising they really don't know how to do anything with computers.
- krapp 7y ago
  >It's not surprising they really don't know how to do anything with computers. but... they know how to type a paper and save it to Google drive. I'm not trying to be pedantic but that's how computers are used nowadays.
  - midasz 7y ago
    Being able to sufficiently handle technology can be a matter of learning a trick and sticking with it. A difference in mentality or 'skills' is the ability and curiosity to learn new tricks when a situation calls for it. So it's not really a generational issue (now that I think about it, generational issues are not really related to the 'quality' of the people in it, but the environment that shaped them - heh), it's a mentality/skill issue. The will to actually solve the problem in front of you is a skill that can be learned, but if everything around you 'just works' you never have the need to develop that skill. You've been happily using your Generic XPad your entire life dealing with minor UI changes that are explained to you via small tutorials or w/e. You learn your job on the job, specific things in school etc. The furthest you'll go is the search bar on Facebook or a marketplace. If you encounter something that doesn't just work, how do you know how to figure it out if you've never developed that skill. To me and you it's not that hard, it's pretty obvious. People just learn the trick, but not how to be curious. Or maybe they just don't care, that's fine too I guess.
    - krapp 7y ago
      >If you encounter something that doesn't just work, how do you know how to figure it out if you've never developed that skill. They'd probably just Google it, and that would probably be sufficient.
maram 7y ago
> I learned how to save it to my floppy disk. All Gen Z "digital natives" that I met they never seen a real floppy disk, except as en emoji. > Things like copying files from a thumbdrive to a computer, filling out a spreadsheet, adding a header or footer to a document - sometimes it is quite shocking When there is a clear pattern of how the majority of consumers/users behave with a product, then the issue is with the product, not the consumer. One day my Gen Z relatives complained to me about their iPhone battery draining so fast, I checked their iPhone Settings and was shocked at how iPhone default settings were set to suck up their personal data all the time. And quite shocked that they didn't know how to turn it off.. Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations & Product Improvement (turned off) I'm a millennial, who used PC at times when the ONLY notification was the Error message. Even for OS updates you had to buy PC magazine to know that there was a new OS release... There was no internet, and the PC was so quiet...As a child of the 90s I had to navigate through every file because I had nothing else to do. Being curious about every function of the software doesn't seem to be a thing of the new generation...surprisingly, this generation, Gen Z, knows more about Social Media Settings than their device Settings. It's like our generation, the millennials, drove the manual car before we started driving the automatic car....Gen Z, digital natives, started driving Tesla as their first car.. I always remember this quote by Andreessen: "The spread of computers and the Internet will put jobs in two categories, people who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do." http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/business/story/2012/09/16/jobs-fight-haves-vs-the-have-nots/57778406/1 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/business/story/2012/09/...
- OkGoDoIt 7y ago
  I’m not sure a lack of curiosity is so much a generational thing. Some people just don’t really care, they learn what they need to get done what they want and don’t poke it any further. That’s not really even a bad thing exactly. I’m reminded of the difference in how my dad and I treat cars: I just want to get where I’m going, but he is so into all the little details of driving and the mechanics of it all. He changes his own oil, tweaks his car’s computer system for performance, etc. He is always trying to get me to care about it all, but I frankly don’t care if my oil is a bit old or if I could change it myself or whatever. I’d rather never have to drive at all if I was rich enough to have a private driver do it for me. Anyway whenever I get frustrated that my family or friends don’t seem to take something computer-related seriously or actually try to figure out how to do it right, I stop and think about how frustrated my dad gets about my attitude towards cars.
jackjeff 7y ago
I share the sentiment but what the article explains is more shocking than basic technical illiteracy. There’s essentially a subgroup of young people (typically poorer and less educated) who do not believe the news but believe their friends and all the rubbish that comes off their social feed. I don’t want to sound too alarmist but that really scares me. If I believed all the stuff from my social feed I’d be drinking bleach and worried about the reptilian Royal family is after me because I know the earth is flat.
- tenpies 7y ago
  The problem you run into is that every time an expert or mainstream opinion is wrong, those social media feeds gain legitimacy. You would think this puts a huge onus and pressure on mainstream media and experts to be measured, fact checked, and accountable right? Nope! Publish first, then when you've done your damage add a little end note saying that you've editing the article a week later so you can pretend you're a "journalist" instead of a tabloid blogger.
walshemj 7y ago
I see this a lot at work unfortunately and this is for major companies its seems that the idea of having specs or requirements in a properly versioned documents is something completely alien.
johnchristopher 7y ago
You want to hear another one ? I am working with a digital native. This week we are supposed to write a small blog post about collaborative tools. He joined the team 9 months ago and it's the first time we ever work on something together. We share a google drive with 3 other members. I ask him to create the doc, we'll start working on it. He creates it, starts working on it then shares the link in messenger. Link doesn't work, I don't have access. Curious, as I am the one who created the drive. Well, I ask him to add me to the collaborators (maybe he created without sharing). He can't, doesn't find where to update the doc permissions. I understand he created the file outside our shared folder. He doesn't get how to move it from his folder to our folder. He's 23, fresh out of uni., working as a marketing/digital consultant, writing a blog post about collaborative tools but can't figure out how to share a doc. I concede google drive UI is a trainwreck but still.
- kungtotte 7y ago
  I'm convinced this kind of thing will become more common, because so many people use mobile devices as their primary/only computing device. They have very little concept of filesystems, directories, or even files. For them data lives inside apps, each app only lets you save data inside that app in a predefined location, and moving data between apps is done by hitting the "share" icon.
wvenable 7y ago
Many years ago a lot of people bought into the myth that because young people grew up with computers they would naturally have these skills and wouldn't be intimidated. I believe the percentage of people who are terrible with computers hasn't really changed that much. People are much more exposed to computers but I swear some people cannot think rationally about the contents of a glowing screen in front of them. I have literally turned people's chairs around, read them the exact contents of the screen, and gotten understanding and a rational response when they were otherwise completely paralyzed.
- slightwinder 7y ago
  There is a difference between being intimidated by technology and at least being able to operatre them on a basic level. Digital natives are overall just people who are not intimidated by technology, like their parents and grandparents were.
akhosravian 7y ago
This is a minor nitpick, but people freshly out of college (generally) aren’t millennials anymore. Thy youngest of that group will turn 24 this year while the oldest will be 40.
anotheryou 7y ago
On their defense all you wrote about could be seen as antiquated: - header/footer: good modern UX always has action and effect close together, so Ideally you'd just click that area, not fiddle with nested menues. - files: it's cloud time, look at files on IOs. It either lives an the app or goes through "share". And while I personally hate it it's actually a fair thing to have it that way. It's just professional tools that have to be complex because they are more general and powerful. Consumer apps don't have to be any more and that makes them diverge from the pro tools further than ever. We were just early enough to be forced to learn complex and relatively low-level interaction with our computers. That's great for understanding and using professional tools, but I'd argue it's not necessary any more to get by digitally. And even with the professional tools they are often just a bit behind in UX. I think drawing a parallel to low-level programming languages makes sense. If you grew up with a lower level you'll have learned a ton of advanced stuff, but it doesn't make sense to force CS students to still be fluent in assembly(?) or whatever.
- heyflyguy 7y ago
  You make some really strong points.
slightwinder 7y ago
> I changed my business recently to a situation where I deal with alot of millenial aged college graduates. Are you talking about fresh college graduates? Or actual millenials which are now a decade later encountered with you? In later case, what kind of business do you have to specifically encounter this age-group? > Things like copying files from a thumbdrive to a computer, filling out a spreadsheet, adding a header or footer to a document - sometimes it is quite shocking. You don't learn them from typical private daily activity, you easly forget them when not regulary trainend. > I graduated from High School in 1994 and had some computer classes leading up to that. I learned how to type a letter in wordperfect. I learned how to save it to my floppy disk. I learned how to use a spreadsheet to make a budget. I graduated some years later than you and had those lections and several more office-stuff even after school. But I could still not do it beyond the most basic level without googleing it. If you don't refresh those lections regulary you forget the details quite fast. Every now and then I do some more complex formulars in excel, and still need to figures for some minutes how the most basic referencing work or which formular I'm supposed to use. And I'm a software-developer, doing more complex things everyday. Random complexity is a hindrace for everyone.
vangelis 7y ago
Counterpoint, as a millennial, I learned all those things (albeit not WordPerfect) and more in high school.
- def8cefe 7y ago
  Us millenials aren't the new generation anymore, we're old now. Now we get to complain about all these damn Gen Zeds (everyone 95 and after). Also you must not be Canadian because our govt had a huge hardon for Corel even post MS Office. Lots of WordPerfect installs on school PCs when I was growing up (I'm 93).
zepto 7y ago
What’s thumb drive - is that the slot a floppy disk goes in?

EamonnMR 7y ago

Growing up with the social implications of the internet isn't the same as growing up with PCs. Smartphones are now what people know how to use and you don't interact with them the same way you interact with a desktop PC. Files? What are files. There was a time before technical literacy and now we're in a time after it. It was fun while it lasted.

shoo 7y ago
Smartphones offer a much more user friendly, accessible way of doing common tasks, but there is a much higher barrier of entry to go from "software user" to a hobbyist "software creator". Compare to microcomputers that might be sitting in primary school classrooms 25-30 years ago, where you turn the machine on and seconds later you're staring at a command line that directly interprets BASIC.
- conjectures 7y ago
  I worry this will have an effect on equality of opportunity in the not-too-distant future. There will be some parents who understand this, and some who don't - or can't afford to do anything about it. It's a big swath of options those people will miss out on.
  - shoo 7y ago
    > There will be some parents who understand this, and some who don't In some ways it is easier to understand (software / IT is perhaps more widely understood to potentially be a good career, given the success of tech companies as businesses & the financial success of many of their employees) but also harder to understand -- there are fewer obviously "tinkerable" computer systems in people's day to day lives. > or can't afford to do anything about it I agree that wealthier families generally have access to more opportunities to set their children up to have successful careers (e.g. private tutoring, wider choice of schools, able to support children to focus on careers with high initial investements of time and capital vs needing to leave school to help out on the family farm, etc). This has been true for a long time and will continue to be true in future. But, I reckon that it is much more affordable to buy hardware & software required for a "tinkerable" hobbyist computer lab these days than 25 years ago: what cost $2000 in 1995 might only cost $200 today (esp if you buy second hand hardware and install linux) while also giving far superior hardware performance and better tools for creating software.
    - whichquestion 7y ago
      Wealthy individuals and their children are probably more likely to have social connections to others with capital who are willing to assist them as well. A raspberry pi 4 kit with 2GB of RAM can be as low as $60 now!! Tinkering with computers can be inexpensive. For those who want it, there is a cornucopia of tinker-able machines out there. Many smart phones have terminal apps you can download. There are also a lot of websites out there that’ll let you do something akin to tinkering. It seems to me that, in many cases, it’s a matter of getting people’s attention or interest in tinkering with their computers than access to tinker-able machines.
      - spikej 7y ago
        Also, you can pick up an old computer from a thrift store or craigslist for really cheap -- much cheaper than a pi.
        7y ago
- walshemj 7y ago
  Its also a barrier to working in a professional job in a lot of cases.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
slightwinder 7y ago
Millenials did not grew up with smartphones, but PCs. Well, at least if their familiy could afford them. But having access to the same tools, does not implicate to use it for the same tasks. Kids would use them for fun, work comes later. And it seems people take it for given that digital natives not only have no fear from technology, but also are on the same basic level as a proper trainied worker, because magic?

dorchadas 7y ago

I'm a high school teacher, so focusing on a younger age group that your demographic, but they absolutely don't teach kids these things. The only class we have with a computer is a typing class that lasts 12 weeks where they essentially play games online (the teacher is also a nutjob; anti-vaxer and flat-earther!) These kids type their entire papers on their phones and save it via Google Drive. It's not surprising they really don't know how to do anything with computers.

krapp 7y ago
>It's not surprising they really don't know how to do anything with computers. but... they know how to type a paper and save it to Google drive. I'm not trying to be pedantic but that's how computers are used nowadays.
- midasz 7y ago
  Being able to sufficiently handle technology can be a matter of learning a trick and sticking with it. A difference in mentality or 'skills' is the ability and curiosity to learn new tricks when a situation calls for it. So it's not really a generational issue (now that I think about it, generational issues are not really related to the 'quality' of the people in it, but the environment that shaped them - heh), it's a mentality/skill issue. The will to actually solve the problem in front of you is a skill that can be learned, but if everything around you 'just works' you never have the need to develop that skill. You've been happily using your Generic XPad your entire life dealing with minor UI changes that are explained to you via small tutorials or w/e. You learn your job on the job, specific things in school etc. The furthest you'll go is the search bar on Facebook or a marketplace. If you encounter something that doesn't just work, how do you know how to figure it out if you've never developed that skill. To me and you it's not that hard, it's pretty obvious. People just learn the trick, but not how to be curious. Or maybe they just don't care, that's fine too I guess.
  - krapp 7y ago
    >If you encounter something that doesn't just work, how do you know how to figure it out if you've never developed that skill. They'd probably just Google it, and that would probably be sufficient.

maram 7y ago

> I learned how to save it to my floppy disk. All Gen Z "digital natives" that I met they never seen a real floppy disk, except as en emoji. > Things like copying files from a thumbdrive to a computer, filling out a spreadsheet, adding a header or footer to a document - sometimes it is quite shocking When there is a clear pattern of how the majority of consumers/users behave with a product, then the issue is with the product, not the consumer. One day my Gen Z relatives complained to me about their iPhone battery draining so fast, I checked their iPhone Settings and was shocked at how iPhone default settings were set to suck up their personal data all the time. And quite shocked that they didn't know how to turn it off.. Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations & Product Improvement (turned off) I'm a millennial, who used PC at times when the ONLY notification was the Error message. Even for OS updates you had to buy PC magazine to know that there was a new OS release... There was no internet, and the PC was so quiet...As a child of the 90s I had to navigate through every file because I had nothing else to do. Being curious about every function of the software doesn't seem to be a thing of the new generation...surprisingly, this generation, Gen Z, knows more about Social Media Settings than their device Settings. It's like our generation, the millennials, drove the manual car before we started driving the automatic car....Gen Z, digital natives, started driving Tesla as their first car.. I always remember this quote by Andreessen: "The spread of computers and the Internet will put jobs in two categories, people who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do." http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/business/story/2012/09/16/jobs-fight-haves-vs-the-have-nots/57778406/1 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/business/story/2012/09/...

OkGoDoIt 7y ago
I’m not sure a lack of curiosity is so much a generational thing. Some people just don’t really care, they learn what they need to get done what they want and don’t poke it any further. That’s not really even a bad thing exactly. I’m reminded of the difference in how my dad and I treat cars: I just want to get where I’m going, but he is so into all the little details of driving and the mechanics of it all. He changes his own oil, tweaks his car’s computer system for performance, etc. He is always trying to get me to care about it all, but I frankly don’t care if my oil is a bit old or if I could change it myself or whatever. I’d rather never have to drive at all if I was rich enough to have a private driver do it for me. Anyway whenever I get frustrated that my family or friends don’t seem to take something computer-related seriously or actually try to figure out how to do it right, I stop and think about how frustrated my dad gets about my attitude towards cars.

jackjeff 7y ago

I share the sentiment but what the article explains is more shocking than basic technical illiteracy. There’s essentially a subgroup of young people (typically poorer and less educated) who do not believe the news but believe their friends and all the rubbish that comes off their social feed. I don’t want to sound too alarmist but that really scares me. If I believed all the stuff from my social feed I’d be drinking bleach and worried about the reptilian Royal family is after me because I know the earth is flat.

tenpies 7y ago
The problem you run into is that every time an expert or mainstream opinion is wrong, those social media feeds gain legitimacy. You would think this puts a huge onus and pressure on mainstream media and experts to be measured, fact checked, and accountable right? Nope! Publish first, then when you've done your damage add a little end note saying that you've editing the article a week later so you can pretend you're a "journalist" instead of a tabloid blogger.

walshemj 7y ago

I see this a lot at work unfortunately and this is for major companies its seems that the idea of having specs or requirements in a properly versioned documents is something completely alien.

johnchristopher 7y ago

You want to hear another one ? I am working with a digital native. This week we are supposed to write a small blog post about collaborative tools. He joined the team 9 months ago and it's the first time we ever work on something together. We share a google drive with 3 other members. I ask him to create the doc, we'll start working on it. He creates it, starts working on it then shares the link in messenger. Link doesn't work, I don't have access. Curious, as I am the one who created the drive. Well, I ask him to add me to the collaborators (maybe he created without sharing). He can't, doesn't find where to update the doc permissions. I understand he created the file outside our shared folder. He doesn't get how to move it from his folder to our folder. He's 23, fresh out of uni., working as a marketing/digital consultant, writing a blog post about collaborative tools but can't figure out how to share a doc. I concede google drive UI is a trainwreck but still.

kungtotte 7y ago
I'm convinced this kind of thing will become more common, because so many people use mobile devices as their primary/only computing device. They have very little concept of filesystems, directories, or even files. For them data lives inside apps, each app only lets you save data inside that app in a predefined location, and moving data between apps is done by hitting the "share" icon.

wvenable 7y ago

Many years ago a lot of people bought into the myth that because young people grew up with computers they would naturally have these skills and wouldn't be intimidated. I believe the percentage of people who are terrible with computers hasn't really changed that much. People are much more exposed to computers but I swear some people cannot think rationally about the contents of a glowing screen in front of them. I have literally turned people's chairs around, read them the exact contents of the screen, and gotten understanding and a rational response when they were otherwise completely paralyzed.

slightwinder 7y ago
There is a difference between being intimidated by technology and at least being able to operatre them on a basic level. Digital natives are overall just people who are not intimidated by technology, like their parents and grandparents were.

akhosravian 7y ago

This is a minor nitpick, but people freshly out of college (generally) aren’t millennials anymore. Thy youngest of that group will turn 24 this year while the oldest will be 40.

anotheryou 7y ago

On their defense all you wrote about could be seen as antiquated: - header/footer: good modern UX always has action and effect close together, so Ideally you'd just click that area, not fiddle with nested menues. - files: it's cloud time, look at files on IOs. It either lives an the app or goes through "share". And while I personally hate it it's actually a fair thing to have it that way. It's just professional tools that have to be complex because they are more general and powerful. Consumer apps don't have to be any more and that makes them diverge from the pro tools further than ever. We were just early enough to be forced to learn complex and relatively low-level interaction with our computers. That's great for understanding and using professional tools, but I'd argue it's not necessary any more to get by digitally. And even with the professional tools they are often just a bit behind in UX. I think drawing a parallel to low-level programming languages makes sense. If you grew up with a lower level you'll have learned a ton of advanced stuff, but it doesn't make sense to force CS students to still be fluent in assembly(?) or whatever.

heyflyguy 7y ago
You make some really strong points.

slightwinder 7y ago

> I changed my business recently to a situation where I deal with alot of millenial aged college graduates. Are you talking about fresh college graduates? Or actual millenials which are now a decade later encountered with you? In later case, what kind of business do you have to specifically encounter this age-group? > Things like copying files from a thumbdrive to a computer, filling out a spreadsheet, adding a header or footer to a document - sometimes it is quite shocking. You don't learn them from typical private daily activity, you easly forget them when not regulary trainend. > I graduated from High School in 1994 and had some computer classes leading up to that. I learned how to type a letter in wordperfect. I learned how to save it to my floppy disk. I learned how to use a spreadsheet to make a budget. I graduated some years later than you and had those lections and several more office-stuff even after school. But I could still not do it beyond the most basic level without googleing it. If you don't refresh those lections regulary you forget the details quite fast. Every now and then I do some more complex formulars in excel, and still need to figures for some minutes how the most basic referencing work or which formular I'm supposed to use. And I'm a software-developer, doing more complex things everyday. Random complexity is a hindrace for everyone.

vangelis 7y ago

Counterpoint, as a millennial, I learned all those things (albeit not WordPerfect) and more in high school.

def8cefe 7y ago
Us millenials aren't the new generation anymore, we're old now. Now we get to complain about all these damn Gen Zeds (everyone 95 and after). Also you must not be Canadian because our govt had a huge hardon for Corel even post MS Office. Lots of WordPerfect installs on school PCs when I was growing up (I'm 93).

zepto 7y ago

What’s thumb drive - is that the slot a floppy disk goes in?