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Going to be honest my company has a gen x CEO, and mostly gen xyz staff. Our awesome boomers did have some trouble adjusting to remote. I am sure is one hell of

Going to be honest my company has a gen x CEO, and mostly gen xyz staff. Our awesome boomers did have some trouble adjusting to remote. I am sure is one hell of a shock for a generation to go from using checkbooks and cash with party lines that were shared with nearby houses to ubiquitous communications and kids who grew up in BFE Texas having best friends they have never met face-to-face in Finland and the Australia. The idea you cant be successful being remote is poppycock. I have been promoted twice during covid as a manager at that- I check in with my teammates at least once a week, they call me for 5min huddles when they need to chat. When your generation was raised with bbs's/IRC/AIM is any of this really that abnormal? Going to be an ageist here, but I think it's foolhardy to claim that remote is as easy for boomers and centenarians as it is for xyz. I think we are seeing a shift in workplace demographics and that is fueling a new normal for work. It's not bad, it's just evolution. My boomer mom loves her remote work now that she has been doing it because she has better interactions with her team. And like me, her office was already global with remote locations everywhere. Mileages may vary, we are all figuring this world out and riding the tiger. I won't go back to a physical office neither will she- if asked she said "I'll just fucking retire" so I think the seas have shifted anyone trying to push for full on-prem IS going to lose resources. When I hear this honestly I think of some crusty old out of touch manager who still uses a paper desk calendar.

watwut 5y ago
This is quite odd take given that everywhere I see, young people want to go to office and older one are happier home. While yes, older ones are more afraid of hybrid setup ending up punishing workers from home, because that pattern was visible even before pandemic. However, everyone at home thing was awesome for middle aged people with families or hobbies.
- jupp0r 5y ago
  It is maybe because "young people" are fresh grads in their twenties without families and "older ones" are people in their late 30s?
  - watwut 5y ago
    30ties, 40ties and I find people in 50ties not caring either way. And yes, it boils down to people in their 20ties using work for socialization and often socializing only in work.
bsder 5y ago
This is precisely backwards from my experience. Older folks have houses and resources and established social networks. They didn't necessarily like remote, but they didn't take a huge hit. Younger, less established workers got crushed. They had to work in suboptimal (read lots of roomates and no rooms) conditions. Mentoring was down. Experience was down. Social networks were smashed. Even as an older tech worker, my social networks have atrophied. And I even took extra time to try to keep them up. To be perfectly honest, it feels like the gap between my level of technical skill and the technical skill of incoming employees grew a LOT on both sides. While new folks lacked experience, it felt like they also always brought loads of new stuff to the table--not all of it was valuable but some of it literally gobsmacked those of us in the greybeard category--that seems to be missing now. I suspect a lot of it is the lack of peer social interaction. And, as someone experienced, it seems that the pandemic released me from a lot of useless social obligations as a manager and my technical skill got a HUGE boost (if I get my work done in an hour today I'm not going to sit and do nothing, you know) from being put back into use. So I seem to be a lot better at direct technical tasks than I was pre-pandemic.

watwut 5y ago

This is quite odd take given that everywhere I see, young people want to go to office and older one are happier home. While yes, older ones are more afraid of hybrid setup ending up punishing workers from home, because that pattern was visible even before pandemic. However, everyone at home thing was awesome for middle aged people with families or hobbies.

jupp0r 5y ago
It is maybe because "young people" are fresh grads in their twenties without families and "older ones" are people in their late 30s?
- watwut 5y ago
  30ties, 40ties and I find people in 50ties not caring either way. And yes, it boils down to people in their 20ties using work for socialization and often socializing only in work.

bsder 5y ago

This is precisely backwards from my experience. Older folks have houses and resources and established social networks. They didn't necessarily like remote, but they didn't take a huge hit. Younger, less established workers got crushed. They had to work in suboptimal (read lots of roomates and no rooms) conditions. Mentoring was down. Experience was down. Social networks were smashed. Even as an older tech worker, my social networks have atrophied. And I even took extra time to try to keep them up. To be perfectly honest, it feels like the gap between my level of technical skill and the technical skill of incoming employees grew a LOT on both sides. While new folks lacked experience, it felt like they also always brought loads of new stuff to the table--not all of it was valuable but some of it literally gobsmacked those of us in the greybeard category--that seems to be missing now. I suspect a lot of it is the lack of peer social interaction. And, as someone experienced, it seems that the pandemic released me from a lot of useless social obligations as a manager and my technical skill got a HUGE boost (if I get my work done in an hour today I'm not going to sit and do nothing, you know) from being put back into use. So I seem to be a lot better at direct technical tasks than I was pre-pandemic.