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The Gen Xers Who Waited Their Turn to Be CEO Are Getting Passed Over
- Brajeshwar 1y agoArchived https://archive.ph/nrtUk https://archive.ph/nrtUk
- mgh2 1y agoI was under the impression that American corporations reward performance over seniority, not sure about now...politics?
- kfarr 1y agoIt’s always been politics, albeit to varying degrees. Some orgs lean toward facts and performance, others not so much, but yeah it’s always a factor even if not acknowledged.
- JCBird1012 1y agoAnd don't downplay how much of a role politics can play at making those facts/performance metrics harder/easier to achieve - and some companies are excellent deluding themselves into thinking it's not the case.
- potato3732842 1y agoIt's not a reward for past performance. They're putting who they think will do best in the role in the role and past performance is one very large, but not the only axis on which that is judged. And, that being said, in larger and richer organizations (infinite monopoly bucks fueled FAANG workplaces perhaps being the penultimate example) the incentives to simply promote the most fit can get more easily polluted by irrelevant criteria than in smaller, leaner organizations that have less runway to continue existing and less opportunity for individuals to dip out without consequence if decisions are not made in a rigorous manner and the results are bad.
- Sohcahtoa82 1y ago> penultimate Unless I'm misunderstanding your statement, I think this word means nearly the exact opposite of what you think it means. "Penultimate" does not mean "supremely ultimate". It actually means second from last. https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/penultimate-vs-ultimate-usage https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/penultimate-vs-ulti...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- potato3732842 1y agoNext to last or almost last as in latest in time, not as in ranked on some other axis. Implying that the series is unfinished because there will ultimately be another booming industry the torch is passed to.
- goopypoop 1y agonot "first from last"?
- riku_iki 1y ago> American corporations reward performance over seniority more like loyalty to upper management which correlates with seniority (spent many years in the same company/group).
- gishglish 1y ago[flagged]
- darth_avocado 1y agoThey’re finding out what millennials found out in their 30s and GenZ knew at an even earlier age.
- wil421 1y agoThey were teaching millennials at 18 or even before that it’s not like your parents age when you could keep one post college job forever.
- fluidcruft 1y agoWhat is that, precisely?
- justonceokay 1y agoThat there’s no gold watch and pension waiting for you if you invest your conviction and identity into a job. Companies are no longer made of people they are complicated manipulations of the stock market. Companies put employees in the liabilities ledger, not the assets ledger. Employees are an inconvenience to be replaced, removed, reduced, optimized, automated, and simplified at the earliest convenience. Believing in the importance of your role in such an inhuman environment is equivalent to believing dancing can bring the rain. As a result most people that I know in the culture that I see in online spaces is to develop an adversarial relationship to your work, to your company, and to your boss. Even if you like your boss, they can be directed tomorrow to layoff half of their team, so why care at all? I was actually just talking with a manager yesterday who is feeling pressure from the C-suite in their medium sized company to pass off their reports’ work as the product of AI because it is better for marketing. If that isn’t a perfect microcosm of the larger economy, I don’t know what is.
- fluidcruft 1y ago
- dehrmann 1y agoMy dad recently told me it's broadly like that where he works, but at the IC level. It's mostly boomers and millennials, but the boomers actively retiring.
- Jtsummers 1y agoThat's a bathtub curve. You see it in a lot of industries. The joke for AE at GA Tech circa 2000 was "Aerospace 'Do you want fries with that?' Engineering". Hiring picked up later as Baby Boomers and other older generations started hitting retirement age, but the effect is that a generation gets largely skipped over. Those trained and interested in it will find jobs elsewhere, tangentially related to the field perhaps but not training towards those critical, soon to be vacant positions. You have a lot of seniors, a lot of juniors (because eventually you realize the coming staffing problem), and few mid-career folks (as a proportion of the whole). A particular downside is that retirement cliff. When the seniors go, you lose decades of experience for each retiree, centuries of experience with every 2-4 retirees.
- dehrmann 1y agoOr is it a bullwhip effect?
- Jtsummers 1y agoI thought I wrote a reply, but I guess I didn't submit it. Summary version rather than rewriting: A bathtub curve could show up along with the bullwhip effect. It doesn't describe how it came into existence, it's descriptive of the structure. If you have a long enough period in your bullwhip effect, you could see the seniors riding it out without replacements or additional hires coming in (they weren't seniors when this started) because of insufficient demand. Then a demand increase causes a hiring surge, but it's mostly targeted at juniors because they're cheaper and you still have your seniors.
- bgwalter 1y agoGenX wrote much of the open source software and the foolishly co-opted the culture war initiatives led by boomers (for job security reasons) and millennials (some idealism, some job security, some sticking it to GenX). They have sold out the open source ecosystem and are now being treated as weak. Ironically, probably millennials will pivot faster to the 2025 realities and the newly required allegiances than GenX.
- kridsdale3 1y agoThe whole 2010s bull-run was Millenials monetizing non-gpl-3 open source stacks written by idealistic GenX in the 2000s. Most notably Zuckerberg.
- metalman 1y ago"idealistic gen X", and still so, but very disinclined to just keep on handing out ideas and bieng generaly helpfull, for which AI is not going to be able to replace. Gen X is a potent creative force, and used to having to work in a world controlled by others, and I believe will do just fine by picking through the carnage caused by rampant idiosy.........it's not our fight
- goopypoop 1y agolike the hyenas in The Lion King
- metalman 1y agoyou will have to explain your cartoon metaphore as I dont watch movies or television but if the allusion is to not following kings then I think that then perhaps you are aluding to the orange one?, in any case there is a widespread dissilusionment as expressed in the "No Kings" movement. https://www.inlander.com/news/todays-no-kings-movement-traces-its-roots-directly-to-the-american-revolution-and-its-seismic-break-against-tyranny-30100291 https://www.inlander.com/news/todays-no-kings-movement-trace... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Kings_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Kings_protests
- bunmer4em 1y ago[dead]
- nickdothutton 1y agoGenX has just been quietly banking the cash. Better to be a kingmaker than a king. You can have a longer reign.
- taylorius 1y agoWhen interviewed earlier, the passed-over GenX CEOs only comment was "Whatever, man."
- cainxinth 1y agoThe type of people who “wait their turn” aren’t the same type of people who rapidly climb corporate ladders.
- afinlayson 1y agoIt's not just in business it's politics, on air personalities, movies / tv shows are focusing reboots and sequels.
- phendrenad2 1y agoOkay let's see the proof... Bueller? Bueller? (Sorry you need to be Gen X to get that reference). Boomer CEOs are "holding on" to their roles, and the board is apparently okay with this, but suddenly when it comes to pick a successor the board is going to flip 180 and value "youth" and pick a Gen Y over Gen X? Sure, Jan (another Gen X reference for ya). The rest of the article is just more of the same. 9 of the last 10 presidents were Boomers, thanks to life-extending medical advancements, which we are going to throw in the trash as soon as the last Boomer dies, so ensure that Gen X never gets them (are you serious?)
- gorjusborg 1y agoGeneralizing to the point where we're lumping entire decades of people together is done far too often. Just live your life, let others live theirs, and stop arguing over generalizations so broad they can't possibly be universally correct. It is just a waste of time and energy.