I think what this comes down to is that if you're a young employee and you're interested in being seen as a rising star, you've got to have a lot of cultural aw

I think what this comes down to is that if you're a young employee and you're interested in being seen as a rising star, you've got to have a lot of cultural awareness. You should be able to combine an ability to leverage new technologies and work patterns to your relative advantage while also being able to assimilate into established structures. The fact that I was raised to adhere to traditional corporate culture has been an asset my entire career. I had a good friend, my same age, who worked at the same company as me, and he didn't have the benefit of a strong cultural pre-education. As a result, he made a number of gaffes in etiquette that collectively hurt the perception of his seriousness in the workplace--things like pranks, being to "familiar" with people, silly voice mail greetings, etc. All these things you can get away with if you're knocking it out of the park, but if you're a regular, competent employee, you're going to find yourself passed over for leadership in favor of people who are a bit more culturally aware, all other things being equal. It's a complicated world. Why should a well-written text message be worse than a well-written e-mail? I'm sure there are several reasons, but the point is that it's not something most young people consider. In today's global, connected, and rapidly changing world, we have choices between many mediums for communication and constantly have to code-switch for different audiences (especially if you're a minority, but that's a whole other topic). The folks who are going to rise are those who are very in-tune, either by intuition or education, with the connotations of the communication and presentation choices they make.