Reposting of "Gen-Y vs. Gen-X" blog post
After reading Thom Singer's blog today (and despite Thom's warning to not read it), I read this short blog post:
Twentysomething: 7 reasons why my generation is more productive than yours.
That single post has sure spurred a lot of comments. While I know a large number of Gen-Y'ers, and in fact many of my own attributes mimic those of Gen-Y (work-from-home, rather laid back, but get the job done, own and iPod(?) etc.), the whole post exudes a sense of arrogance and immaturity. The tone reminds me of adolescents who believe they are smarter than their parents...and such people who never grow out of that attitude. The wisdom from previous generations should be learned from, and not categorically dismissed.
Tone aside, some of the content is useful to recognize, but I assert it's not a characteristic of a certain age group alone, but rather some trends of employees who keep up to date on current technology trends. I do agree with a commenter who added a #8 to the characteristic list: "Doesn't have kids yet".
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All the things they talk about are as true if not more true of most techie Gen-Xers as they are of Gen-Yers. And Gen-Xers generally have the advantage of age, wisdom and the things that go along with it like maturity and humility.
Also I'd tend to say that even though Gen-Yers grew up in a more pervasively computer driven society, their knowledge of systems, how they really work and how to make them do non-intuitive things are largely crippled because they only know things at a very superficial level. They've been coddled by everything being pre-made and GUI driven and they weren't forced to dig around in the ugly details of the belly of the beast in order to get things done. They fear the command line and hex dumps give them heebie-jeebies. C and assembler are usually too much for them because they are used to the support net of things like exceptions, bounds checks and automatic garbage collection to manage memory for them.
Yes, I see what you mean. I'm a Gen-X'er, and when I grew up, my technology was the Commodore 64 (for which this site's name pays homage). I started by teaching myself BASIC, and recording programs onto cassette tapes. I also had a couple Radio Shack Electronics Kits (25-in-1, 100-in-1): Wire up some circuits from the book, and make the lights blink.
So that was my starting point: my baseline level of abstraction was basic (no pun intended) software programming on 8-bit computers. Now kids born 10-15 years before me started on the Altair and Heath Kits, and actually built computers. Thus their level of abstraction was much lower. They understood circuits and machine language intimately, whereas it was a bit of a mystery to me for a number of years until I taught myself 6510 assembly. My point is that because the level of abstraction for computer interaction constantly moves upwards, I think each succeeding generation risks losing sight of what it running under the hood.
I guess for those of us who care, knowing what's under the hood can provide some real employment benefits, as well as personal satisfaction. However, for others who don't care, the stuff at the lower-level should "just work", and it's a platform for building upon. Neither one is right or wrong...but I'll assert that when the sh*t hits the fan and stuff stops working, understanding the lower-levels is a big asset - for any generation.
That is exactly what I'm talking about. I started on the Apple II, which was a great machine for hardware and software hacking -- it was butt simple and thoroughly documented. To really do interesting things you practically had to learn assembly on 65xx machines and you really had to have a strong understanding of how the low level architecture of the machine worked. That kind of knowledge still pays off as you say when the going gets tough.
Technology and Perspective is very different depending on when and how you were introduced to it. Gen-X versus Gen-Y. How about us "boomers?"
My "first" computer also was also a Commodore 64. The difference was that I couldn't figure out how to get it working and it sat on a shelf in a closet for a few years. I actually used to use an old accountant's type of calculator/adding machine to do business plan financial projections. Not until I got an Apple 2C did I actually work on a computer.
I know just enough to be dangerous now. I can change memory chips and replace a hard drive (had to do that about 6 weeks ago)...programming isn't for me. I have a friend who I call if something goes haywire. I know what my system hardware needs to do, but couldn't begin to tell you how to make it work or why it does. That's why there are people who know how to do that "stuff."
The issue is that unlike the haughty claims by the Gen-Yer who started this whole mess about their ability to fiddle with application software, when it comes to understanding of hardware and low-level operating system software and the base level of applications development libraries, I personally believe that Gen-X techies and earlier are ahead. That said, there are lots of Boomers with similar knowlege, but the raw number of Gen-Xers, especially those currently active in technical pursuits are probably higher.
Tech-averse pre-Boomers exist who simply refuse to enter the world. One of my friends just recently accepted that he had to use email to communicate with business associates (actually his wife insisted that he stop receiving emails on her account). Another gentlemen who recently passed away was insistent that he knew how to "use a computer," but couldn't do the simplest of tasks like attaching a document or reading an attachment.
Simply put, the range of technical skills cover an extremely broad spectrum.
That is true, but the important thing related to this thread is that it is even true of Gen-Y. While they've grown up in a pervasively computerized society, there are still many of them that are essentially computer illiterate, despite the grandiose claims of the original blogger.
I became Internet friendly in 1990, because I was consulting at a University and was given an account. I found the tool valuable to do research, and at the time, I was far ahead of most other "boomers." In fact, my abililty to identify people back then (through Gophering) enabled some of the foundational elements of my business. The university was also where I got my first Windows computer. Now I'm tethered to it, and could not have managed my gov't contract any other way.
Everyone uses the tool in different ways. For me, it has facilitated work (it also allows me to work almost anytime, anywhere which bothers the daylights out of my wife)...the Internet has given me a powerful research capability. But I know absolutely nothing about software, programming or the inner workings of my computer (the "tool").
Here's the thing though. My two kids are 33 and 30. I know so much more than either of them its not funny. So, it is very hard to generalize.
My first computer was an Apple II+. The Apple II was a very simplistic machine as I've mentioned before that you really had to dig into deeply in order to make it sing. I learned BASIC, but quickly had to move to 6502 assembler. I also dabbled with stuff like Logo and Forth. In the early mid 1980s I got interested in the dialup modem BBS scene. I ran a BBS through most of the 1980s, and got interested in the internet -- well, it wasn't actually called that yet in about 1985. I lived in a college town and one of my friends who was a grad student at the time got me an account on the CS department's VAX which was running 4.3BSD UNIX. I was still in HS at that time, but I quickly learned to navigate the shell, learn the ins and outs of the command line and UNIX utilities, vi, and started to teach myself to program in C from the first edition K&R book. When I got to college I got a job as a programmer and sysadmin for the USDA/Ag Extension Service working on a little VAX running BSD UNIX. That's the job where I really expanded my knowledge because I had access to (and occasion to look at) the UNIX kernel source. I tought myself VAX assembler and learned to debug running kernels in adb (assembler debugger) in order to trace kernel panics, etc. While I was there I did things like bootstrap up BSD on an unsupported VAX model including hacking some device drivers to make things work where I really learned a lot about the internals of modern 32 bit systems.
Anyway, my perspective on OSes is probably different than a lot of people because I've never owned a Windows computer or used it as my primary OS. I went from my Apple II to *nix machines using Macs for some desktop apps to Linux in 1983. My first Linux box was built from dumpster rescue, cast-off and surplus parts. I've been using Linux as my primary OS since soon after that. I "know" Windows of course -- but I only use it as little as I can get away with at work. The opposite thing is true of me than most people in that Linux is what feels comfortable and normal and on Windows I find myself irritated that things don't work like I expect they should and I find myself cursing at the user interface and how things are so much easier to do in KDE.
As for your kids... unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) they are enough younger than me even that they probably barely remember a time without GUIs, large amounts of memory, big hard drives and lots of commoditized off-the-shelf software. By the time they would have been interested, things had already changed and a lot of the openness to hobbiests had been lost (the hardware too complex and not documented for the end user, and most of the software closed source). Fortunately we are now in an era where open source software is at least starting to give new opportunities for people to get into things at a lower level again at least for software -- but it isn't as compelling a need to do it like it was back in the old days.