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generational differences / thinking in your career field?

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10 April 2000
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Silicon Valley
this morning i read an article in the paper about a "current generation" doc who was forgoing the extremely long hours most early-career docs have to endure to take a 8-5 m-f doc-job at a local hospital. when the guy walks out the door, the pager / phone are turned off and he's got his normal life back. (or so the story goes.)

that made me think of a conversation i had with one of my former co-workers (i was his manager) / long time friend and for the past few years, client, who owns a very successful software company. my friend is now 39 and a couple of months ago was ragging on me that "his generation makes / takes more time for their families than" my generation did. my take was that depending on the type of work one does, today's tools / business / social mindset support making / taking more time available away from the office and availability to one's family.

he called the house the other day and in conversation with my wife, mentioned that one of his employees was ragging on him that he (my friend) didn't get how important a facebook presence could be to their company because my friend is "too old to understand".

buahahahahahaha, that's just sooooooooooooooooo funny to me! (39 = too old.)

so, i'm curious - do you see major generational differences in your line of work on a frequent basis, and if so, what are they?

thx,
hal
 
I am part of the last generation of engineers that draws on paper, uses a calculator, and builds actual models.

The previous generation of engineers used a sliderule instead of a calcuator.

The subsequent generations use a computer to design, document, simulate and test.

Actually, I was the first generation that started using a computer daily, but was limited by what it could do.

The previous generation gave us the automobile, the airplane and the spaceship, my generation gave us the internet, and the new generation gives us globalization.

It could be seen as the de-evolution of man.:wink:
 
I don't know about the generational differences at my company. It is a mixed bag. Really depends on the individual. In the last 5 years (8 plus years at current company), I know I have changed from career first to family first. I rather have a lower salary than less time with my family.
 
thx for the feedback.

thought i've focused on being a strong performer / member of my organizations, i've always been a family-first, business-second person... just couldn't have it any other way.
 
I'm 35 and work pretty darn hard, but I'm an attorney, so it's a given, or so I thought. We've got some younger attorneys in the firm (25 ish) who take far more time off then I do, leave at least 1, but more typically 2 hours before I leave and generally whine and complain about their workloads when they have no idea what it means to face pressure.

I worry for that generation.
 
As a broad generality newer Radiologists coming into the field are also choosing to make less and work less,or make par and work more unusual hours to fit in thier schedual.The rise of the internet and decline in its costs for highspeed conectivity to home have helped foster more creative(unorthodox) work scheduals.Of course since the burden of work increases each year the hard daily grind ie troops in the hospitals have to work that much more.
 
I think one of the biggest differences I've noticed is that people used to stay with a company, even a tech company, for most of their lives. Companies also provided enticements to make you want to stay. I remember when Digital Equipment Corp started laying people off in the late 80s. I knew dozens of these engineers in their 40s for the most part and they had been with the company since they got out of college. I remember DEC would rent out the local amusement park once a year for their 100,000+ employees and their families. Free food, free rides, when I was a kid, I looked forward to that every year. Honeywell did similar things.

Today, in the tech industry, the young generation is typically looking for the next best thing, has no loyalty (partially the company's fault) and if they last in one place for more than 2-3 years, it's unusual.

If a company treats me well, listens to my ideas, and I'm happy and fairly compensated, I'll stay forever. Unfortunately, there aren't many of those types of tech companies left. Whenever I've worked for such a company, I was forced to leave either because of layoffs or because they closed their doors.
 
I think one of the biggest differences I've noticed is that people used to stay with a company, even a tech company, for most of their lives. Companies also provided enticements to make you want to stay. I remember when Digital Equipment Corp started laying people off in the late 80s. I knew dozens of these engineers in their 40s for the most part and they had been with the company since they got out of college. I remember DEC would rent out the local amusement park once a year for their 100,000+ employees and their families. Free food, free rides, when I was a kid, I looked forward to that every year. Honeywell did similar things.

Today, in the tech industry, the young generation is typically looking for the next best thing, has no loyalty (partially the company's fault) and if they last in one place for more than 2-3 years, it's unusual.

If a company treats me well, listens to my ideas, and I'm happy and fairly compensated, I'll stay forever. Unfortunately, there aren't many of those types of tech companies left. Whenever I've worked for such a company, I was forced to leave either because of layoffs or because they closed their doors.



Great post and true. I worked for Dec in 1996 when they where doing huge layoff's. It was unreal had food brought in and treated people well, Now it's 2008 and 12 jobs later I do what I have to do to keep happy. My parents do not understand it but I have to do what is best for myself not for the company. I will say I found a great place to work and they let me do whatever I want and I get to work from home. Doubt I will ever leave and they do take care of the people from what I have seen, my co-worker has been at this job for 28 years and he's a tech too.
 
Great post and true. I worked for Dec in 1996 when they where doing huge layoff's. It was unreal had food brought in and treated people well, Now it's 2008 and 12 jobs later I do what I have to do to keep happy. My parents do not understand it but I have to do what is best for myself not for the company. I will say I found a great place to work and they let me do whatever I want and I get to work from home. Doubt I will ever leave and they do take care of the people from what I have seen, my co-worker has been at this job for 28 years and he's a tech too.

1996 was Bob Palmer and EVIL, DEC was all done long before then. I was there in the early 80s when it was still Ken Palmer, Notes conferences were huge (sort of like today's newsgroups/forums), and it WAS a family of 100,000+ people. I had social events to go to EVERY weekend, all over the US and UK if I wanted. It was an absolute blast. Then Ken was out, Bob was in and things went downhill from there extremely rapidly. Obviously as a company Ken did a lot of things wrong, but the one thing he did right was he took care of his employees..... there were however far too many that took advantage of this and didn't contribute other than to sit on notes conferences all day. Bob came in and took care of that fairly quickly as well as carving up the company into pieces and selling it off.
 
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