I’m 24 and work at a large corporation as part of a larger IT support group. I’ve sat in a gray/white cubicle, participated in those meaningless meetings mandated from the “higher ups” and signed dozens of birthday cards for people that I rarely ever speak to for over 2 years now. Based on my experiences with my own job and observing the work habits/behavior of other employees in their 20’s and as well as employees who I will refer to as older employees (30’s and 40’s), I thought I’d take a little time to blog about my thoughts on what I refer to as the corporate age divide.
To be completely straight forward and probably contrary to what some older people think, from my experience of observing people their 20’s is that they almost universally are much harder workers, better dressed, more technical, and more inclined toward upward mobility than most workers of other age groups. I don’t know if it is a declared problem (or even looked at as a problem) but there is no doubt that this corporate age divide exists and if these corporations don’t start addressing the problem they will start seeing a drop in new hires of people in their 20’s and the age gap of workers continue to widen. The fact of the matter is that workers right out of college regularly work circles around the established employees they’re supposed to be learning from.
In my 2 years of working here, I have moved ahead of a large number of the established employees in both pay and position. And without making it sound like I didn’t deserve or didn’t have to work hard to get my promotions, I have surpassed people who had been working here 5+ years (all of them 30+ years old). My competition for continued upward mobility comes from the small group of 20 somethings who work with me.
If there’s any general resentment toward older workers among the younger ones, it’s not based on age at all, but more our observations that way too many of the older workers have learned the ‘ins and outs’ of the company and now make it their goal to get by and get their yearly raise/bonus doing as little work as humanly possible.
It’s insane the amount of people in the company who just take up space but can never be removed because they continually hit their minimum targets and are friendly with the right management. New jobs almost never open up because so many positions are filled by people with no ambition or drive, but who simply “qualify” for the position because of their tenure. Talented workers my age regularly leave the company because their attempts at mobility are stalled and they don’t want to wait years and years to climb the old corporate ladder.
The solution isn’t a simple one but it isn’t completely unreachable. In short, it is time for these “old school” corporations to start appealing to the younger workforce. There is no appeal in outdated technology, outdated HR policies, and outdated work environments to people in their 20’s coming out of college. They are going towards the smaller companies where they will have a voice in decisions, and not be forced to take a yearly survey on what needs to be improved at the workplace.
This is, of course, only the experience of one person at one company. I also might be too young to have learned the cynicism I see here from older workers (i.e. - maybe all jobs are this way and I have a long career ahead of me). I only know that my experience is usually in line with what I hear from other people my age working for other companies, where in too many instances bright and ambitious kids are working with older people who couldn’t give a damn about their job performance and in a lot of cases never really bothered to learn things like basic written communication skills or any software programs beyond the bare functionality required for their job.
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