Posted on 05/07/2019 8:40:06 AM PDT by fireman15
This is not a new phenomenon. In my past life as a corporate employee, I had my best manager and my worst manager in succession some years ago.
The best manager came in, sat us down, and let us know that he knew we knew what we were doing, to keep doing it, and he'd figure it out, making a few tweaks as and where needed. He'd come from a similar department in a newly acquired company in another part of the country, but didn't yet understand the new corporate or local culture. And he knew he didn't know it. As such, he was valued by all and shortly moved to another part of the company.
The worst manager came in, proudly displayed all of his "#1 boss" paraphernalia, and started to tell us how to do our jobs because, of course, he knew better. Never mind that he came from a different part of the corporation, and had no real idea about what we did. Thank goodness he transferred my position to another area that was probably more in line with what I was doing. Sadly, I wasn't the only one moving on or moving out. He finally left the company, although I think it was due to family health problems as much as his arrogance.
The greatest untapped talent in the US is senior technicals of all stripes. Those tech companies wont even look at you, nor will most other companies of merit. They are screamimg for talent, but if the position requires 2-4 years, forget it if you have 20. As a technical, if you become unemployed at 50, there is about a 70% chance your career is over. It is often much younger for programmers.
Way to show your ability to generalize. My 24-year old son with the AA employs older people in his rapidly growing dessert business and everyone, young and old, loves the place.
The younger employer is realizing there are some new tricks they can learn from us old dogs! My son will always run his ideas by me.
I am three years retired from the workforce but I more often than not enjoyed working for a younger boss. The energy and fresh thinking of youth did energize and keep our hospital finance department from becoming moribund. That and a younger boss on occasion created job security for us desktop jockeys as steady hands were sometimes needed to undo the youngster’s mistakes.
I think the first comment in this thread would disagree with you, that person seems to think younger people are all incompetent.
Got out of the military at 22 and was a manager by age 30. Been climbing the management ranks ever since and now at VP level.
Managing people more than twice my age was a little awkward (for me) in the beginning but I always treated my people with respect and got respect in return. The age gap was never an issue with me.
Maybe in that person's experience all of their younger supervisors have been grossly arrogant and incompetent, even though he remains and eternal optimist and is still willing to give the next one a chance. But Ocasio-Cortez is the mold that a lot of them seem to come from.
“hen is put in charge of people who know their jobs and then mucks everything up.”
Yes.
In my experience, the older professional and experienced guys push through the idiot and do their job, well, thereby no matter how incompetent the idiot boss is, the job gets done and this makes the idiot boss look good.
I have to admit that I was in a supervisory role at an early age as well. My dad had invested in a building and then a lumber mill business that was failing. I had to end my fledgling college career at an early age and go to work there to help out. Sweeping floors and stacking lumber I was able to observe first hand why nothing was going right even though I had no previous experience in the lumber mill business.
At one point the “workers” demanded more money. I had already started figuring out where the production problems were and setting up machinery myself and getting things to run smoothly. I told my dad to fire them all except for two guys who actually were conscientious hard workers. My dad put me in charge and I hired people that I knew, for temporary help until they could be replaced with people who wanted a more permanent job. So at 20 I was in charge of production with about a dozen people working under me. And for the first time in the businesses history we started making money instead of losing it.
I had to be fairly ruthless at times, if someone was unable to do their job I let them go. And I expected a lot more from people than what other similar facilities did. I didn't know or care how I compared with other people who were managing mills, all I cared about was getting the job done. I was so hands on that I don't know that one would necessarily call what I was doing as management.
After I got hired as a firefighter and was promoted as a fire office... it was a completely different type of job with a lot of slack time and spoiled government employees. I really did not thrive in that type of environment in some ways as well even though it paid the bills for 25 years. That was not as much of a management position either except that I was sometimes in charge of a lot of people as an incident commander and had to set up fire and emergency management teams quickly that had a specific type of structure and span of control.
I learned at a young age I was not management material. I just don’t have the a$$hole gene.
Yes, it is terrible. These youngsters have no tact or diplomacy, they do not understand just how they alienate older people who have returned to the work force to lower level jobs, sometimes much lower than the jobs they held when they worked full time. I took a low level job to avoid the stress and responsibility that I had when I was working; willing to accept a pay cut because I am retired and just wanted a little extra spending money. After being chewed out by a kid who was enough to be my grandson for being a few minutes late because all the handicapped parking spots had been taken and I had to slowly limp in from the back of the large parking lot, I decided it was not worth it and resigned. Interestingly, I had a doctor appt the day after I left, and she told me that quite a few of her older patients had told her that they had left an after-retirement job for the same reason. Perhaps these tech companies would do well to hold some management workshops for their young employees going into management.
“We’re living longer and working longer–either by choice or necessity (it’s hard to finance a 30-year retirement with a 40-year career)”
If you find mathematics challenging maybe. A 40 year career could easily fund a retirement that could last for a 200 year lifespan...and on into perpetuity.
Only a dumbass eats their seed corn.
My beef is with the young punks put in charge is that a lot of them have no respect for the older guys who have a LOT more experience then them.
I got kicked to the curb by a 30 something to be replaced by a 20 something. The new kid can’t find his ass with both hands.
Time to move on.
Perfect! Oh, I'm stealing it.
My wife was in a couple of positions where she was new and in charge of quite a few employees at a hospital once and a university and quickly figured out who were her good workers and had good suggestions and wisdom to impart and those full of crap. Those full of crap were the worst or the worst for office politics and sticking their noses into everyone else’s business and causing problems. With help of the wise CPO’s or Sargent’s as you put it, pushed the office hacks into positions where they were a minor nuisance with little of no power or out right fired them for incompetence.
In a hospital setting that's difficult, the lazy trouble making malcontents often get a hearing with HR and their voices MUST be addressed based on employee opinion surveys where they anonymously cause great havoc and cause low moral - they attempt to screw the department heads and the HR departments are afraid of them.
Unless you're a tech, eh? (Shhhhh...)
She would build her case with documentation, evaluations and then as they screwed up or failed in their duties if she couldn’t fire them she would take duties they liked away from them and hand them issues they needed to work on more intently and continue building her case until they no longer had any political protection. Most of the other good employees liked that because they were having to cover for the mooches.
In this particular hospital the employees hated HR and vice-versa, it was not a good situation for either. In this weird situation many employees would come to her with payroll issues since she was way up the food chain in the finance/business dept. and plead their case after being told F-off in HR. She got the reputation of hearing you out and being fair and abiding by hospital policy and federal/state laws. If an issue went for the employee she would cite the reasons and if it went against she took the time to explain why and most appreciated that effort. About seventy percent of the time HR was wrong, especially on payroll and hourly rate issues and violating federal and state laws in regard to hours worked, payment rates and other items.
She would call the HR director and let her know I am ordering this employee paid XYZ and the HR witch would throw a fit and my wife would cite hospital policy, IRS codes or federal or state laws and tell her, they will be paid and paid them. The HR director hated her, but most of the good employees liked her and looked out for her and knew she would give them a fair shake.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.