A culture clash between generations

Once again, I was going through linkedin posts. And then I found an article about “how people see using phones in a meeting”. I can see how this can be seen as disrespectful, but what if they actually misunderstand? What if there’s multitasking involved? Not necessarily, of course, but there’s a near-threatening line afterwards: Millenials are the group that thinks it’s okay, but their bosses don’t — and that’s keeping millenials down.

So we’re in a case of abuse of power and refusal to budge. And unintentionally hurt personal feelings. The people in higher positions should not be treating their subordinates like crap because they are higher on the ladder. It’s a toxic environment that is just self-defeating.

Having read through a bunch od the dailywtf articles with a nice dash of 9gag, I’ve come to a startling realization…

Okay, I came to it earlier, but I’m only writing about it now.

As you grow up, you soon realise that it’s not that people know what they’re doing: they just get better at pretending they do. Which ends up outright jarring when they are outright wrong. A lot of stuff that twentysomethings are aware of and understand seems to be arcane to the people currently in charge.

Not everyone needs to be technical, but then they use this as an excuse to do silly things, like suggest we should do encryption that’s breakable by governments. I’d just say: no. I see why you suggest it, because terrorists. Because bad people. And I say that they are the exact reason why we need encryption. For every case where encryption makes it less than a cakewalk for law enforcement, there’s over a thousand of cases where the unbreakable encryption is important. It’s the private lovey messages you send to your girlfriend. It’s the credit card details you send to buy something online. Without that encryption, that information — especially the latter — can be obtained by those bad people. And they can steal your money.

Why? Because, well, those people think of encryption in terms of locks and safes, as the dailywtf said. It’s hardly that.

In fact, the lack of tech savviness and the feelings of self-importance that the corporate suits often exhibit is a serious problem. They often refuse to understand why the techies are complaining. “Why can’t this be done on time?”, they ask. The answer is simple: We gave you estimates and you said we had to make do with half of it. Of course it’s not gonna be made on time! We’re not trying to gut you, we’re trying to get it done but you pretend you know our job better.

That’s the thing though: the suits are supposed to manage stuff but then they consider themselves super-important. That’s… less than ideal. The reality is that nobody really knows what they’re doing. Sometimes the truth has to be faced.

Cooking your books hurts you first — management isn’t there to micromanage every detail and fight their departments. The ideal situation is where the management cares for the quality of their output and listens to people in the know. But you end up hearing a lot about self-absorbed people who fire people who tried to do damage control over their own bad decisions. Or managers who get promoted for pinning the blame on a team that kept telling them the things the manager was doing were a bad idea.

Now, of course, I fully realise that this is anecdotal evidence at best. In fact, I must say my work’s quite pleasant compared to a lot of hellish stories I’ve seen… and I’ve also been to an interview where I was personally insulted by the potential employer. So it’s not like the problem exists. Things are often done correctly, but there’s a lot of focus on people trying to make themselves look good. People throw others under the bus to cover themselves.

This selfishness is what tends to ruin a lot of good things. And indeed, the generation gap is widening — the “old guard” is immensely peeved by how millenials are used to 24/7 communication while the millenials are baffled by how the “old guard” apparently maliciously does everything they can to make tech not work as intended.

The truth is it’s likely a misunderstanding — is it a condescending attitude? Or perhaps just thinking that the kid is exaggerating, which doesn’t have to be entirely unreasonable? Of course, there’s the bottom line. There’s the available financial resources and there’s a need to profit. But at the same time, why does SNAFU seem to be the order of the day?

Honestly, a lot of mess-ups could’ve been entirely avoided by listening to the tech-savvy people. They know what can break and how, which is why they’re cautious. But no one wants to hear about it — and resources get cut. Whenever it comes to tech, cutting corners always ends up with higher cost in the end.

So, a 50+ year old CEO might consider us disrespectful, self-centered, whiney kids… but what if it’s just a misunderstanding? What if we actually have a point? Why are our concerns brushed aside and ignored? You see, that’s the heart of the problem. Let’s stereotype it a bit and consider this…

CEO’s viewpoint: I have those young whippersnappers with no experience who demand a lot of cash, a lot of time and always buzz about something. When I arrange a meeting, they are busy with their phones. They’re rude, always in a hurry and they might as well speak a foreign language. These little gits know nothing about life! They have ridiculous, unrealistic expactations.

And actually, he has valid points there. We do lack experience. Obviously, we’ve lived through much less and we don’t know all the shit life can throw at you. But at the same time, while some might have, getting up there in a company that survives isn’t a fluke. There might indeed be very good reasons that the management is where it is. In fact, it’s probably more likely that there are good reasons for it. It’s quite reasonable to argue that they’re there because they’re good at avoiding critical mistakes in the unforgiving business world. We do end up saying it’ll take a long time and it’ll be costly. It’s not a very attractive thing at all and we tend to break into technobabble easily.

At the same time, that’s the thing: we’ve learned to work with tech as part of our lives and we understand it better. That’s why, even with less “classic” life experience we understand that we can’t just make the project meet the deadline with slashed resources. As for the absent-mindedness at meetings? Well, long, regular meetings are actually pulling us out of work, and a lot of technical work requires you to “be in the zone”. There’s a wind-up that a half-hour long meeting can destroy.

20-something viewpoint: The management is full of themselves and putting a lot of hurdles in our way. They are blocking our development, they throw us under the bus, they pay us too little, they constantly change the requirements, they refuse to understand simple concepts. They have unrealistic expectations.

And… the points are valid. With experience grows hubris. The red tape slows work a lot and pulls us out of the zone. Dumping blame on us for their decisions is pretty bad and indeed we were hired for the expertise they don’t have — and things are expensive nowadays. Changing the requirements for projects is a horrible thing, as this is bound to break something. Simple concepts? Quite frankly, they don’t need to understand it. Just look at the Mersenne Twister. I can use it, I know its flaws and upsides. I know what it’s for. I don’t need to know how it works inside, I’ll use it for the right purpose, I won’t use it where I don’t need it. But when we try explaining them the “why” or “why not”, they take it as explaining them the “how”.

But at the same time, the management actually does know more than we do. The red tape is sometimes the result of trial-and-error and might be there to actually protect us from things like lawsuits. Rules might be in place so that we don’t do the same silly thing again or so that we don’t end up wasting work by going too far off the rails. Throwing under the bus? Well, it’s a cognitive bias thing — they hadn’t meant to be malicious, sometimes they may have been misled by a third party. Paying too little? Well, it’s not like the company has billions of dollars they can throw at us. The company is there to make money, and costs cut into that. Changes in requirements? That’s simply because not everything is immediately obvious and they aren’t always aware of the limitations. Some things that seem simple aren’t. And it’s sometimes our fault because we don’t ask the right questions, so they can’t get the requirements right the first time around. The problem with understanding stuff is that they often don’t know what the thing is for and don’t understand its pros and cons. While understanding exactly how it works is not always necessary, they often do actually misunderstand the “why” or “why not” for “how”… because we often mix these up and they don’t know which we’re trying to tell them.

So. Unrealistic expectations… that’s the thing. Because we think differently, we end up with misunderstandings that generate resentment and cost. We probably should think about it.

It’s the adversarial mindset that somehow pops up as a result that is a problem. Why yes, sometimes it’s the workers who were too cheeky. Sometimes it’s the employer who is taking advantage of his people. My current job manages to avoid the adversarial mindset and we go it together. It’s pretty nice — and I know it’s not like that everywhere. When serious communication fails and it becomes “us” and “them”, things go downhill. The business and tech expertise are complementary. The issue is that each believes it’s more important than the other and hurt feelings bring everything to ruin. We should avoid that and, probably, try to be as straightforward as we can.

Because every point has its counterpoint. That’s why it works better if we discuss things genuinely instead of brushing it off. It honestly works much, much better that way. We probably just need to develop some introspection and we need to take things a bit less personal.