More and more Millennials are approaching the market. Chip Conley, a baby boomer, experienced this generation at Airbnb company and shared his observations on age diversity in the workplace.
- Do you work in an age-diverse team? If so, what is your experience?
- Have you ever experienced the generation gap?
- Do you think Millennials have a positive impact on the market? Present examples.
Comments
There are differences in thinking. Sometimes it's easier for me to research something and find a good solution to a problem while my coworkers try to solve new problems with old tools. Usually the latter is faster due to experience but on the long run it's not efficient.
Millennials is just a name for another generation, so they probably have the same impact as previous generations and I can't see a way to judge it. If it comes to technocratic approach, which they mostly have in common, it's practical and plays out well because technical problems are huge part of our lives today. However, I often observe young people intentionally denying all the knowledge and behaviour that older coworkers represent, which gives us for example no sense of propriety in the workplace.
As I’ve mentioned in previous paragraph, I have experienced the generation gap but it wasn’t a big deal.
As for the generational gap, I recently had to work with an analyst who is about 60 years old and worked in a very old system. I did not expect much from him, but I was positively surprised by the quality of the analysis he made. However, he did everything very slowly and when I had to consult him on average, he used a computer.
When it comes to the Milennials generation, I was once a student training guardian. I must admit that it was difficult. They did their job, but nothing more than that. They did not seem interested in the tasks they get. They did not try to think how to do something but rather expected that someone would tell them exactly how to do it.
I think that millennials may have some positive impact on the market, everything has positives and negatives. Although I am not very interested in this kind of topics so I cannot give any examples.
Only where I experienced the generation gap is the family and I think it's a normal thing and it does not bother me at all.
millennils is a generation of people, and in every generation there are good and bad people, so it's hard to judge it, it depends on what person comes across.
I believe that age diversity helps team performance same way as race or gender. But I think it's not an only or first thing which creates the best performing teams.
Answering your last question, absolutely yes. I couldn't imagine a scenario in which young workers new companies created by young people negatively impacting a market. In addition, I'm a big fan of an idea of a shared economy, so new start-ups, companies, ideas have a positive impact on the economy.
Personally, I very often prefer to talk and work with peoplethat are not my generation, as I can learn from them a lot.
I never experienced generation gap in work, but I often feel this at home. My mom doesn’t really use a computer so sometimes I can get a task like “can you find how to transplant a violet”? Gosh, mom, just google it, you have your phone :)
Regarding the last question - I’m not sure. I think they have an impact on the market, but probably it’s not as big so I can’t describe it or give my opinion on it.
I work in an age-diverse team and I am the youngest employee in my company. I don't feel age gap between us and I think that we have good contact. Most of us have simillar interests because we are programmers so I feel that we are on the same wavelength.
2. Have you ever experienced the generation gap?
I have pretty young parents and I didn't feel the generation gap between us but e.g. I sometimes feel it when I am talking with my grandparents. I think that it is quite normal because they have different point of view than people in my age. They have different experience than me, they remember hard times of communism in Poland so it is not a surprice for me that we have different opinion on a lot of things.
3. Do you think Millennials have a positive impact on the market? Present examples.
I don't like calling people 'millennials'. I think that people in my age have a positive impact on the market because we don't want to work for unfair salary. On the other hand I am concious that are a lot of people on the market who finished studies but they don't have any practice. That's bad because now we can see gap in professions like e.g. builder, welder, excavator operator.
I'm the youngest person in the company for the last three years. There is more than ten years difference between the oldest employee and me. At first, I found it difficult to get used to topics they talked about, like family, children and other more mature themes from my student perspective. After some time when I learned a lot of life I overcame this feeling, and now I don't feel any generation gap in our beliefs. The only moment I can think that I'm from other generations is when we discuss some ongoing situations, and in most cases, I have a different point of view than them.
I think we push changes to the market. Social-media companies like Facebook are one of the examples of our impact on the world.
2. Of course I experienced generation gap many times.
3. I think that millennials have some positive impact on the market because they are curious and not afraid of learning by trial and error process. Recently I was participating in a training with some junior developers and I was astonished with their self confidence and out of the box thinking. They were not afraid to fail when they were trying to figure out how systems’ components are working.
1. Luckily or not working in a very unified age environment, we all differ from each other by a maximum of six years. Thanks to this, the afmosphere is freer and relations are more intimate and friendly.
2. Of course, I've experienced this as many of us on many levels. Starting from significant age differences in the family which gives rise to a different opinion on many topics as well as a more conscious look at many issues as well as in everyday life, at meetings, public places, such people seem mature and more serious (I am talking about the older difference).
3.The subject of work in the present time is difficult, many of us put our hard on, usually negotiating a fair pay, but more and more companies do'nt want to embarrass employees at the beginning of their careers, require a minimum of three to five years of experience to take from nowhere.