Bridging the IT Generation Gap - ' New Tools for New '
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When Reef surfwear's Schneider, who is 49, speaks
to co-workers, he makes eye contact and gives clear
signals that he is in fact listening to what the other
person is saying. But when he does that with some
younger workers, he says, they keep looking at the
screen of whatever device they are using at the
moment. Multitasking and what's known as continuous
partial attention are endemic to Generation Y.
Younger workers at computers typically have multiple
windows open—not just an SAP screen for the work
at hand, for instance, but a side discussion with a colleague
and an Internet window for research. "They
don't work in serial fashion, but in parallel," he says.
That takes getting used to. So do the tools younger
workers use to multitask. "Talking on the phone is
their last resort," Schneider says. Phone calls take too
long. Even e-mail takes too long—instant messaging
has largely replaced it—and Facebook has become the
way of communicating across a broader audience. The
phone is a platform for text messaging and IM.
Young people use the technology to different ends,
too, according to Erickson. They are amazed at the
amount of time their seniors spend on what she calls
social scheduling activities. "They very rarely schedule—
they coordinate—and they are comfortable
working asynchronously," she says. "They don't need
a conference call, they just put the question out. They
are more used to working physically alone, as opposed
to more frequent social interactions."
Ben, the 30-year-old engineer, works remotely
and connects with his team via IM. He can't imagine
doing things differently, and it bugs him when his
older colleagues are behind the curve. "A lot of the
people I work with are tied into this old-school
way of doing business," he says. "They say, let's get
together to set up a call. It's like, another useless
meeting. People today want it to be more like, 'Get
out of my way and let me do my thing.' That's why
so many people use the tools like texting and IM—
because it's fast, the response time is quick. My team
is all IM all the time."
The tools are changing. "I think that in a lot of
cases, like the expectation that people will read and
write blogs, the older generation has to catch up,"
says Ryan Shell, 28, who works in public relations and
marketing in North Carolina. The same may be true of
more esoteric technologies.
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