like 30 or so years older?

how is your work compared to them (if you both do the same thing).

like are you faster/slower/same speed.

more/less efficient?

just curious.

or (this may no be a likely scenario)

do you work with someone who is much much younger.

11/29/2007 10:40:46 PM

I've been around a bunch of much older people (60's - 70's) when I co-oped.

When it comes to stuff like responding to email or typing things up they take longer, but for actual "engineering work" they tend to be very experienced and are the same speed or faster. They might do things differently than young people. Worked with one that would use a slide rule instead of a calculator, but he was just as good with that as everyone else with better technology. Plus when you add in the experience that they have, they can often solve a problem very quickly in their head without putting anything on paper or looking things up.

[Edited on November 29, 2007 at 11:10 PM. Reason : ]

11/29/2007 10:57:50 PM

i work with a lot of people who are much older than me

sure i am faster on technology, i can usually type faster, know how to use the features on our fancy phone system and can whip around on our internal sites and systems

however they know a zillion times more about our company, our products and our industry which is obviously of great value

i would say i'm probably a little more efficient when it comes to general things like typing, responding to email, etc but when i dont know about something i have to spend time talking to them to learn about it. if it came down to doing a presentation on something, i could spend hours putting content together since i am still learning about a lot of things while they could whip it up very quickly because they have the knowledge and years of experience

its always nice when you can work together and show an older coworker how to do something more quickly (like skipping someones voicemail when you call and going straight to the beep, copy and paste functions, random stuff that seems really easy to us) and when they can explain something technical to me in a way i can understand without having to read 20 pages of technical writing.

11/29/2007 11:01:50 PM

Quote :

"anyone work with older employees? like 30 or so years older? "

who doesn't work with people over 30?

11/29/2007 11:09:22 PM

^are you serious?

i do

they do what i tell them to do basically, its painful to see people even 20 yrs older type with one finger at a time

[Edited on November 29, 2007 at 11:12 PM. Reason : ]

11/29/2007 11:11:25 PM

the op is saying 30 years older than you, not over the age of 30

11/29/2007 11:23:00 PM

While firefighting you'll see the 55-60 year old guys doing just as much work as the younger guys and often it's less sloppy work...but when the work's done they're sore as shit and rub bengay all over themselves.

I have noticed they're more efficient in some tasks. I guess thats what happends when you do something for 30 years.
The old guys can't beat you in a sprint to the top of a hill, but they'll walk two times farther than you can. Slow and steady...

11/30/2007 12:21:56 AM

I wish older workers were appreciated more. Many of them have been with their companies and their jobs for many years - they get the business, the industry, the company. They have amazing work ethic. They may not be technological whizbangs, but they can network to get what they need just as fast.

Younger workers tend to think that older workers are obsolete simply because they can't bang out on a keyboard quickly. There's a lot more to it than that.

There are some that want to teach you everything they know. Others have bad attitudes about the whippersnappers

11/30/2007 12:26:52 AM

i love the old dudes i work with. they are smart as fuck and have great stories about the old days.

11/30/2007 12:32:29 AM

My office is pretty evenly divided by age. The sales team and upper level management sell our (SEO) services, the younger crew, all guys under 25 do the leg work. The guys @ the top are totally out of touch with even the basic details of whats actually involved in delivering what they're promising. I spent the better part of my morning schoolin a bunch of old heads on the dynamics of PPC management. Some of these guys have masters/doctorates from places like MIT and Harvard but they're totally lacking in the common sense department.

11/30/2007 12:37:59 AM

Who actually thinks bad about old people in engineering environments? That's just a stereotype of young people. The overwhelmingly positive comments about old folks here should be telling.

The saying about not dueling with an old gunfighter is true -- if he sucked, he wouldn't be old and still doing the work. The institutional knowledge of old workers smoothes out problems and stabilizes a company while younger workers search for breakthroughs.

[Edited on November 30, 2007 at 12:43 AM. Reason : .]

11/30/2007 12:41:52 AM

i work with this old hag.

doesnt know the difference between double and single click.

has a hard time doing everything. you would think after like 2-3 months of being here and trained she would catch on. is afraid to do copy and paste.

and she doesnt think i am doing any work around here because like in the old days, you have to have a stack of papers in front of you to do work. she fails to realize a lot of my work is done on my laptop.

i dont think she has Xray vision yet. if she did she would understand.

anyone have someone like that?

11/30/2007 9:04:19 AM

I was shown an interesting statistic the other day. At the center I work at, there are a few thousand employees and of them, only 81 were born after the year 1980. I am the youngest person in my department (one of the many engineering departments) by quite a lot. As stated before, I'm generally pretty fast with stuff on the computer and knowing various keyboard shortcuts in MS Office and stuff, but the amount of knowledge and experience that these guys have is insane. I am surrounded my so many super smart engineers, it makes me feel like my puny little BS in aerospace engineering really doesn't mean anything. Like for example, there was a problem I was working on solving for almost a month. I tried everything I could think of. Then casually one of my coworkers was talking to me about what I have been up to for the past few weeks and he was like "Oh that's probably blah blah blah, just check that and if it does something, do this" and sure enough it fixed it in like 15 mins.

11/30/2007 9:35:48 AM

the next youngest in my group is ~20 years older than me

yesterday they asked me what facebook was at lunch

we're a pretty tech savvy group though, just apparently not in social networking

11/30/2007 9:49:49 AM

I work with a couple 50+ and everyone else here is 30+. Me and one other guy are under 30.

Some of them (not many) over 30, do the same amount of work as I do.

I'm the high call-taker here, they all type slow though

11/30/2007 9:50:37 AM

baonest, you're probably dealing with an older worker who has lost confidence. For the most part, technology has excluded older workers who didn't get the proper training to keep up with it. No one has the patience to teach them. When you're in the work force forever, and suddenly you can't do the basics anymore, it's a mindfuck. By criticizing your "work", she's probably just trying to hang on to what she knows.

Is she a retiree with a new job? What do you know about her? You're going to get a lot farther by embracing and understanding her, imo.

11/30/2007 10:00:14 AM

I tell ya it can be awkward to supervise around 25 people, more than half of whom have children older than me.

I love working with them though, especially being able to count on them - they show up to work, don't need much active supervision, and just plain deal out less drama than my young guns.

Regardless of their position relative to you, just treat 'em with the respect most of them have earned, and show you will learn from them. After all, odds are they've been doing something for the past 20 years and picked up a little along the way. You not only gain friends, but get saved a lot of stuff you would otherwise learn by failing first.

[Edited on November 30, 2007 at 11:14 AM. Reason : a]

11/30/2007 11:11:01 AM

There are some dudes who have been working here longer than I have been alive.

11/30/2007 11:25:06 AM

Quote :

"(like skipping someones voicemail when you call and going straight to the beep"

This may be a retarded question....but how do you do this?

11/30/2007 12:12:51 PM

with most carriers its pressing 1. then it beeps after like half a second

11/30/2007 12:13:44 PM

i work with a lot of older people in the DOT. depending on what everyone is doing, i'm usually a lot faster at completing tasks.

one thing i have noticed is that the lower people do a lot more work than the people with higher salaries, but will do the work equally the same if not better than their boss.

11/30/2007 1:27:56 PM

And what are you going to do with the ~30 seconds you saved by not listening to the voice-mail announcement? Listen to your iPod? Talk on the cell phone? Fuck around on T-Dub while you're supposed to be working?

You "Millennials."


[Edited on November 30, 2007 at 2:39 PM. Reason : .]

11/30/2007 2:36:47 PM

those queer 30 seconds add up

11/30/2007 3:07:02 PM

in the nuclear power industry, the average age of employees is >45 years. That's because they hired all these folks as 20 year olds to build the plants 20-30 years ago and then the industry stagnated after TMI and Chernobyl. So I work with Engineers, Technicians, etc that are 50-60s.

We had a 60 year old technician die in our containment building because he had a heart attack and we couldn't get him to the hosptial fast enough (really tore up our Security department - they provide first response on site).

Overall, these folks have produced excellent work and have a very different work ethic than folks of today (probably because the companies cared for their employees back when they started). Its also a common turn of events that one of these folks "retires" and starts back a week later with a contract firm.

The best part about all of this is now that they are planning on building the next generation of nukes, they aren't staffing up. Management thinks "we don't have a people problem" but I guess they expect corpses to build and maintain the new plants....

11/30/2007 8:55:23 PM

Quote :

"And what are you going to do with the ~30 seconds you saved by not listening to the voice-mail announcement? Listen to your iPod? Talk on the cell phone? Fuck around on T-Dub while you're supposed to be working? You "Millennials." "

go back to the soapbox

11/30/2007 9:19:00 PM

Quote :

"who doesn't work with people over 30?"

lololololol

11/30/2007 9:21:42 PM

Quote :

"(probably because the companies cared for their employees back when they started"

This is what I've noticed the most. A lot of older workers worked for one company their whole career - you just don't see that anymore. Companies don't invest in their workforces like they used to.

11/30/2007 9:31:15 PM

i'm the youngest guy at my work. average age is about 35. god, old people talk so much.

I ask the simplest questions and they rant for hours on end. By the time they are done I feel like..

11/30/2007 9:43:56 PM

I'm the youngest guy on our team by ten years.

The amount of knowledge around me makes for a very intimidating environment.

12/1/2007 2:28:43 AM

knowledge is the only hard currency in a job. you can only trade on relationships for so long before they'll cash their stock in you and expect you to return them some results. without knowledge, results will be hard for you to come by.

[Edited on December 1, 2007 at 2:45 AM. Reason : s]

12/1/2007 2:39:07 AM

because i'm a consultant i've worked a large number of different groups - every time i've been the youngest - the smallest gap was when i was 23 and a coworker was 27 - the project i'm on now thogh i'm the youngest by 20 years and 2 people on the team of 5 have kids older than me

typically the older guys i've worked with get more done while at work because they don't screw around or check email during the day and when 5 rolls around it's time to go - they don't stick around just because something isn't done - work will always be there tomorrow

12/1/2007 12:00:01 PM

Older workers definitely have a competitive edge in the biotech industry. They tend to know the products, company, and customer better than the new guys, which cuts down on the amount of time wasted. They are usually in higher positions and tend to lose touch with how much time is demanded of the little guys (I worked 6am-10pm the past 3 days, no day off in the last month), but I have to admit the experience is handy. And I hate them for it because it keeps me out of the higher positions with my limited experience

[Edited on December 1, 2007 at 12:09 PM. Reason : .]

[Edited on December 1, 2007 at 12:15 PM. Reason : yeah so what]

12/1/2007 12:08:45 PM

um dude ^

that's professional progression

12/1/2007 12:10:50 PM

Most of my coworkers are older than me but I can hardly think of them as "old." I assume everyone is two years older than me and get surprised when I find out they have grown kids. The office would fall apart without them though. Their experience is absolutely invaluable. I learn quickly and all, but I wouldn't get very far without their guidance. Everyone has their specialties.

12/1/2007 1:10:20 PM