Accelerating Generation Gap

I've been reading about the generation gap between baby boomers and Gen-Xers. I guess these two groups have had trouble playing nice in the workplace, because the boomers feel like the Gen-Xers are lazy and have inflated senses of entitlement. I imagine you could trace this story back through thousands of generations of time. One generation thinks they worked harder when they were young than they actually did, and so they expect the next generation to work equally as hard as the previous one did. You could make a strong argument that my grandfathers outworked me.

My paternal grandfather was a WWII veteran and a rail road worker. My maternal grandfather ran a large family farm. Those are hard jobs, and I'm basically a sissy compared to them. But what do you want me to do? Should I drop out of school and go work on a farm? I doubt my grandfather would give me that advice. He worked so very hard in one way, so that I could work very hard in another way.

This generation gap seems to be hitting attorneys pretty hard now. You have the guys who are now partners, who had to put in 70-80 hour work weeks for the first decade of their careers, and now they expect the new associates to do that. I doubt this is based on any rational criteria, but more on entitlement or greed. "If you have time, it should be spent here. That's what I did, so that's what you should do." What if you could use technology to be more efficient? What if a new associate can accomplish twice as much per hour as an associate 20 years ago (probably not, but just humor me) Do you think the firm would just say, "Great job, go home and relax!" It's not likely, because firms have a history of doing this, and these kids shouldn't get away with being lazy just because they work smart. Time is money.

This Generation Gap seems to run along a curve, rather than a straight progression. As technology increases, advances in technology happen more often. Eventually this has to end based on simple economics: if new stuff came out every day, nobody would ever buy anything.

However, the speed of advances is still increasing, and so the gaps between generations are getting wider.

This phenomenon is being offset by having more savvy old people :) Generation Xers (people born after the baby boom, but before 1981) are showing more resilience than the previous generation. Xers are trying to keep up with changing technology, and they are doing it better than their parents.

Nevertheless, I doubt they'll be able to keep up with their kids. The difference between my childhood and my parents childhood will be FAR smaller than the difference between my childhood and my kids' childhood.

Think about a family with parents in their 40s. They probably have a kid or two who is begging for a smart phone or some gaming system. Personally, I think it's absurd for anyone who can't drive or work to have exclusive access to a cell phone.. But is that because I didn't have access to a cell phone until I was an adult? Maybe so... but cell phones have changed drastically. Now you aren't only giving your child full access to a phone, but to an instant messaging system, a camera, a video camera, a video game player, a music player, and a fully functioning internet browser. What!? Why do my kids need to be able to text message all their friends, play tony hawk, listen to Chris Brown, and look up definitions to all the dirty words they hear--ALL on the bus ride home? This isn't the future I saw in back to the future II. I'm okay with my kids riding hover-boards. We are giving the most curious generation of all time unlimited access to insane amounts of information (some accurate and some not-so-accurate).

Next, we face the challenge of privacy. My parents used to have a phone in the basement, and the phone had a cord long enough to reach under the stairs. My sisters would go under the stairs for privacy to talk about silly things with their best friends. What kind of trouble could they have gotten into? It used to be that if your kids were home, they'd probably be okay unless they were hiding drugs under their bed. Now your kid could be reading mein kampf, or watching Nip Tuck at the dinner table. (Sorry FX fans, I don't mean to say Nip Tuck is as bad as mein kampf... not quite anyway :)

This new technology is also much different than the tech from 5 years ago. Now, due to internet access, these devices are constantly being updated. So it is very possible, that my children will obtain new technology, technology that I have never even heard of, on a daily basis. I can just imagine when hulu comes to the iphone... and parents will be like "You can watch any R rated movie you want? What do you mean you only have to check an "i'm 18" box???" Awesome... let's watch boondog saints or wedding crashers during recess.

Finally, we are getting to the point where we will be able to maintain a certain standard of living with less work. Old timers will reject the shorter work week out of precedent, young people will reject it out of greed. And what's left? Instead of taking advantage of our new efficiency by spending more time with our families and friends, we'll just cram in more work making more new technologies that will make us work even more per hour in the future.

So I will advocate for working more from home by using my technological devices. It will be possible for me to be a little league coach because I can do work from my phone if anything comes up during practice.

And the baby boomers and gen xers will probably call me lazy... I'm cool with that. I'll just pay it forward.