Why Gen-Xers hate Boomers - from 1993
WHY BUSTERS HATE BOOMERS There's a new generation gap, and it can hurt
a company's effectiveness. To overcome the tension, begin by
understanding each side's point of view.
(FORTUNE Magazine)
By Suneel Ratan
October 4, 1993
(FORTUNE Magazine) – HATE TO BREAK this to you, boomers, but among
twentysomethings gathering in bars, coffee houses, and Lollapalooza
festivals across America, bashing you folks has become the new
national pastime. Some of it is playful -- surely we've all heard
enough about the Sixties -- but much of it is deadly serious.
The beef is that boomers seemed to get the best of everything, from
free love to careers, while today's young people get AIDS and
McJobs. If the sound of young people whining sounds annoyingly
familiar, as from time immemorial, listen closer. This time it's
different. Unlike their boomer siblings, Generation X, as the new crop
have taken to calling themselves, from the title of a Douglas Coupland
novel, aren't rebelling against the government or the
culture. Instead, today's kids (whose numbers include the author of
this story) are up in arms over economic and career prospects that
look particularly bleak -- with boomers as the targets of their
resentments. That makes the workplace center-stage of the
twentysomethings' rebellion, with younger people referring privately
to their boomer bosses as ''knotheads and control freaks,'' in the
phrase of Jeffrey McManus, a 26-year-old computer instructor.
To hear twentysomethings tell it, boomers spend too much office time
politicking and not enough time working. Boomer managers claim to be
seeking younger employees' input when in reality they couldn't care
less what Xers think. Worst of all, boomers seem threatened by young,
cheap-to-employ hotshots who come in brimming with energy and -- note
well -- superior technological savvy, and thus are doing everything in
their power to keep the young'uns down. And while we're at it, with
downsizing taking a wicked toll on support staff, can't you boomers do
your own faxing?
Boomers are more than willing to take on twentysomethings in what's
shaping up as a generational grudge match. Xers, fortysomethings say,
are too cocky and aren't willing to pay their dues. That complaint is
as old as humanity, but other knocks are more particular to the
Xers. They aren't loyal or committed to work, detractors say, changing
jobs more casually than sex partners and refusing to go that extra
mile to do things right.
Unlike workaholic boomers, twentysomethings like to play, and they
even expect work to be fun. Irony of ironies, the boomer generation
that came of age rejecting authority charges the next generation with
-- sacre bleu! -- being unwilling to, uh, show appropriate deference
to their authority.
Interviews with more than 60 Xers and boomers in the business world,
as well as with sociologists and management consultants, reveal that a
combination of clashing workplace values and the sour economic scene
is creating lasting tensions that managers will have to deal with long
after hiring has picked up. Faced with working for boomer bosses they
find oppressive, many twentysomethings have abandoned corporate
America, retreating into slackerdom or striking out on their own as
entrepreneurs. The challenge for managers is to figure out ways to
capture twentysomethings' enthusiasm to enliven existing companies --
many of which certainly could use an infusion of youthful energy.
To chart the generational fault line, throw out textbook definitions
that identify boomers as the 78 million Americans born between 1946
and 1964 and baby-busters as the 38 million born from 1965 to
1975. Bill Strauss and Neil Howe, authors of two books on generational
issues, Generations and 13th Gen, correctly point out that people born
after 1960 have difficulty identifying with the coming-of-age
experiences of older boomers. They call the generation born from 1961
to 1981 ''13ers,'' denoting their status as the 13th generation since
the founding of the republic. Says Strauss: ''Our shorthand is that
boomers are too young to remember Roosevelt dying, while 13ers are too
young to remember Kennedy's assassination.'' Using Strauss and Howe's
definition, 13ers -- by subtracting from boomers' ranks the people
born after 1960 -- outnumber boomers 79 million to 69 million.
Of course, the still, small voice of the boomer skeptic intones, 32
million of the 13ers are under 21. Just as the times in which they
came of age are different, so too are the factors that provoked
boomers' and Xers' rebellions.
Against a backdrop of unparalleled U.S. economic strength, boomers
rose up not only against the Vietnam war but also against a culture
and social system they thought repressive. Twentysomethings see
themselves as the children of America's economic and social
decline. They aren't angry at the Silent and World War II generations
that have steered the economy onto the rocks and whose Social Security
and Medicare payments threaten to bankrupt the government. To young
people, those older generations paid their dues in the Depression,
World War II, and Korea.
Instead, twentysomethings train their resentments on boomers, whom the
younger people see as having coasted through life -- from their Leave
It to Beaver childhoods in the 1950s to their current positions in
management -- without ever having built anything. Beyond that,
twentysomethings identify boomers with the unraveling of American
society that seemed to accompany the antiwar movement and the divorce
wave that began sweeping across the country in the late 1960s.
For a taste of these sentiments, sit down on the banks of the Potomac
River in Washington, D.C., for a drink with Dana Neilsen, 25, an
account executive with AAA World magazine. ''We're the generation of
divorced families and latchkey homes, and that's a big dose of
realism,'' says Neilsen, the child of divorced parents and of a
working mother. ''The boomers had elementary schools built for them
and then secondary schools and then colleges, and then as they entered
the work force, companies made room for them. Now we come along and it
seems as if all the resources have been used. Now they've moved into
management levels, and they're not going anywhere. Where does that
leave us?''
Some Xers, forced into joblessness or underemployment, are downright
bitter about the lousy cards they think they've been dealt. Says a
disgruntled Xer, a 28-year-old temp for a FORTUNE 500 company in San
Francisco who has a master's degree: ''The boomer manager I work for
comes in and says, 'Wow, look at my shiny, new, red convertible.' And
I'm like, 'Look at my battle-ax '76 Nova.' I mean, I'm a 'burb kid. My
parents weren't big spenders, but they gave me a comfortable
upbringing, and that's something I feel I could never give my
children, if I have any. ...
Far worse is young workers' perception that many boomers seem more
caught up in maneuvering for status in an organization than in
working. Towers Perrin consultant Margaret Regan and David Cannon, a
doctoral student at London Business School who has conducted extensive
research on Generation X in the workplace, report independently that
in focus group after focus group, twentysomethings' biggest complaint
about their boomer managers is the politicking in which they
engage. Says Cannon: ''Younger people want to make a contribution, and
not a vague one, and they don't want to waste a lot of time. They see
boomers, and not so much the senior people, as politicking and
maneuvering and doing a lot of unnecessary make-work.''
Xers FORTUNE interviewed aren't so naive as to think politics can be
banished from the workplace. What amazes them is the degree to which
scrapping for position and control can interfere with a company's
work. A 29-year-old programmer for a Southern California software
company described how a power struggle among the boomer managers
overseeing development of a product delayed a planned 12-month project
for a year. The key villain, he says, was a middle-age vice president
who insisted on making every decision -- even if the staff had to wait
weeks for her schedule to clear so she could weigh in. Says the
programmer: ''It's a bottom-line issue, but they ignore it and allow
politics to drive decisions that could eventually cost them their jobs
or their companies.'' That's what happened to the vice president, who
was laid off when the company recently retrenched.
Twentysomethings see another aspect of their bosses' politicking in
autocratic management that denies Xers a voice or the feeling that
they have any ownership of their work. ''For the young person, the
attitude is, 'Just tell me what you want to do and leave me alone,' ''
says consultant Regan. ''Obviously the boss above them wants more
direction and control.''
What really grates on Xers is when bosses publicly avow participatory
management but then cling to their old hierarchical ways. Says Megan
Wheeler, 31, who has started her own software company in San Diego:
''At the other places I worked they would tell you that you could have
input into all these choices about hardware and software, but when it
came down to the final decision, it didn't matter at all.''
This leaves a thick residue of cynicism among Xers that kicks in when
their bosses seem to find God in nostrums such as Total Quality
Management. The young employee of the Midwestern consulting firm
recalls, ''A couple of weeks ago we rolled out a group vision and
mission statement. Then the partner asked us what we thought. I mean,
what did she expect us to say? I was sitting there thinking, You know,
it's a miracle you're getting paid for this.'' ...
Xers bring a different set of values to the workplace, values that in
many ways are a reaction to the workaholism they associate with their
older boomer brethren. Says Margaret Regan: ''In my employee surveys,
the factors that predict job satisfaction among people in their 20s is
that it be a fun place to work.''
The peril of an un-fun workplace is that Xer employees will consider
their jobs no more than a paycheck and will clock out regularly at 5
o'clock, when the real fun begins for them. Says Scott Hess, a
27-year-old Chicago marketing writer: ''The god we're worshipping is
not the bottom line -- it's quality of life.''
The moral of this tale is that feeling threatened by Generation X and
tightening up is the worst possible reaction for a boomer manager to
have toward younger employees. Yes, we kids are impetuous, naive, and
just a tad arrogant -- and that's why we need smart but sensitive
boomer managers who can smooth our rough edges while channeling our
enthusiasm. Ally yourself with us while you can -- or don't be
surprised if, one day, you're asking one of us for work.
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