[mjayhn]

Well there's a decent chance you're going to be working for millennial and gen-X'ers nowadays. We're the ones who were hiding all our online lives (still) from our parents. I'm glad my Myspace was deleted to my teenage angst.

Point being a lot of us I think are really respective of privacy and the fact that people (even teachers and nurses!) have lives that don't revolve around work.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Nice to see Gen X mentioned. In the several years, the media has mentioned only Boomers, Millennials, and Gen Z. It’s like Gen X is the lost generation.

[boulos]

The Lost Generation were the people who came of age during WW1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Generation

[Izkata]

Apparently before the name "Generation X" stuck, one of the proposed names was "New Lost Generation".

[ddingus]

Gen X here. Apt

[Jaruzel]

This is something that I've been aware of for a while now. Us (Gen-Xrs) have had a rough time of it; The boomers rode the financial booms and mostly did well, and the millennials are pandered to everywhere you look, whereas we had to suffer more than one financial crash, and the media and retail pretend like we don't exist, so nothing is aligned to our values or desires.

Even worse, there's a large chunk of millenials who don't even believe that Gen-X exists, and think that the generation above them are all boomers.

[mjayhn]

This is very far off from my millennial experience

1; I’m a 34yo millennial, 2; my siblings are ~40ish yo gen-xers, 3; my parents are 65yo boomers.

My genx siblings all bought massive houses around 2008 when I was starting my career which in 2008 meant being lucky to make $40k as a sysadmin. Obama subsidies all over the place if you had 5-10 years to put together a downpayment, though. I don’t think my paycheck became NOT hand-to-face until I was in my mid-late 20s and making well into 6 figures. And I’m not eating avocado toast or buying starbucks.

This is my 2nd recession since I started my career. In the first I was a “JR” and couldn’t get a job. Now I’m a SR and overqualified at most places. I barely know any millenial colleagues of mine that are home owners. And once again, I’m in my mid 30s.

And no, I don’t have children along with half of my mid-30s friends because we can’t afford them along with the 70k+ Of college debt and $600k starter houses.

The truly sad part though, millennials actually remember and know what life was like starting out around ~2008. We’re very open to mentoring and hiring gen-z. Social media wasn’t what it was back in 2008, of course, but I don’t remember any genxers going out of their way to get us millennials hired, go over our resumes, refer us, etc. I luckily landed my first engineering job from another millennial over IRC. This goes into the culture of the company, interviewing, everything. The people bitching about having to describe how to throw a rock or explain why manholes are round? They’re millennials who got those stupid questions when we were JRs because of a horrible job market that Boomers/Genx allowed to continue as the status quo. Not all, of course, but there’s a lot.

Instead of working to make things better for those coming up behind you, you’re acting like the victim. We can all come up with reasons that things suck. Let’s try to improve things.

[ddingus]

Mentoring is right up there at the top of things we can all do to improve the world for everyone.

Yeah, it does suck. Has for a long run now. You are not wrong.

I was mentored by boomers who passed the power and importance of it on to me. GenX'er here

That may be rare. I don't know.

What I do know is when we all help the new, up and coming people, it pays off nicely.

[TedDoesntTalk]

> The people bitching about having to describe how to throw a rock or explain why manholes are round? They’re millennials who got those stupid questions when we were JRs because of a horrible job market that Boomers/Genx allowed to continue as the status quo.

I’m a GenX and I got those stupid interview questions. I don’t think that is related to generation.

[mjayhn]

Oh of course you did, my point was more that you got those questions but also a lot of your peers continued asking those stupid questions. I remember when I was hired after getting a manhole question; the genx managers (i was probably 19) used it as an inside joke, "gotcha" just to see how candidates responded. I always thought it was gross.

So I don't ask those questions to people that I interview, because I remember how stupid they made me feel and how unrelated to the job they are.

It's the genx'ers that were asking me that, probably asked by boomers. I don't know why you'd continue to repeat those biased systems.

Genx isn't exactly well known for standing up for itself as opposed to continuing to normalize trash systems, that's the entire problem.

Be better than those before you, that's it. Make things better for those coming up or going out. There's no reason work should suck.

[TedDoesntTalk]

> you’re acting like the victim

Now you’re the victim... of bad interview questions that have nothing to do with generations. There are assholes of all ages. Just because YOU don’t ask interview questions about manhole covers does not make it a generational trend. I still get these questions and you can delude yourself that all the people asking them are GenX or Boomers if you want.