Team Chevelle banner

War on Generation X???

6K views 97 replies 50 participants last post by  77 cruiser 
#1 ·
Got a few things to say about the way society has become. We all know that the Baby Boomers are a large area of the population. 1946 to 1964. This generation shaped the job market and the economic market during their years in service to the work force. However, since they have been retiring over the past 5 to 7 years, things are changing. What is being lost in the shuffle is their children. Im one of them. Im a Generation Xer born in 1974. Im not hear to gripe or moan, its just the way things have happened. I noticed that the "rules of the game" began to change as the baby boomers retired. Of course here we are in mid life, having to make amends to that. Having to relearn systems, relearn the way things work, relearn the economy, relearn how to get a job, relearn how to hang onto a job....just a lot of different things. Drastic changes made during this change over. What Im seeing is that the Generation Xers - 1965 to 1979 are being left over and stepped over by the Xennials and Millennials for a variety of reasons. Seems to me that Generation X got left out in the cycle and are paying for it.

Anyone in there 50's and or 40's experience some of this? Curious.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Thunderbolt13
#2 ·
Yes and no. It’s their upbringing / parents / social media so you can’t judge all. Some react because they don’t know how to, some need to hit rock bottom, some just get it, some don’t get it, a lot are late bloomers. I have quite a few young guys employed, I’m 53 and around a lot of guys every day and I see a wide age spread in the trades. Draw upon what your elders taught you and use that to teach or preach to them and hope it spreads like wildfire. They’ll come around sooner or later, some maybe never but let’s hope so.
 
#3 ·
I know where your coming from, but I think you missed my point. My point is the Generation X is being screwed over today by employers and the society we live in....they are getting things shoved in there face....everything today is NEW....no more hanging onto the past.....and etc.

See my point?

Screwing the Generation Xers to go younger instead of honoring commitment for Generation X for playing by the rules.
 
#5 ·
Dan , you are so right on with that!

We allow so many foreign people into this country to got to school, be tax free, to get profit....makes me sick!!!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Saltherring
#6 ·
It's not a generation thing, it's an age thing. I was looking for a job when I was 49, and it was a lot harder than when I was in my 30's, and I'm a baby boomer. I also in the job sector already when computers came along and changed everything. I learned what I needed to stay productive. Probably 90 percent of my current job is using skills I've learned since I was 40. I still can't type, though...
 
#7 ·
The changes you are describing started happening well before the baby boomers started retiring. This started at least 20 years ago and is accelerating. Most people weren’t paying attention until it started to effect them. At the beginning it was industry by industry, now it’s nearly everywhere. The “blame” falls on everyone, it’s not the “system” out to get anyone, it’s changing times, largely based on advances in technology.

Steve R
 
#8 ·
I went through a bunch of changes in my jobs over the years. New bosses, computers, electronics in everything. I was fortunate that I worked for only 5 companies over 40 years starting when I was 17. One of the companies for 8 years and then 24 years over two separate tours. I had on the job training that kept me current and probably also made me more proficient with computers outside of work.
I’m 62 and retired 5 years ago only because the new business owner was a complete prick. (I lasted two months with him) Otherwise I guess I would still be working.
Now I spend my time trying to figure out how to put Canbus controlled engines into analog cars, so still,learning.
 
#13 ·
Every working man, woman and child growing up needs to realize that all of us will have to reinvent ourselves at least once as we go through adulthood.

There is no allegiance to any generation anymore for paying your dues and sticking with a profession you know. Things happen and technology changes too quickly to do it like the 1950s to the year to 2000.

Learning is constant from now on. Stay sharp folks and hold on tightly. The ride may be a little bumpy.

Sorry for being preachy here . . .

Rick

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
 
#14 ·
Let’s be honest. There are some trades that work the same way they did 20 plus years ago but for the most part are not open to or sustainable paths for people who expect to grow in their careers. For the rest of us, technology is making everyone obsolete. The younger generation got a head start adapting to technological changes where us older folks expected the rate of change to be much slower than it is. Compound the change in technology with increases in bureaucracy and extremely rapid changes in social mores. If you aren’t willing to be highly adaptive and proactive in your personal and career choices you will be left behind.
 
#17 ·
There is a war on the remaining baby boomers as well as the gen x'ers. As technology advances, we are having a harder time keeping up, thus we are being phased out. Along with True craftsmanship. The idea of taking pride in your craft, working hard, some longer work hours seems to be dying with us. I have employees, some gen x'ers and some millennials who are more than satisfied with "close enough". They are more than happy to put in a solid 30 hr work week. When they "have to" put in a 40-45 HR work week, they suddenly have an ailment and miss a week of work. They want things handed to them. I don't know about you, but it's extremely frustrating. I have busted my butt most of my life and thought I could retire. I don't believe it will be possible if I keep having to work harder than ever, to pay way more than my fair share of taxes so people can keep getting "free" *****, like health care. But don't get me started on just how bad Obama Care screwed me. That's for another day.
Just my .02.
Mike
 
#90 ·
Amazon has a hard time finding people to work in their distribution centers here in the DFW area. Many of the jobs are second and third shift. The pay starts at $16 an hour. You won't be driving a brand new BMW every couple of years or living in a $500,000 home, but a person can live on that. You'll do okay. They have full benefits including tuition assistance.

Now when you report for work, you work. You're not allowed to bring your phone into the building. If there's an emergency and your family needs to reach you, they have a number to call and your managers will come find you, like it used to be. But you're not allowed to spend your shift surfing the web, playing games, or checking messages on your smart phone all night. You have to work.

Because of the work policies and because they expect an hour of work for an hour's pay, millennials around here sniff at working for Amazon. They say it's slave labor. The young people in that age group have basically boycotted working for Amazon. The positions are filled by older workers. But they always need more help.

When I was 25, Texas was mired in a severe recession caused by the collapse of crude oil prices which shut down the domestic oil production industry, which included the manufacture of oil field tooling and equipment which was the sector I worked in. I would have jumped at the chance to work at a job like Amazon had there been such a thing back then. Instead, I got bogged down for years in a job that barely paid minimum wage and in 1983, 84, and 85, that was not a whole lot.
 
#18 ·
Forty has been the age where you get a target on your back for some time now. At that point you are likely to be well versed in your job and paid accordingly. The temptation to replace you with a younger cheaper hire is huge. Keeping up with tech stuff in the job is not usually that hard; it changes slowly and you can change with it usually. Local community colleges offer courses to keep you up to date if you want.
Another potential problem is that young guys on the fast track to management will not like having an over-forty guy with lots of experience working under them. They can perceive a threat from a more experienced employee.
I have had friends who told me of unwritten rules in their companies that say to never hire anyone over 40.
There is even a non-profit company to help place job seekers over 40 .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40Plus
 
#19 ·
Aaron,

I am an old Gen X'r (1966) and I get exactly what you are saying. Yes, we are a squeezed group. The baby boomers won't retire to get out of our way and the millennials are demanding everything from their employers, many have a poor work ethic and complain they are broke because their basket weaving degrees aren't getting them anywhere.

We were the first generation with technology coming into the houses. Yes, 286, 386 and 486 plus MACS and TRS-80s were in our youth. We can rebuild carburetors and repair fuel injection systems. We can survive without or phones. Our generation has a lot of plusses. Yes, we are getting older but I am in technology and can run circles around many millennials. You see, they don't have any idea where technology came from or where it is going. We also had to use landline phones and generally we have better communication skills.

We X'rs have to stick together!!
 
#22 ·
I'm technically a Baby Boomer, but I am much more like you describe. I was born last week of 1963, so one of the last boomers, but grew up with no tech and I work in IT at the top of the game now. But I am one of the oldest in our department.
 
#23 ·
My suggestion is to get your financial house in order ASAP. Thing are moving fast, and your employer is having meetings behind closed doors on how to eliminate your job.

Everything is changing.
 
#37 ·
You should ALWAYS have your financial house in order. Always.
But that said, stuff happens, college for kids is expensive, not everyone makes the same income or lives in areas where the cost of living is the same.

And there are a lot of jobs that cannot be replaced with machines. Here’s the biggest myth....

Uber and Lyft-

They both want to replace the independent driver with autonomous cars, right? Has anyone drilled down on this concept?
An independent driver costs Uber and Lyft NOTHING unless they earn it. And then the companies take the Lyons share. They have no auto or employee related expenses. With this seemingly simple concept they lose BILLIONS every quarter.

Flash forward 20 years and they have zero drivers, right? But now they must own literally millions of autonomous cars. They are in 150 something countries each with thousands of cities and suburbs which some, like San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles could each need hundreds of cars.
And where do they park them?
And who services them? Fuel of charging, cleaning, check tire pressure, etc.
Who manages the registration and smog and insurance for all the different cars in different jurisdictions with different requirements?
And these costs don’t care if there is a paying passenger in the car.

And the biggest thing is something they don’t even want to think about...

Currently they both claim to be “ Technology Companies”, NOT transportation companies. Well if they own the cars, what are they?

Taxi companies.

And taxis need medallions.

Note that some investors are buying up medallions at auctions, hundreds at a time for 10’s of thousands each. At one time a New York taxi medallion was worth $1 million. Can Uber or Lyft afford medallions for the millions of cars they own? Not a prayer.

I think they will find that the cost of drivers, at even twice what they earn now, will pale in comparison to what the true bottom line will be with autonomous cars.
 
#25 ·
My new prick boss that I mentioned earlier was younger than me but not by much so it wasn’t an age thing. He was just a prick.
But he’s gone now. Shown the pasture by senior management.
And now the company hires anyone they can get their hands on. Gains them, underpays them and they all end up quitting and head over to two major competitors that are glad to get people with some training.
Before I left, the new boss came via a merger. I was the least tenured salesperson at our half of the merger with 24 years experience. The other company we merged with’s most senior sales person was having his one year anniversary the following week. He had been a manager at McDonalds. And we were selling sophisticated systems for millions of dollars per transaction.
There is no replacement for experience and on the job knowledge.
 
#27 ·
Jonathan, I mostly agree with your take. I'm 68, semi-retired and still working part-time because I want to. To be fair, there aren't any "younger" folks looking for my job (farm related) but in fairness to me, I have a lifetime of experience and my boss knows it and we all know there is only one way to get experience. The entire world is changing faster than any of us can fathom and with those changes comes new requirements for the labor force. The biggest need is and will be current and up-to-date tech knowledge. Yes physical work will be around forever but mental work seems to be leading the charge. I see that with my kids and older grandkids. The only constant is change!
 
#29 ·
I was a Toolmaker, graduated trade school in 68 retired at age 62. I worked in a lot of different companies over the years. Never got laid off, fired once and quit all the other jobs but I never had a hard time finding a new job. Our era of Toolmakers is a dying breed we were more of the type of a hands on person then push a button and watch the machine make the part. Right towards the end I worked with one younger person that just came out of trade school. He was constantly on the phone talking or texting and scraping just about every other part he was making. Do I think times are tougher now yes I do but part of that is because so many want everything handed to them now. Today the country is changing and not all is for the better. Sure there's a lot of technological advances today, computers can link you to anyone in the world and they are a treasure trove of information but a lot of these improvements have also caused problems with this society and have replaced jobs that were once there. I feel bad for anybody that is younger than me because of this. I was one of the lucky ones that lived during some of the better times and will be able to go out and not say I didn't enjoy myself while I was here. :D:thumbsup:
 
#30 ·
Hank: I think you are right about today's jobs are not as plentiful as they were back in my youth (graduated high school in 1965). I have this conversation with my friends about how difficult it is for their kids and grandkids to find good jobs. It was easy back in my youth. Not today, though.
Job interviews are done to detect more about your weaknesses than your strengths for example. They want 5 years experience with software that is 3 years old and so on.
 
#55 ·
Same year I graduated, 1st job was a Chicken processing plant for a few weeks to acquire a little cash for travel. 2nd job was for Kraft foods as a temp but I had something else in mind. They asked me to stay but I went on to building Chevys at GM (dream job). Jobs were extremely easy to come by back then and some paid enough with enough benefits. (retirement plan, guaranteed work benefits, medical Insurance etc but those days are long gone. I stand by my claim that the Vietnam war was a drastic turning point in the USA which changed the country forever. There have been people who have done exceptionally well but the opportunities appear to favor foreign workers over (untrained) Americans.
 
#32 ·
The jobs are out there.

Finding responsible reliable people with a good work ethic to employ is the issue.
 
#92 ·
And drug free. Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth was looking to hire 50 engineers for a project related to the V-22 some years back. They did the usual stuff back then, posted ads for an engineering job fair on Careerbuilder and Monster.com. They put ads on LinkedIn. They even went old school and put ads in several newspapers. The day of the job fair came, they held the job fair at the headquarters in Hurst, and selected 50 people they wanted to hire. They sent them for their pre-employment drug screen and 45 out of the 50 failed. They had to sort the process all over again to fill the 45 positions.

I've worked in aircraft maintenance for almost thirty years now. They pound it in your head from day one that drug use in this business is not tolerated. We still have to terminate a good number of people every year when they get popped on a random test.

One of my workers related this story - He said his neighbors 19 year old son came up to him one day and asked him the job and what it's like working for an airline. The young man was considering going to school and applying for work in aircraft maintenance until my co-worker mentioned the zero tolerance policy towards drug use. At that, the 19 year old got extremely upset and said, "Well f#&k that then! That's a bunch of f#&king bulls#t!!. I'm not giving up smoking my pot for any f#&king job!!"

All I can say to someone like that is, "Have it your way, but don't ask me to pay for your free sh#t."
 
#33 ·
There was a study on the younger generations and I found it interesting. They're so used to getting everything now, ie information, newest updates to software, etc that they aren't patient. They see a lifetime's work from 2 decades ago and want it now. Building a life doesn't make sense to them. They need their expectations reset.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 540 Olds
#38 ·
I was a dealership service manager/service advisor for 37 years, left to try another career for 4 years, and at age 59, am back on the service drive. In my first full month, I out performed the nearest person by 10%. We have a couple of 24 year old guys that have the potential to be excellent advisors, but have severe tardiness issues, as well and the most startling lack on maturity that I have ever seen. The prior top performer was a bit put out that I outdid him last month, and couldn't understand why, just didn't think it was "fair", since he'd been there longer. I've discussed the tardiness issue as much as I can, being a peer and not a boss, and they truly don't see why it matters, even when I pointed out that just maybe my being there an extra hour a day might have had something to do with my performance.
 
#46 ·
Did you tell them that it takes absolutely zero skill to show up to work on time? That’s one of the first things I was taught about work from my father (boomer) and both grandfathers (greatest generation). In my line of work, showing up on time is half of the battle.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top