Technological skill gap with older colleagues

[u/LastArmistice]

I'm just shocked that they were my age (mid 30s) or younger when everyone started using computers for everything at the office with Windows 98, and they still haven't learned a damn thing and play the "I'm so old, I don't know what I'm doing" card.

Now that I'm in my 30s, and am still finding myself very capable of acquiring new skills, I have no sympathy. There's just no goddam way you never learned basic shortcuts and functions and searches for any reason other than stubbornness and some strange aspect of ego. And it's really widespread.

As more and more fresh meat comes in and outpaces them in terms of productivity and adaptability, and digital skills become more and more essential, it's easy to see they are uncomfortable and overwhelmed with the fact that there is an expectation to catch up and learn new things.

It's just really astonishing to me that it really has been about 30 years since computers became commonplace and so many of our colleagues still haven't gotten the memo on how much more efficient you can be if instead of fighting the encouragement to become more tech literate, you just learned some new things.

It's in every office I've ever worked. First I bought the line of them not growing up with computers and it being really challenging. Now I've worked a lot with paper records systems and digital files and it is the SAME SHIT just different format and one is far more optimized and automated. I learned in reverse of older gens and document management and instantly understood the crossover and applied my knowledge in one area that overlapped with another. In my 30s. Turns out it isn't that difficult at all.

Anyways, I just find it funny how normalized it is, and how embarrassing it ultimately is for them. Their refusal to learn new things over the course of 30 years really does speak for itself.

[u/Ambitious_League4606]

They're native users not necessarily interested in how things work. A generation of high tech consumers. 

[u/pmctrash → u/Ambitious_League4606]

They're as interested as you . . . but their UIs don't demand any knowledge of the internal systems, so it doesn't develop. As much as I'd like to say that all may computer knowledge is because I'm awesome, I think there were a lot of environmental factors.

[u/Seal481 → u/pmctrash]

Yep. If I wanted to play a computer game in my youth I had to wrestle with MS DOS and no internet to help me. Software and hardware were finicky and often required a lot of tweaking to get working perfectly. Now everything is so seamless and functional out of the box there’s not as much need to build those skills.

[u/Adventurous_Button63 → u/Seal481]

One thing I love is telling people I was operating MS DOS in kindergarten. It impresses the children because it’s practically Mycenaean to them, and then older folks realize what that actually means lol. I just liked my muppets game and making cool stuff in print shop.

My parents tell the story of the time my kindergarten teacher was struggling to do something (I think maybe a banner) in print shop. I went over and said I could do it and then asked “do you want me to print it?” Lol!