I think their metaphor is referring to ease of use and the knowledge required for use. I have a few personal anecdotes as examples.
I’m an eighties kid. My first PC was a Commodore 64 and my first car was a 1966 VW Bug. Neither was reliable nor easy to use. I had to learn to utilize interfaces that were more finicky and complex than modern equivalents, and I spent a great deal of time learning how to make them work when they glitched out or were broken. The alternative was not having them at all. It was hard to get BBS advice when your PC took a dump and no one else you knew had one you could use, and then where would you get car advice? Certainly not from my dad!
A kid growing up with an Apple anything and driving a 20 year old car doesn’t face the same kinds of difficulties. Many things just work more reliably and aren’t as difficult to use. One can easily buy gaming systems now where we often had to build our own to get what we wanted. My buddy’s 23 year old daughter had never even heard of CLI. That’s all I had!
It doesn’t make one generation better than the other - younger people today are skilled in ways I could have only dreamed of. We just have different opportunities for excellence.
Hell yeah. My experience may be skewed due to my field, but I’ve noticed my Gen Z peers are SO much better at critical thinking. If someone asks most of my millennial coworkers to do something, they generally just do it. Ask one of my Gen Z coworkers and they’ll usually ask you why, often followed by probing questions to better understand what they’re doing. They’re full of healthy skepticism.
As a cohort, they’re also better at enforcing work/life balance. I’ve been fighting for employee rights for years but for so long felt like I was alone. Now I’m at home with the newer coworkers who (politely) tell their bosses to fuck off when asked to do extra unpaid work (we’re all salaried) or to work outside of their job description.
While many aren’t technically advanced - many couldn’t build or troubleshoot a broken PC - they are as a group fairly technically capable, having uniformly been raised using technology. Teaching my computer illiterate boss to use Excel is so frustrating that it feels like repeatedly punching myself in the side of the head. Teaching my equally Excel-unskilled, twenty-something coworker the same is a breeze. He has no fucking idea what he’s doing, but he picks it right up. He knows how to use a PC, just not how to use Excel in particular. My boss knows neither.
I absolutely love working with them, Gen Z is the best.
I think their metaphor is referring to ease of use and the knowledge required for use. I have a few personal anecdotes as examples.
I’m an eighties kid. My first PC was a Commodore 64 and my first car was a 1966 VW Bug. Neither was reliable nor easy to use. I had to learn to utilize interfaces that were more finicky and complex than modern equivalents, and I spent a great deal of time learning how to make them work when they glitched out or were broken. The alternative was not having them at all. It was hard to get BBS advice when your PC took a dump and no one else you knew had one you could use, and then where would you get car advice? Certainly not from my dad!
A kid growing up with an Apple anything and driving a 20 year old car doesn’t face the same kinds of difficulties. Many things just work more reliably and aren’t as difficult to use. One can easily buy gaming systems now where we often had to build our own to get what we wanted. My buddy’s 23 year old daughter had never even heard of CLI. That’s all I had!
It doesn’t make one generation better than the other - younger people today are skilled in ways I could have only dreamed of. We just have different opportunities for excellence.
Any examples?
Hell yeah. My experience may be skewed due to my field, but I’ve noticed my Gen Z peers are SO much better at critical thinking. If someone asks most of my millennial coworkers to do something, they generally just do it. Ask one of my Gen Z coworkers and they’ll usually ask you why, often followed by probing questions to better understand what they’re doing. They’re full of healthy skepticism.
As a cohort, they’re also better at enforcing work/life balance. I’ve been fighting for employee rights for years but for so long felt like I was alone. Now I’m at home with the newer coworkers who (politely) tell their bosses to fuck off when asked to do extra unpaid work (we’re all salaried) or to work outside of their job description.
While many aren’t technically advanced - many couldn’t build or troubleshoot a broken PC - they are as a group fairly technically capable, having uniformly been raised using technology. Teaching my computer illiterate boss to use Excel is so frustrating that it feels like repeatedly punching myself in the side of the head. Teaching my equally Excel-unskilled, twenty-something coworker the same is a breeze. He has no fucking idea what he’s doing, but he picks it right up. He knows how to use a PC, just not how to use Excel in particular. My boss knows neither.
I absolutely love working with them, Gen Z is the best.