Are Gen Z employees more anxious about tech issues than any other generation?
When the Zoom lags, some participants might be panicking more than others: Gen Z.
They're most likely to feel plagued by technological issues at work, according to HP's global survey of 10,000 office workers around the world. That might be surprising considering the youngest generation is digitally native, often assigned the job of explaining newfangled gizmos or devices to their older peers at work. But that can put Gen Z under pressure.
While 1 in 5 young office workers report feeling judged for having tech issues, only 1 in 25 of their older coworkers feel the same way, according to HP. They're also 10 times more likely to feel shame when having these tech snafus than their peers over age 40.
This "tech shame," as Debbie Irish, head of HP's U.K. and Ireland human resources, posits to WorkLife, is due to a number of reasons. For one, she says, it might be related to not being able to afford better technological equipment or Wi-Fi the way senior coworkers can, since Gen Z is largely still on entry-level salaries. They may also feel less confident in their place at work in general.
[...] Gen Z workers spend about eight hours a week on average simply helping their older colleagues locate their computer files, according to a survey of 1,000 workers by software company OSlash. That amounts to $11,000 annually in wasted employee time. And more than a quarter of Gen Zers reported that they weren't able to do their regular work because they were juggling tech support duties.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Opportunist on Tuesday January 03 2023, @12:24PM (4 children)
You don't work here because of your life experience or your work experience. You work here because you know how to deal with these newfangled thingamajigs.
Should I start lamenting how I feel the pressure of being required to know the intricate details of my job or how much it burdens me that every young coworker expects me to know how to operate those old time crap they don't want to deal with?
(Score: 3, Funny) by fliptop on Tuesday January 03 2023, @01:20PM (3 children)
Probably both. It could be worse [youtube.com], though.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday January 03 2023, @05:56PM (2 children)
Well, youngsters sure don't know how to use old time crap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=updE5LVe6tg [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Touché) by Opportunist on Tuesday January 03 2023, @10:36PM (1 child)
Oh, c'mon, she was given impossible tasks. I mean, refold a completely unfolded map, NOBODY has ever been able to do that!
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday January 04 2023, @01:35AM
You mean, they gaslighted her??
(Score: 4, Touché) by PiMuNu on Tuesday January 03 2023, @01:20PM (2 children)
> head of HP's U.K. and Ireland human resources,
> software company OSlash
... Gen Z workers spend about 497 hours per week helping older colleagues switch their computers on, according to a survey of 1,000 workers by software company TryingToGetSomeFreeAdvertising. That amounts to 18 trillion megabucks in wasted employee time. And more than 100 % of Gen Zers reported that they weren't able to do their regular work because they were juggling tech support duties.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2023, @02:32PM
If they got smarter they'd realize that puts them in a strong position. They should sigh and say, as if to themself, "It's really awkward being the choke point for everyone's work..." and wander off somewhere. Let it sink in while the clowns sit at their desks holding their dicks.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 05 2023, @05:27PM
Back in my day sonny, there were only 168 hours in a weak.
You were not allowed to have fun on the weak days. But you could have fun on the weakened.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2023, @01:45PM
To anyone having to work for HP, where there will always be a round of layoffs this year. It's cheaper than giving pay rises to the keen ones.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Tuesday January 03 2023, @01:55PM (15 children)
I am continually astounded by the technical incompetence of people who use computers for a living. An example from today: someone asked me why a path they entered wasn't working. It was supposed to be an absolute Windows path, but they had no drive letter and a mix of forward slashes and backslashes.
I have people who don't seem to know what directories are. They don't understand the difference between a zip file and the unzipped result. Etc, etc. I'm talking about people in their 20s who would claim to be technically literate.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Tuesday January 03 2023, @02:07PM (10 children)
I have people who don't seem to know what directories are. They don't understand the difference between a zip file and the unzipped result. Etc, etc. I'm talking about people in their 20s who would claim to be technically literate.
I have yet to meet a technologically literate person under 40, and even 40 to 60 are kind of rare, and those 60 plus weren't that common to begin with and have anyway all retired or died off.
Just being able to flick thumbs at a touchscreen and microblog in yet another walled garden does not mean anything about making the computer obey you. It just means being good at being farmed to "emit behaviors".
It's not just local to your environment, not knowing what directories are is a real thing [theverge.com]. That's just the surface of the problem. For all practical purposes there are almost no new skilled teachers in the pipeline so you are starting to get a case of the blind leading the blind. A few learn in spite of what's going on and most of those few are in for great difficulties as people around them won't have any clue as to what they are talking about or trying to do. As they say, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is in for on hell of a hard time.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by acid andy on Tuesday January 03 2023, @03:24PM (7 children)
Ha ha; I opened that link, immediately saw the "File not found" title in huge text (with whitespace all around) and immediately assumed it was a 404, first thinking they'd deleted the article, then wondering which cross-domain request I needed to unblock to read it! :)
They ought to figure most of these things out through experimentation. After reading the article, you linked, I just about get why many young people are not used to the directory concept. But there are older people that are just as useless. I don't know whether it's predominantly fear or intellectual laziness that they don't figure these things out or look them up. Probably a bit of both.
From your link:
Yeah, THIS. Windows has been doing it for years. I'd argue the whole My Computer, My Documents model was the start of it. Then Smartphones completely obscured the concept to the extent they didn't even come with a file manager installed. They even close programs autonomously. It was a massive dumbing down and a seizure of control from the user. If you want to start customizing things or do anything vaguely interesting with your device, you need to start looking in directory structures. I was a little shocked reading there are people in science and engineering that haven't wanted to experiment enough with their tech to at least know about this.
About two days ago, when I wanted to tweak the game's config and get it running better on Linux!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Common Joe on Tuesday January 03 2023, @04:24PM (6 children)
I came here to say this. The article in the grandparent says us old fogies are going to need to change to a different structure. Like what, though? Here's what the article said:
Laundry basket? How is that superior to folders? Now, there are ways to tag files, and those tags mixed with a kind of folder structure are (last I read) being experimented with and have promise. But that also requires an organized mind. And time to sort. I seriously doubt the kids growing up with only phones will be able to do that. Google bubbles are not a good way to find files.
I don't see how it could be done, so, I ask Soylent News: What tools could they develop and use? Is the article blowing smoke or did I miss something?
(Score: 3, Funny) by acid andy on Tuesday January 03 2023, @04:47PM (2 children)
Yeah I was almost shuddering thinking about the implications for future OS development. No more "/bin, /dev, /etc, /home", just millions of files all in the root directory! Imagine the lag. I guess you'd need a relational database file system for it to have an acceptable level of performance.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Tuesday January 03 2023, @06:44PM
I suppose that's possible, but only if you include sharding, NoSql, Agile or Scrum, cherry picking in Git, and (of course) Big Data.
(Score: 3, Funny) by turgid on Tuesday January 03 2023, @09:09PM
Yes but just think of the innovation in icon design, window animations and sound effects.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2023, @04:48PM (2 children)
> Laundry basket? How is that superior to folders?
It's not. I grew up with CP/M directories and the only problem I have these days is working around the default attempts of MS to hide paths in Windows.
But there might be one exception--given super-fast searching. Case in point is Gmail, I was an early user (when they were mostly not evil). If I can remember a name or a few topical words, the Gmail search is remarkable. I regularly find ~10 year old emails that I can reference when telling my customers, "Hey, didn't you get the message the first time?" (but of course I use more polite language!)
Before that I saved emails in big files (usually by customer) and searched with grep (in an emacs clone) and that wasn't bad, but for me Gmail search is better all around.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Common Joe on Tuesday January 03 2023, @06:48PM (1 child)
The fast searching might work for documents with text, but not pictures or videos. The topical words you describe is kindrid to the tagging I was talking about. Thus, we're back to storing everything in folders -- and applying some secondary method of fast searching text in those folders. Windows and Linux already has that available today.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday January 03 2023, @07:57PM
Searching works fine if (a) you can search the contents of documents and/or (b) you have the good practice of having meaningful filenames - that is, not Copy of Copy of Copy of Document3❬hidden❭.docx❬/hidden❭
Frankly the Linux command line utility locate has been very useful together with grep of the occasional voluminous output. Finding mail by keywords has also be very useful; so I won't say that you should use one method to the exclusion of all else - both are useful in the right context. That said, I have an extensive folder hierarchy too.
My phone doesn't present an UI me to search within the text of SMS messages, which is irritating.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TaxiCabJesus on Tuesday January 03 2023, @08:59PM (1 child)
People who took to computers in the 80's and 90's have a huge advantage over kids who grow up with smartphones that work without having to understand what's going on behind the GUI.
I recently helped a 50-something year old woman with her printer. She'd asked her teenagers for help, but they didn't have a clue. My investigation found the printer responded to pings but didn't print. "I've seen this problem before." I shut the printer down, pulled the power cord, let it sit for a minute, plugged it in again and turned it on. *poof*, printer works fine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2023, @09:49AM
Ah, the old turn it off and on again trick. Nobody knows how to do that any more...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Revek on Tuesday January 03 2023, @05:10PM (2 children)
I've been astounded by that since 1990. I had to go show a CS professor how to turn his PC on in the early 90's. Guy was used to using terminals connected to big iron and had no idea that the monitor button wouldn't turn on the PC as well. We later put emulation cards in his departments computers and he refused to let us remove his terminal. Thankfully the new guy got to go hold his hand and he left the college a few years later. I've had to show some Gen Z (kids) how to perform basic tasks this year so its slews both ways. Also gen z has some terrible practices when it comes to keeping up with their documents. They don't use folder just throw it all together and rely on search.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2023, @07:07PM
> ..refused to let us remove his terminal.
A close friend doing engineering work at about the same time also held onto his mainframe terminal as long as possible (and then a little longer). His company IT (and just about everyone else in that big company) was pushing everyone to networked PCs. What they didn't understand was his huge investment in small & fast APL programs/scripts that performed analysis on giant data sets, on the mainframe. Data sets that couldn't even be loaded on PCs of that era.
He retired about five years ago and was still having occasional problems with some of the larger operations and data manipulations on PCs. The same analysis had been a few lines of APL on the mainframe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_syntax_and_symbols [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by quixote on Wednesday January 04 2023, @09:23PM
Not a computer / software expert, just a scientist-enduser who's been around the stuff since the 1980s. Dirs have _always_ been essential for structure. And then I met my first person in the Aughts who just threw everything in a heap, assuming tags and search would save them. Who could think that?! I thought I'd fallen into some alternate nightmare universe.
My scientific work involved huge databases of characteristics, so I started trying to tell him all about tags. You're totally dependent on consistent usage. (Good luck with that after a decade or two.) You're totally dependent on tags that actually encompass what you're trying to find. You're totally dependent on good enough and increasingly fast search engines. (Good luck with that too.) That last has morphed into you're totally dependent on Big Data Ad Company.
None of that is enduser-friendly or sustainable.
The irony is we already have experts in data retrieval from huge databases. They're called librarians.
Yes, it's a lot of work. Yes, it requires some human input. So, yes, it would cost Big Data actual money. But eventually we'll have no alternative but to learn from them.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 03 2023, @05:55PM
1989, different world but..., I was TA for a senior level lab class in the Computer Engineering required curriculum. In other words: these students were going to be graduating with a degree in Computer Engineering either immediately after or one semester after this class. I had more than one student in that class tell me: "this class isn't about computer folders, I shouldn't have to know how a directory tree works in order to do my digital circuit design lab."
Of course, this is the same TA position where I was pulled aside and told: "It doesn't matter if they can't demonstrate any knowledge of the concepts being taught. These are paying customers, if they show up to class they get at least a C."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday January 03 2023, @02:01PM (1 child)
That old chestnut. Most of them are idiots that know how to push the buttons and use the apps. As noted by previous posters that is why they have their job. But they mostly have no idea or clue how the devices actually works. Perhaps that is why they feel shame. They are frauds in some regard.
Still there appears to be a lot of shame going around these days in the modern western world among the youth. Tech shame, climate shame, something-something-shame or whatever trends today. It's almost as if they are religious. But without God of cause cause that would just be wrong and boomer like.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2023, @02:36PM
The problem is they don't learn the dope info any more. They learn a wrapper language embedded in a GUI using drag'n'drop widgets. BAHHH!H!!!!! OFFF MY LAWNQN!!!!!!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Tuesday January 03 2023, @02:12PM
Tech Shame? It's either because they're too young to know it happens to everyone (Zoom not working sometimes, or a password expiring at a not so great time), or they are afraid someone is going to find out they don't know what they are doing.
Shame is a personal feeling inside oneself. All I can suggest is to get over it and quit thinking about things that aren't happening. The world has yet to end because someone was late to a Zoom call.
Train your brains kiddos.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2023, @02:41PM (1 child)
This sounds like a bunch of nonsense.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by turgid on Tuesday January 03 2023, @05:46PM
Oh, I don't know. Windows is becoming more and more opaque as time goes on. It's as if it's trying to actively discourage you from understanding about files and directories. On Windows 10, you get presented with icons for pictures, music, videos, downloads and so on. Where are they on the machine? Are they on a local disk? Which partition (drive letter)? What's a backup? Why would I need one? You mean you can have more than one copy of the same file?! Who knew! Joking aside, my work machine has "OneDrive" and I sometimes find that files I have saved are on that, despite the fact I thought I was saving them to the local machine. Microsoft's applications have really confusing UIs these days, particularly when you try to "Save As." There's a lot of clicking required to get to the place you actually want to save your data.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 5, Interesting) by acid andy on Tuesday January 03 2023, @02:55PM (3 children)
OK, this is the third article I've seen in a couple of days comparing generational cohorts in critical ways. In other comments a few people were complaining about the frequency of these articles too and the divisiveness. Looks like our overlords' propaganda machine is going into overdrive for the new year.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 03 2023, @06:00PM (2 children)
I think there's a genuine schism between the digital natives and the older generations.
The older generations understood how things worked, and didn't, because it was simpler "back then."
Furthermore, the older generations are used to digital stuff not working and being basically helpless to fix it because that's how it has been since they took the punch cards out of our hands. Oh, and the older gen _does_ know how to unplug and replug, reboot, etc. and are generally not afraid to do so.
Digital natives are 100% dependent on the mysterious beast to "deliver value" to their employers. When it's down, there's nothing they can do about it, and nothing they can do without it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday January 03 2023, @09:04PM (1 child)
I'm somewhere in the middle, and my experience varies. Some years ago I used to work (in a very junior position) for a large Unix-y company and I sat next to a guy who was nearing retirement. He had a good reputation with management for "getting a lot of work done." However, how he achieved that was by a bit of selfishness, some arrogance arrogance, willful ignorance and brute force. He insisted on using Windows because "it has a better GUI" for starters. He'd ignore emails about the server going down and then whine like a baby to the boss. He'd commit loads of stuff to the repo just as someone else was preparing to deliver their stuff (having been warned) making them have to rebase, rebuild etc. wasting several hours, but what really took the biscuit was one day when he asked me to copy a file for him across the network from one machine to another. The files were on an NFS server, which all machines could see. The command cp was sufficient. I think he couldn't get to it from his Windows GUI. We were developing on and for unix.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 03 2023, @09:19PM
Yeah, I don't know that there's a solution to that problem of educating management to distinguish between a lot of work and a lot of productivity.
I'm pretty lucky, I'm mid 50s, my manager is early 40s, he worked as a programmer long enough to know the distinction between work and productivity, and he seems committed to insulating his team from upper layers of management that don't understand that.
Before he was promoted, there was a guy who today would be in his mid 60s "in charge." When I interviewed for an intra-company transfer I met with my then (now gone) manager and the team well dressed as everyone in the Denver office dressed: nice blue jeans, newer shoes, business casual. Mr. "In Charge" had to sign off on my transfer and my manager to be sent me home to change into dress slacks (actually reschedule to meet him in a couple of days) because Mr. In Charge absolutely categorically would never hire anybody in my level who came to an interview in blue jeans. This is the same Mr. In Charge who requested lines of code metrics on our projects, and when discussing licensing costs for a type 1 hypervisor for our new product (so we can cut down from 2 cooperating CPUs to a single CPU that shares the load) he resisted because: "don't we already pay license fees for Microsoft Word?" "Um, yes, sir, but you see: this license fee will allow us to have a single CPU chip instead of two..." actually, of course, our product pays license fees for Microsoft Windows, not Word.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pTamok on Tuesday January 03 2023, @06:13PM (4 children)
The younger generation use their smartphones and other IT paraphenalia in much the same way as most people use cars: as a tool to do other stuff. Just as most people are not car mechanics, most people don't feel the need to understands the basics of the technology they are using to 'get stuff done' as they see it. Which ends up with framework and paradigm piled up on schema and UI until navigating all the layers becomes seriously difficult without a very solid and in-depth mental map, which the vast majority of people lack, leaving them using the technology in the same way as magicians in books use spells - follow this recipe and something happens with no apparant causality, and if you don't follow it, something bad will happen.
Dumbed down interfaces are easier to use, but encourage dumbed-down thinking. A pre-packaged microwave meal gives broadly the same result as a pile of raw ingredients and a recipe book. The pre-packaged meal is convenient; but the ingrediants and recipe + understanding allow you to vary the dish and get it the way you want it. Current IT is simply pre-packaged microwave meal equivalents, and customisation involve cooking six different meals, throwing awya the majority of each, and mixing the rest on a plate. Someone who only knows how to do that will be in awe of a chef. No wonder they feel stressed and inferior.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2023, @07:11PM
Hey, you are quite the magician! How did you know I was about to request a car analogy...(grin).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MIRV888 on Tuesday January 03 2023, @08:20PM (2 children)
But the pre-packed meal takes 5 minutes to microwave. Time is a commodity too. I'm not suggesting the freshly prepared meal doesn't taste better and isn't much healthier. however the 5 minute meal with no effort trumps the preparation & cooking 30 minute meal that's way better. Especially if cooking isn't your thing.
IT is the same way. If it's your day job, all the users will look like idiots. That's why you're the computer mechanic.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2023, @09:53AM
Not really. It cuts you out of loop in doing things for yourself. People are far happier doing things for themselves, being involved in their own life, than being served - and then having to serve others to pay for it. That way lies madness.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday January 30 2023, @10:15AM
I think you missed this bit:
If what you want is a quick meal, and you heat a single microwave dinner - that's great!
If you want beef with mashed potatoes, broccoli and sweetcorn and you heat four meals - Beef with roast potatoes and cabbage; Sausages with mashed potatoes and onions; Pork with broccoli and rice; and Chicken with sweetcorn and noodles, you are bringing in a whole load of external stuff you don't need, and you are paying for. You get what you are after, but with huge overhead and waste. That's current IT.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Sjolfr on Tuesday January 03 2023, @10:19PM
I've always been a staunch advocate of automating things where they can be automated. I also think my generation, and those before me, would rather that the idiots simply don't touch our hardware to begin with. So here's your tablet, here's your dashboard, please leave me alone.
The problem sunk in when we let management redefine jobs so that these same idiots became co-workers. My reaction was to take the important technology back down in to the work dungeon to keep it safe.
Even linux isn't safe any more. Systemd, snap, the list goes on. The irritation I experienced back when the kernel modules couldn't be tweaked to stop the system from using memory as disc cache is immeasurable. It ended with the fact that kernels don't need building on most systems ... just tweaking. No one knows what a directory is because the systems took that knowledge requirement away from them. Every small company has a web "developer" who thinks they are competent systems manager as well. Most are not.
Yet, to my own dismay, these idiots seem to be the people driving technology today. There are bastions of hope, however, and I try to stick to them. I guess it's a lesson in the trappings of a policy of isolation.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sonamchauhan on Tuesday January 03 2023, @10:33PM (3 children)
No, it's because Gen Z has been marketed to from the cradle. Tech companies have successfully got them hooked on tech and digital content -- phones, laptops, social profiles, streaming.
What does "affording better Wi-Fi" even mean?
Ah, I see who's paying for the survery:
.
(Score: 3, Funny) by kazzie on Wednesday January 04 2023, @01:06PM (2 children)
It means the authors are of the generation that can't distinguish between the quality of a local network and that of their internet connection.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday January 04 2023, @07:13PM (1 child)
"The Internet is down!!!"
"It's working again!"
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday January 04 2023, @07:15PM
I keep on forgetting that Soylent doesn't display invalid html tags. Bah! Humbug!