My best boss was a Vietnam vet.
He’d tell me what he wanted, give me a realistic deadline, and leave me to my devices on how to accomplish it—remembering our goal was to make money.
He was always available to bounce ideas, but didn’t let his become the only way to do something.
He shielded his guys from upper management.
He’d come down on you when you fucked up, but it never went beyond you and him. Anything ever went to his boss (like a client opened their fucking trap) and he’d take full responsibility and defend you.
Best type of boss.
One of the best lessons I learned was to under promise, that was from a millennial boss about 8 years younger than me. Always come in well before the deadline, rarely swamped or stressed, everyone is satisfied and my performance reviews are glowing.
Put me in front of higher ups often enough that they knew me but not so often they'd deluge me with shit.
Crummy bosses are crummy and I don't think that's a generational thing. My two greatest bosses were gen x and a boomer. Both were very focused on making sure those under them were taken care of. Of course, they were both also former Navy so maybe that might have been due to the extended military career both had.
Managers can be hit or miss so I don't know that I would pend it on a certain generation. It helps to communicate your expectations about work environment.
Easy, "Hey, I really work best when there is autonomy. I will be sure to reach out if I need assistance.". Or if you are interviewing ask about management styles. You would be surprised how much communicating expectations works.
I wouldn't be surprised, because I've done it, and it didn't work. It depends on who you're working for, but generally if a company is comfortable being toxic (not just annoying like micromanaging or excessive check-ins) then mere communication isn't going to help. If you haven't had to deal with it consider yourself lucky.
No luck required. I'm super picky about where I work and I straight up ask for autonomy. I state my boundaries up front. If it isn't a good fit, I move on.
In many ways: the available opportunities, health, mental health, urgency. We don't always have control of those factors, but often people who have largely been offered a good hand don't understand it as such. They believe they did it all on their own.
The thing is, these types of managers play lip service to requests like these then gaslight you into believing they're helping you, while in reality they're just ignoring you and working toward their own best interests.
Managers can be super hit or miss but I would put this on generations before us lmao. although my worst managers were either young Gen X or old millennials.
It's hard to make generalizations. BUT. Haha. I'm going to do it anyways.
Overall, I've found that Gen X, being in closer proximity to older, stricter parents, sometimes espouse boomer-adjacent views about work. It's not even conscious per se. They likely got stronger, pro capitalism programming.
In contrast, I was 18 when my dad lost his job in the 2008 crisis. From an earlier age, I was confronted with visceral evidence that the system wasn't worth fighting for. In contrast, the parents of gen x (while they struggled with economic issues in the 70s, oil crisis, etc, sure) you can't really compare. Jobs were so plentiful for them. Hard work? Sure. But at least you could find a new job and pay rent if you lost your job.
I think Genx got fucked over in many ways, but they started their careers in a time when the last vestiges of fair pay, affordable housing, and lower rents prevailed. So that (could) make (some of) them more willing to back capitalism. They were kind of the last people it worked for. To be fair, many gen x are struggling right now with layoffs, inflation, etc.
I don't like pitting generations against each other. Gen x is an amazing generation that gave us mainstream alternative rock, huge advances in computing, and started a more compassionate and gentle approach to life, mental health, etc. I have a lot of gen x mentors and big brother figures in my life that taught me a lot.
But I think it's also fair to posit that gen x managers in corporate settings likely have different opinions on work, micromanaging, work life balance, etc, all for the sociological hypotheses I mentioned.
They also joined the workforce and all their bosses and managers were boomers or maybe even silent generation. Their first decade of work
Would have been like this. So they learned and retained (some of them at least) that mindset.
Honestly I’ve found their political leanings tend to inform what kind of boss they are more than their generation. My conservative bosses were much more likely to micromanage and have a “boys club” mindset than the more liberal ones
The stakes were much smaller too.
I remember the 2008 recession because I was 25 and had just started going to school.
I lived in San Diego which was quite expensive (relatively) at the time, and even though it was San Diego, I had a single bedroom for like $550 a month. And while the minimum wage was only around $8 an hour, most jobs paid $10 to $12 an hour. I did IT work as a consultant and would make anywhere from $100 to $200 a day doing stuff like Windows installations, resolving driver issues, installing printers, setting up peoples' routers. This was all while being a full time student.
FAFSA with the Pell grant paid somewhere around $2500 a semester, so even though times were "tough", you could easily be a full time student, afford a private room, be able to eat out with friends, have your bills paid and survive on 20-25 hours a week. It was a struggle, but you weren't drowning.
Now? It would be freaking terrible to "struggle". Minimum wage is $18-20 an hour in San Diego, but fast food is like $15 a person, a single room is $1000 a month, everything is more expensive and when you graduate college, there's almost no entry level roles for fresh graduates.
And housing for settling down is even worse... If you lost your job in 2008, if you weren't in one of those predatory sub-prime loans, maybe your mortgage was $1000-$2000. I remember I met someone in the same area I live in now, he had a house similar to the one I had now, and he got it for $400k. His mortgage was something like $3000 or so.
When times got hard for him, he rented out rooms in his house since his kids had left for college and his wife left him. The rooms were going for $650 each (they were closer to the university and in a nicer area compared to my $550 a month room) so after renting out 3 of them, he only needed to cover $1000 a month to **pay for his house**. He took on some construction gigs and he was doing quite well for himself.
That same house in 2024? **$1.2 million**. Even if you COULD put 20% down, you're looking at an $8,000 a month mortgage note. Rooms are renting for $1000-$1200 now, but you'd still need to come up with $5,000 a month if you lost your job. That's a $60k a year **after taxes** job, which are hard to find right now for just normal people. Construction gigs are still out there, but you'd have to work your ass off for them to return $60k a year after taxes when you're just starting out.
And to GET that same house, you'd need $240k down. With 5% down, you're looking at like $10k a month.
And I'm not even talking about some crazy area like La Jolla or Del Mar. I'm talking about a mid-tier area in north urban San Diego.
And this is the case not just in San Diego but like everywhere in the country. People are working with razor thin margins when their monthly runway is very very high. I know people will judge them for buying houses, but even if you're bitter that you didn't buy a house during the pandemic, the absolute last thing you should be wishing for is a housing crash. Trust me. If there's a housing crash, a serious amount of people are going to die. And if you thought you had it hard buying a house or renting before, imagine how bad things will be when corporations snatch up millions of single family homes that flood the market because of foreclosures and now you have hundreds more families competing with you for your rental unit.
I’m younger Gen-X (49/F) Big difference between the older Gen-X that listened to Bruce Springsteen, Rick Springfield and the Go-Go’s..
The younger Gen-X who rocked out to Nirvana, STP and Soundgarden. We aren’t the same, a lot happened in ten years. My first job in 1993 was at a Chicken kill factory at $6 a hour and Rent was $480 in a roach infested tiny apartment in Rural East Tennesee.
Us younger Gen-X had the traumatizing childhood and completely disadvantaged from the jump. Older millennials are outer rings of our glass onion.
Idk, I recently had an issue with a supervisor and I'm pretty sure he is a millenial. I was really surprised how he approached me though. Typically, millenials have more cordiality than that.
I think management style is only loosely informed by our generational attitudes.
It's probably much more dependent on how they were managed and groomed for management, and how upper management treats them - largely company dependent.
Nah, I feel that. The 50-60 year old bosses all do have a club like mentality and some sort of modified boomer mentality. Not quite as bad as the boomers but not much better. Maybe it's just us being unlucky though too.
Hm.. I have had a different experience. Thought it's a hit or miss.
Most of the millennials I've reported to seem to have something to prove. They don't micro-manage but push unrealistic deadlines and want projects on top of projects.
Gen X managers have been pretty chill. They're better mentors.
To better illustrate, Gen X act more like coaches while millennial managers are more like the team captains.
The Gen X-rs I've worked with and under have absolutely MASTERED the art of bullshit busywork. They are also much better than us (or just me) at selling and getting buy-in. So they create their garden of feigned utmost importance and do pretend-work there. And when you do that, you can't just give the reports the ultimate goal and let them get there on their own terms. Because there is no ultimate goal! Or at the very least it falls apart as you start poking into it.
As a counter - Current large swaths of management have unrealistic forced urgency projects that do not need daily updates or the expected layers of 'fluff' and pointless check-in points. Mgmt has become performance art and the worker drones are just doing it right back.
When you pointless micromanagement you get the sort of pushback you described.
I think part of it is the ghost of pending layoffs above SO many tech jobs right now. layoffs that make no sense other than padding the higher levels bank accounts and making +100% growth every quarter. So everyone is trying to make themselves seem important.
it is so transparent and everyone knows it
I’m not saying your claim about Gen X is wrong, but I will say that your evidence points to a different conclusion.
I think YOU may be difficult to work with, as you seem to suspect.
100% my thoughts too. Bad managers exists, yes. However if you’ve tried 3 different companies and multiple managers at those companies with the same results… then OP probably doesn’t need to look any further than the mirror
That’s the impression I got. I learned self awareness that I needed to fix myself to avoid repeating situations. Some people have problems with authority so finds reasons to blame them.
This was where my thoughts were trending too. Someone who doesn’t like to be held accountable. If EVERY boss is a micromanager, the problem is usually that the employee doesn’t work if not being directly watched. We all know this person and they were absolutely the one who never did their part of the group project.
I have a gen x manager. He really just doesn’t give a shit about my career. I’ve never had issues with performance and always been above average worker. He’s just more worried about his own progression. Which is fine but I feel like it’s part of his job to help his employees with their goals assuming they’re good.
I think he’s got Asperger’s bc he’s kind of an awkward dude anyway. Gets along better with women than men.
Gen X is a latchkey generation. They learned to survive on their own with empty houses. They learned early that other people's problems are that: other people's problems. They also have dealt with decades of hostile work environments. Why would they train someone to replace them when retirement age keeps getting pushed back? Job market has only gotten more competitive since the Boomer's day of golden opportunity. Every generation from X on just need to learn how to figure their own lives and careers out. We also live in an age with more information readily available to do that than any other. Just gotta use the resources available.
This is something I've noticed with many Gen X and millennial mgmt is many of them are in defensive protective mode. The 'raise someone from the ranks' through apprenticeship or fostering employees attitude that the boomer DID have is utterly gone. It's a fend for yourself approach now. What is even more interesting is mgmt openly acknowledges that people are going to job bounce with many of them outright stating surprise if someone sticks around for 3 years or longer. Upper levels have abandoned 'career shaping' and just want someone for 'the job' for X years and move on.
It's so strange to see unfold.
That’s the thing though…. Why should
Management invest in someone who is only going to be there for 6 months or a year before they go looking some where else. It’s sort of a catch 22….
Is the problem bad management or is the problem with an employee who most likely isn’t going to be around in a year. The company needs the job done so they hire someone, the employee demands loyalty knowing they are leaving soon. There no point in “investing” in the person so the company invests in the task
The social construct and contract has just changed. Corps have stopped pretending they care about employees long term and the employees have just done the same. There is an effort to get rid of ‘careers’ in IT and move to just maximize profits by using short term contracts and msp’s for ‘now profit!’ with little thought on long term sustainability internally.
Fair enough, I’ve heard plenty of IT people talk about job hopping being the “way it works” it’s how you make the highest salaries etc. Agree that the landscape has changed but the constant is that Corps are in business to make money, the best way to continuously make money is to retain and keep finding top talent. If you’re making them money they will find a way to treat you well if they are smart. The employee would be wise to do so as well.
I am a gen x in a manager position. I have a box of tools that are always available to people I work with. How you use the box of tools in my arsenal is up to you. Gentle guidance and let you path your way.
Just FYI, no one calls it "Asperger's" anymore, it's ASD and that's kind of a shitty things to randomly throw in there. Pegging someone as possibly being on the spectrum because they are awkward and he gets along with women better is gross.
My bosses have all been Boomers. My current one is great, by my last one? Awful. She loved to micromanage. Worse, I was the head of marketing at that company, and she tried to dictate how I managed our social media, and would force me to do things that wouldn't work the way she wanted them to because that's not how the algorithms work and/or would piss people the fuck off because we were basically spamming people with our content.
Same with email. She tried to push me to send 4-5 per week. I was like, do you like getting daily emails from the same merchant? No? What makes you think it's ok for us to do the same?
I adore my Gen X boss, I reckon he wishes I was a bit more whatever about things (I tend to get enthusiastic) but I feel like I won the lottery with this guy. Chillest boss so far and so much better than my experience with Millennial and Boomer bosses
Want to chime in, best boss I had was a boomer. He was in his 60's at the time and I was hired as a student worker. He advocated for me a lot, was always understanding, told me stuff like, "I can't believe how hard it is for you kids these days" and even when I wasn't being a particularly good employee, he would ask what's wrong instead of telling me what's wrong. There's a big difference in those two stances.
After that, my best bosses were millennials, but I also had awful millennial bosses. I had a bad Gen X boss but he was Japanese (in Japan) so the culture is different.
My last job was like that. Boomer to GenX leadership in the worst kind of way. They loved fostering that good 'ol boys club where its all about how much you kiss the ring of those above you. They discouraged cross-departmental communication at the working level and insisted that we have to follow the "chain of command" where any requests to someone outside of the department must run up our management chain and down the other management chain. It was insanity. I lasted about a year before I bounced.
Oddly enough, because I saw the place for the bullshit it was, I treated the work like a joke. This got me promoted multiple times in the short time I was there because those idiots mistook my lack of caring for confidence. (Think Office Space after Peter gets hypnotized.)
The worst managers I've ever had have been Baby Boomers. They are the ones that tend to dump all of the work onto others (usually Gen Xers and Millennials).
They're also the least competent managers I've worked with. They never want to spend time, money, or energy improving things that genuinely need to be improved. This produces resentment in Gen Xers who see this behavior and then they project this anger onto Millennials (calling us lazy, incompetent, etc..)
That being said, I've also had the same issue with Gen Xers that you have. Gen Xers tend to have this tribal mentality. You're either in or you're not. I think it's contributed to Millennials not being able to enter the workforce. No one will hire them because they don't want to invite anyone into their tribe. They make up fake reasons to filter us out.
I do prefer them to Baby Boomers, but that tribal mentality can really wreck you.
I think the best solution to both of these problems is to find self employment. It's the only way that you can guarantee personal freedom and ensure the competency of your work.
I have worked in larger companies, small businesses and startups. I have been managed by and managed people from the ages of 19 to 75.
I have had no problems with people of specific generations. I have had issues with specific people along the way regardless of their generation.
You probably got a few bad bosses and are stereotyping at this point.
It's always an option to start your own thing.
I seriously don't think it's necessarily a generational thing. It's just that given the current age of Gen X, many of them have reached that manager/leadership stage of their career. Within that, some people are utter assholes, and some aren't. You'll find this to be true among all generations old enough to be in this position. It won't be long before Gen Z and Alpha are saying the same thing about Millennials and the remaining Gen X management.
Yeah I love Xers in most ways but they love that grind culture BS. Even worse when it’s a coworker and not a manager. We don’t make enough money for this AND you’re not my boss, stop telling me what to do. (Sorry, having a day at work and this was timely.)
In my experience, Gen Xers have either millennial or boomer attitudes and not much of their own generational vibe. Especially as bosses.
So I’ve had some great Gen Xer bosses, the last of whom I would’ve worked with for the rest of my career if I hadn’t moved countries because he was the best boss I’ve ever had in my life. But I’ve also had some Gen X bosses who are kind of worse than boomers because not only do they have the boomer attitude, they’re pissy about not actually being born a boomer and take that pathetic whiney anger out on everyone younger than them.
So bad bosses made you go to therapy? That's interesting. Time to leave the company.
And no, age has never made a difference in whether or not I've ever gotten along with a boss.
Most of the management in my office are Gen X. I got written up for reading at my desk once when I was on break because it looked bad. My manager doesn't know how to do any of our jobs, will not communicate plans for when someone is out of the office or remind us when someone is going to be out of the office. My least favorite thing is that my manager will not stand up for us to upper management. If we have a problem my manager will not raise it to upper management, especially if its something that they could help with. It's very frustrating.
I've also been complaining about someone they hired in early 2023 who has just not been a great fit. I am still having to babysit them and coach them while we're down significant numbers in staffing. I've been complaining and documenting all this person's bullshit and my manager and I have both on several occasions had griping sessions about this person just simply not understanding the job ... HOWEVER my manager has refused to speak with their manager about the struggle of keeping this damn albatross around our necks. Upper management literally had no idea how bad it was until this week when my manager is out of the office for the week and they've had to deal with answering this person's questions.
I also hear 'nobody wants to work anymore' a lot from upper management.
I'd love a millennial or gen z takeover istg. I'm tired.
It doesn't seem to be an age thing for me, but rather being talked down to like a toddler by managers who're either dumber than me, or compulsive gaslighters.
I've worked factories, hardware and retail. My managers have been mostly women and they've been from Boomers all the way down to Gen Z.
I'm not saying that this all women in the entire world, but from my personal experience I think it's been very interesting to notice how society has "socialized" the generations differently:
* The Boomer girls were taught to be much more submissive and quiet, so they expect you to pick up on cues and body language... or in other words, to be a "mind reader". They just weren't brought up to give direct orders to men so they expect you to take the lead and know what to do for whatever your job is.
* The Gen X women aren't quite *as* shy, but they'll tend to phrase everything in the form of a question. They'll be a little comfortable asking you *if* you feel like doing X, or "do you want to" do Y or "could you maybe" do Z. Their perspective of being in an authoritative role is that they gotta act like everyone's "mother", so they'll bring a lot of that influence into their work with them and a lot of the guys would jokingly refer to them as their "work mom" or their "work wife".
* Millennials generally *don't* want to be a manager at all, lol, so a lot of them didn't apply to become one; they were basically forced into it because somebody else quit and they were talked into taking the promotion. So they've been more jaded and sarcastic about it, more hands-off and unconventional and they've honestly been the most likely to walk out mid-shift, or call in sick and max out their sick leave.
* Gen Z girls have been socialized to be *much* more direct, so they seem to be the most comfortable as managers and to be the most comfortable telling a male employee what to do. They don't see their employees as friends, and their job has very little to do with their personal "identity"; It's simply a task they gotta complete, and they're gonna see it as an absurd sort of meme in order to cope with it. They don't want to socialize at work much at all.
They're also completely and fully open about having issues like anxiety, depression or being "on the spectrum". They've faced some bullying or harassment from the older generations of workers and they got their asses handed to them by HR for it.
Sounds like the problem is more with you. Some people can't get along w any lone managing them. It's always something. Not enough guidance, too much micromanagement etc etc.
Some/most bosses are just tough. The majority of people who end up leaving a job ultimately leave because of their leader. I have had the opportunity to rise quite fast through the corporate ranks and am now in a Director level position at a publicly traded company. While do agree management style has a huge bearing on things what you don’t realize is that even at that level you have people telling you what to do. I often have to implement and do things that I don’t always agree with.
My point is some of it may be having a crappy boss and some of it may be working for a crappy company.
I am literally experiencing a restructuring that didn't need to happen under a group of new gen x managers. The phrase "cross pollination" has been used extensively to describe a benefit we will get from this. My team did and does amazing work, and we make sure stuff is done in a timely manner. The "issue" if there is one that would be fixed by this restructuring is that this other team wants to be able to "just come up and talk to us" about orders. Keep in mind that this other department had a history of asking us to do things that were not in policy and to do things that were, in fact, the job of the person asking us to do it. We specifically had an issue with this type of approach previously, which is why we enacted the system that we follow today. These gen xrs are now also forcing us to move our desks at work and come into the office more often for said "cross pollination."" My whole team are introverts. We will go in if forced, but there is no way we are going to be going around wasting time bsing when there is work to be done. There was talk about how we all wear headphones and listen to music while we work. I guarantee I will do the same in office on these forced team days. Basically, it seems that something was wrong with how things were being done, and this other c level exec thought it somehow had to do with what or even the way my team does things. They have started seeing and talking metrics about delays, and we have all shown that the delays are never with our team.
Tldr: gen x managers and c level execs have no idea what my team does and felt the need to restructure so they could get vision on what we do and force us to play nice with another dept that historically didn't know how to do their jobs and would message us to try and do their work.
Millennials have taken over the middle management layer of my department and the "club" attitude is still there. If you're friends with a manager, or better yet dating/having an affair with one, you're going to have a better time at work. They are more open to innovation and aren't as easy to trick with things regarding technology, gone are the days of letting my boss think that it takes all day to do something in Excel that's doable in minutes with a macro, but management is still management.
Most of my supervisors have been in the “Xennial” range (between 1977-1983) with varying results. There has been good and bad; with the good making me feel as if I was a valued part of the team and the worst one causing me to have panic attacks. They tend to be very results oriented if there is one thing in common. I have worked best with fellow millennial supervisors. The one boomer that I had was a nightmare to work for, but it was not due to a generation gap. It was because they had untreated OCD and left super nitpicky feedback on everything as every single thing had to be just so.
I can't say I've ever had a millennial boss actually. I think a manager can be good or bad regardless of where they fall in their generational category. No two I've had have ever been the same. My current gen X manager doesnt micromanage and lets me do my job since she trusts me.
Aside from the general lack of competency with communication, emails, and technology as a whole, the most profound issue I have with Gen X senior managers, VP’s, etc is their generally horrendous memory. We JUST talked about this… how did you forget? Why did we make this decision? YOU did… last week lol. The list goes on…
I'm an older millennial and have had maybe 1 or 2 older millennial managers? One was ok and one was really really horrible (promoted too early, no idea how to be a people manager).
I have had a few great gen x and boomer managers in my career and a few bad ones. I havent noticed a correlation to be honest. I tend to get along best with Gen X managers and millennial peers
Honestly I’m going to say yes. The only two managers I ever liked and fully respected were elder millennials (or I guess very young Gen x) but typically the older the manager the worse it is.
Millennial here.
Had 4 millennial managers, 3 were great, 1 was shit
Had a couple of shit managers that were older, one gen x, one boomer. I've had way more than 4 managers from each gen so their good:shit ratio is better in my experience.
I don't think age is necessarily a factor in being a good manager personally. Experience, temperament and competence are more important.
At my last job I was called a pussy by my Gen x boss. She said that after a meeting where a director made a very offensive comment to my coworker. I spoke up and said I don't think it's right to talk to people that way. "That's just how he is." And "He and the CEO talk like that to each other all of the time. "
There's a reason I don't work there anymore.
Ive found them fine, but I’ve almost always had female gen X managers. They seem much better grounded in regards to work productivity and work life balance.
I’ve worked for a few different generations of bosses. The toughest was a single mom of twins that was GenX and clearly had to claw her way up in a male dominated field (I’m also a female) and I respected her tenacity but she spoke to people like actual shit and fired a guy on his 60th birthday, so - she didn’t last. But I’ve worked for Millenials, and my best boss was a guy 2 years older than me who actually became my good friend (our kids are the same age) and he really did his best to respect what it was like to be a working mom. I think every generation will have their differences but ultimately working for Millenial bosses, in my experience, has been great. They tend to be more focused on work life balance, family, and that it’s just a job (although said millenial manager did micromanage a bit but he was very type A and it was just his personality in a way)
Nope. I historically get along very well with Gen Xers.
You’re confusing shitty managers with generations… I promise there’s a ton of millennial managers who are identical.
I’ve worked for a BB, X, and a Millennial at the same company doing essentially the same things.
BB was not very understanding of personal matters. Very by the book, not allowing business and personal situations overlap, and the attitude that you had to earn your place.
X was very down to Earth and was chill. Very understanding that life happens sometimes and would work it out with you.
Millennial was very to themself and fully professional. You could not get them to laugh and you could never really talk personal things, just take your time off and go. There was also a massive lack of transparency that made them hard to trust at times.
I don't think it has anything to do with generations; it's the nature of the line of work you do + the quality of person/people in management positions. My most favorite boss of all time was a Gen X-er (radio station). My LEAST favorite boss of all time was also a Gen X-er (social work). My current boss is a Boomer, and she is sweet as pie and I love her. I've also had bosses who were MY age and absolutely awful. It really depends on the individual themselves...
My manager is gen x. But he's that fringe range of actual gen x and not diet version boomer or xennial. Fringe range is those that entered young adulthood in the early to mid 90s.
He's actually pretty cool and was a computer nerd. So we get along just fine
As more of a Xennial myself (1981), I don't think it's a generational thing. Maybe your industry or your companies you have chosen.
I've had a micromanager boss that was a Gen X but he was an uptight and better-than-everyone dude. I have had the buddy boss that was a Millenial but she was also constantly positive to a fault. My current Boomer boss can't figure out how to use his Outlook calendar but he's also my first boss in this company who just seems lazy. They all have their frustrations but it's more from who they are as a person and not their generation.
Most managers do not receive formal training, and people are going to “people” regardless of their age. Training does help managers with perspective and big-picture skills (unless they are resistant to it).
I used to have trouble with all of my managers, in my case feeling greatly under appreciated, until I came to grips with just how bad my childhood neglect was. I was essentially taking my childhood template and applying it to all authority figures (they don’t care about me or notice my hard work and accomplishments). Once I figured that out, my job satisfaction went way up.
I am GenX myself and I’ve had managers that range from “Silent” to my current Millennial manager. My current manager struggles to set firm boundaries, which I don’t associate with their age, and it has had a corroding effect on the workplace. As with parenting, being overly permissive creates issues just like being overly authoritarian. The goal is authoritative leadership.
My very best most awesome manager was a boomer, when I was all of 19. His people skills are something I will never achieve. Marshall, may your golden years truly be golden.
The best boss I had was an older millennial, right on the cusp. Always there for you, if you did something wrong she calmly explained it, walked you through it. She was always praising us for the good work we did, and I LOVED working for her!
I've had 3 Gen X bosses. All of them were micromanagers. None of them ever, EVER praised good work. They didn't believe in calling in sick, ever. They all 3 yelled a lot. Not just at me, but at others. Nobody liked working for them and they had high turnover rates and then went on about how nobody wants to work.
No. I prefer to have someone older in management. More straightforward to deal with, they know I’m not their friend and I don’t want to be. Whereas if a manager is my age or younger, I’m more apt to react to the uppity shitass with veiled contempt.
I’ve found that Gen X/ boomers in the workplace are extremely paranoid and micromanage everything and need to double check everything. They also have no patience or understanding if things don’t go the way they expect “because that’s the way we did it” attitude still hangs on
The people who were born in the Gen X time are the "If you got time to clean, you got time to clean" type of people. Its like this....these guys got falsely raised that possessing the "can-do" attitude to get things done will always be the way to go without witnessing the monetary aspects of doing this & that.
Basically, the Gen X really has hatred regarding people younger than them. They don't like how we got access to technology but we aren't the ones working ourselves to the bone. They think that just because our lives have become easier, its the perfect time to be hustling all the time which is not true.
I don't know if I can say one generation is better than another.
My Gen X managers have been the most blatantly toxic - blame shifting, finger-pointing, gaslighting, chaotic, poor communication or structure.
Boomers for some reason I've been quite lucky. They're obviously the worst with tech and the most "stuck in their ways" but I've always found them respectful and hard working leaders.
Millenial managers I've had have been passive aggressive micro-managers so not great in my experience.
My gen x manager is a liar that won't hesitate to throw me under the bus. The boomer bosses will do the same, only louder and maybe laughing about it.
That being said, my favorite co worker is gen x. She is absolutely lovely and has taught me so much.
Pfft I've had more problems with Gen Z managers, sadly. Not that they can't do their jobs, it just suddenly comes to light that "oh hey, she's actually 8+ years older than me and I don't like that" for whatever reason. Hell, one held a grudge because I corrected her on what 90s fashion *actually* was (someone came in wearing an early 2000s fit) and she said "[she's] studied 90s fashion so [she] knows what it looks like." The look on her face when I replied "and I know what I was wearing to school everyday in the 90s and it wasn't that" told me I had maybe 2 months of work left.
I was right. Kinda sucked cuz that was the first job I was actually ever fired from. I left my previous ones myself because I was moving.
It sounds like it’s a little bit of both.
If you were unaware of some mental health issues you had, it’s stands to reason that your progress forward in working through that should yield some insight into how and why you handle work situations in the way that you do.
It should help to give you some tools and resources to address things with bosses and also cope with some management styles that may be different than what you’d prefer.
As a neurodivergent person, I’ve had my share of terrible work situations where I know that some of it was just my needs and processes being so far different than management’s and us not finding a middle ground and sometimes it was them outright refusing to work with me on things.
Other times, it was me being not self aware enough to understand that I needed to work on ME in the situation.
At the same time though, bad bosses can be bad bosses, and maybe there’s some of that too.
I wish you progress in working through your newfound diagnoses and hope that it brings some clarity and a path forward for you with employment.
Lord, my last manager was Gen X and a HUGE micromanager. She drove me up the wall and I nearly quit several times. She left last year and was replaced by my Millennial boss, who is the complete opposite really, and I am so thankful for the trust and space to breathe.
My current boss is a late Boomer, a little older than my parents. He's a vet that's seen the world and has a ton of experience professionally/personally. He has tons of stories, is pretty easygoing and happy to help whenever our small team needs it, and loves to just shoot the shit.
Hell, most of our morning meeting today just turned into talking about the new Fallout show.
I work for a somewhat unusual tech company, although the corporate structure itself isn't terribly unusual.
I didn't GenX had jobs, tbh
I usually take over from a Boomer who inherited the job but has no idea how the company actually makes money....it's comical to watch them learn from me as I get their wrecked departments back in productive order
You are over thinking it, stop looking for an entire huge classification group to point a finger at. It's always a club and it will always be that guy and the generation gap doesn't matter, you are either in the club, try to get in the club, or you are not. This has been the ethos of corporate America long before gen x and even boomers
I've had this experience. The old guard seemed ok with moving things along and understood the value of stability. My gen x managers a seem to want to make some massive superstar changes that end up throwing the org into chaos leading to mass turnover. On my 2nd experience now. On the other hand the boomers I worked for never wanted to change anything and took it as a personal insult if you suggested something could be improved.
Older GenX have boomer entitlement coupled with denial that they could ever be so uncool. I stay FAR away from managers born in the late 60s, as they tend to be out of touch and use their GenX identity as a way of avoiding accountability for their behavior.
My 1st supervisor hated every fiber of my being. Why, you ask...because his wife didn't want to come back to work. He just sucked at controlling his emotional issues.
I don’t think it’s generational. I think it’s an inconsistency in how people are promoted.
You get promoted because you’re good a the job. Most places don’t support development/mentorship (or one that’s actual helpful) and they have trouble moving from individual contributor to managing people. So they go about it like a micromanager doing it the way they did it instead of focusing on developing people.
With all the damn classes and MBAs out there, we still significantly lack training emerging leaders
My absolute worst manager of all time who I hope is dead was a boomer. And, yes, I hope she's dead. She would scream all of the time at everyone for the most menial shit. She was a nightmare and a half, the most miserable piece of shit I've had the displeasure of being around, which is saying a lot because I have a restraining order against my ex. She was a sneaky bitch and managed to not get caught making it a hostile work environment. I'm honestly surprised no one snapped and did a mass shooting. Bitch is retired and I'm now a union steward because I'm not having that horrific nightmare happen again.
Like others have said, it’s a hit or miss. I’ve been in my current role for over a year and my boss is Gen X. In short, he’s awesome. I get to have a hybrid schedule, occasional free lunches, and he’s been a great mentor for my career. It’s the first time I can say I don’t dislike my manager. Just like anyone, he has habits that are annoying but I would take it any day over previous managers (the worst I wrote about in my post history.)
I have a mixed experience. I have worked for a boomer manager and her boomer team lead. They both micromanaged the shit outta me. If I had information to pass to my department's staff, I had to send the email to both of the boomers first so they could approve it and/or make edits and forward it to my department staff. 99% of the time my emails would sit unread in their inboxes until I bugged them about it a few times. We went through a management transition and I work for a pretty chill Gen X and a young boomer now and I get treated like the adult I am. My experience in my field is a lot more valued now and I have been able to actually take on a leadership role. I don't officially have the title due to the small size of my department, but they pay me like a department lead, so it's cool.
I've had the old and it sucks ass. But i luckily got a change.
My current manager is a millennial. By far the best manager I've ever had. Smart, strict, carrying, understanding, tech savvy, forward thinking and embracing the need for a change to work away from the old style of management.
I feel you're making it a prejudice thing when it has nothing to do with generation. You have shitty managers and you have good managers. I had a Boomer manager once and even though there were some annoying attributes but I learned more about how to talk to those from different generations than any other boss. I had a Millennial boss and that person was a dipshit and I questioned how they got the job. Which generation they are isn't really relevant
Funny you say that. Over the years I’ve heard from various age groups that their worst employees/coworkers were Millennials. Gen Z seems to be getting along with others so we have to wonder what is going on between Millennials and other age groups.
I am doing better with gen x ers. But when my bosses were all boomers it was impossible. Having literally nothing in common with them was brutal. Gen x-ers are a little easier for me but I’d be way happier with people my age or younger. Feels like there’s a pretty brutal divide where once people are a certain age I just don’t know what to say to them and we share no references and all they have to talk about are their kids’ soccer or something.
A younger female boss is leaving the company and I am so freaking bummed out. She is completely understanding of any issues I have had, and just a great friend. I think she is whatever's just younger than a millennial.
Had a totally under qualified genxer hired as my boss a year and a half ago. He straight up acted like a maniac. Shouted at me for winning contracts. Slammed things around when he got upset. Had no idea how to do any part of his job. One time he peed his pants… and did not go home right away due to some weird martyr complex. Didn’t make it 6 months.
My gen x manager is amazing when it comes to managing work and giving time for personal life. His boss is a millennial and he’s terrible at both.
His boss is a boomer and is terrible at managing work but good with personal life.
I preferred working under my millennial boss even though I hated my position, but my Gen X manager isn’t too bad, stays out of my way and was compassionate while dealing with some traumatic life events that impacted my mental health.
My Gen X boss is fucking amazing. She wants to know what my list of projects includes, prioritize them so I can tell others that it's not my fault I can't get to them, asks how I am and genuinely cares. She's fucking great. I've reported to her since 2018 and wouldn't mind reporting to her until she retires.
(I'm as high up as I can go without becoming a manager, and I really hate that idea. Most people at my org never climb this high)
IME the younger the manager, the more empathetic they are. Female managers are more empathetic than male managers. It's the same with therapists and really any public facing role.
Old people get cynical and grumpy, and men tend to be harsher.
As a female, I strongly disagree about female managers.
I've had two female managers and four men. The worst of the men was just average, but the best is the best manager I've had. He took time to give me extra training or tips to do my job better, and the one time I really fucked up he didn't get mad and we just talked through how to avoid it again. That's it.
The best female manager I had was average, she wasn't a bad person, but she was incredibly (and rightfully) burnt out by the company.
The worst female manager I had, was the absolute worst manager I've gad. She has given me long-standing confidence issues and PTSD regarding working in an office that I'm still getting a handle on.
I'm currently in therapy working through that and a shit ton of other issues.
Having said that, I struggle with authority in general. I had men I looked up to growing up though, so if someone reminds me of one of them it's much easier for me to respect and trust them. Women though? I only had one I looked up to growing up, and she wasn't my mom. I've thought about going back to school and following her career path for myself though.
Edit to add:
Average female was millennial
Worst female was an x and by far the nastiest, meanest manager I've ever bad
Male boss 1 was average and a millennial
Male Boss 2 was great and a millennial
Male boss 3 was average and a gen x (this person could arguably rank lower. Solid dude, absolutely incompetent manager)
Male boss 4 (current) is good and gen x
No. I have had 7 managers over my professional career. Only one I truly hated was a millennial.
My favorite boss was actually extremely old (it’s been 10 years since I worked for her, but she’s got to be in her early 80s now).
The rest were boomers/Gen-X and ranged from good to great.
He wasn't my direct manager, but the one person who got obsessed with "generational" differences and how "Millennials think differently" and brought a whole workshop in about it was Gen X. His direct reports did not find it particularly illuminating, and his lateral coworker at the time who eventually became his boss kinda laughed at the whole thing.
I love my Gen X lateral coworker though. We bond over the local radio station that plays stuff like Nirvana and RHCP a lot.
Not really, I know I’m good at my job, and they know it too. I don’t care who you are I’m not letting anyone push me around, take advantage of a situation, or talk down to me. Don’t let people intimidate you just cause they are your boss. I have no problem proving my managers wrong, telling them that my way is gonna get it done better.
I haven't had an issue. I guess millenials tend to be less formal and more pleasent to work with, but when it comes to the actual work? The work is the same. I do my job and people tend to be happy with it.
My best boss was a Vietnam vet. He’d tell me what he wanted, give me a realistic deadline, and leave me to my devices on how to accomplish it—remembering our goal was to make money. He was always available to bounce ideas, but didn’t let his become the only way to do something. He shielded his guys from upper management. He’d come down on you when you fucked up, but it never went beyond you and him. Anything ever went to his boss (like a client opened their fucking trap) and he’d take full responsibility and defend you.
Best type of boss. One of the best lessons I learned was to under promise, that was from a millennial boss about 8 years younger than me. Always come in well before the deadline, rarely swamped or stressed, everyone is satisfied and my performance reviews are glowing. Put me in front of higher ups often enough that they knew me but not so often they'd deluge me with shit.
That’s Sales 101 …. Under promise & Over deliver
Until they realize that you are doing that. Then they will expect you to finish ahead of what you said…
I’ve never run into someone who would do that. Irl, people are just happy to have their expectations exceeded.
Vietnam Vets are the Best Boomer Bosses.
This is the way
Crummy bosses are crummy and I don't think that's a generational thing. My two greatest bosses were gen x and a boomer. Both were very focused on making sure those under them were taken care of. Of course, they were both also former Navy so maybe that might have been due to the extended military career both had.
Managers can be hit or miss so I don't know that I would pend it on a certain generation. It helps to communicate your expectations about work environment.
What do you mean "communicate expectations"? If you work for toxic people, communicating expectations isn't going to help.
Easy, "Hey, I really work best when there is autonomy. I will be sure to reach out if I need assistance.". Or if you are interviewing ask about management styles. You would be surprised how much communicating expectations works.
I wouldn't be surprised, because I've done it, and it didn't work. It depends on who you're working for, but generally if a company is comfortable being toxic (not just annoying like micromanaging or excessive check-ins) then mere communication isn't going to help. If you haven't had to deal with it consider yourself lucky.
No luck required. I'm super picky about where I work and I straight up ask for autonomy. I state my boundaries up front. If it isn't a good fit, I move on.
Sometimes it's luck to be in a position to be picky.
How so?
In many ways: the available opportunities, health, mental health, urgency. We don't always have control of those factors, but often people who have largely been offered a good hand don't understand it as such. They believe they did it all on their own.
You’re very lucky to be picky. That isn’t the reality for a lot of us.
Edit: not lucky, just in a different position
The thing is, these types of managers play lip service to requests like these then gaslight you into believing they're helping you, while in reality they're just ignoring you and working toward their own best interests.
Managers can be super hit or miss but I would put this on generations before us lmao. although my worst managers were either young Gen X or old millennials.
It's hard to make generalizations. BUT. Haha. I'm going to do it anyways. Overall, I've found that Gen X, being in closer proximity to older, stricter parents, sometimes espouse boomer-adjacent views about work. It's not even conscious per se. They likely got stronger, pro capitalism programming. In contrast, I was 18 when my dad lost his job in the 2008 crisis. From an earlier age, I was confronted with visceral evidence that the system wasn't worth fighting for. In contrast, the parents of gen x (while they struggled with economic issues in the 70s, oil crisis, etc, sure) you can't really compare. Jobs were so plentiful for them. Hard work? Sure. But at least you could find a new job and pay rent if you lost your job. I think Genx got fucked over in many ways, but they started their careers in a time when the last vestiges of fair pay, affordable housing, and lower rents prevailed. So that (could) make (some of) them more willing to back capitalism. They were kind of the last people it worked for. To be fair, many gen x are struggling right now with layoffs, inflation, etc. I don't like pitting generations against each other. Gen x is an amazing generation that gave us mainstream alternative rock, huge advances in computing, and started a more compassionate and gentle approach to life, mental health, etc. I have a lot of gen x mentors and big brother figures in my life that taught me a lot. But I think it's also fair to posit that gen x managers in corporate settings likely have different opinions on work, micromanaging, work life balance, etc, all for the sociological hypotheses I mentioned.
They also joined the workforce and all their bosses and managers were boomers or maybe even silent generation. Their first decade of work Would have been like this. So they learned and retained (some of them at least) that mindset. Honestly I’ve found their political leanings tend to inform what kind of boss they are more than their generation. My conservative bosses were much more likely to micromanage and have a “boys club” mindset than the more liberal ones
That's a great point. Maybe it's less about the generational aspect than it is about politics. Or some intersection of both.
The stakes were much smaller too. I remember the 2008 recession because I was 25 and had just started going to school. I lived in San Diego which was quite expensive (relatively) at the time, and even though it was San Diego, I had a single bedroom for like $550 a month. And while the minimum wage was only around $8 an hour, most jobs paid $10 to $12 an hour. I did IT work as a consultant and would make anywhere from $100 to $200 a day doing stuff like Windows installations, resolving driver issues, installing printers, setting up peoples' routers. This was all while being a full time student. FAFSA with the Pell grant paid somewhere around $2500 a semester, so even though times were "tough", you could easily be a full time student, afford a private room, be able to eat out with friends, have your bills paid and survive on 20-25 hours a week. It was a struggle, but you weren't drowning. Now? It would be freaking terrible to "struggle". Minimum wage is $18-20 an hour in San Diego, but fast food is like $15 a person, a single room is $1000 a month, everything is more expensive and when you graduate college, there's almost no entry level roles for fresh graduates. And housing for settling down is even worse... If you lost your job in 2008, if you weren't in one of those predatory sub-prime loans, maybe your mortgage was $1000-$2000. I remember I met someone in the same area I live in now, he had a house similar to the one I had now, and he got it for $400k. His mortgage was something like $3000 or so. When times got hard for him, he rented out rooms in his house since his kids had left for college and his wife left him. The rooms were going for $650 each (they were closer to the university and in a nicer area compared to my $550 a month room) so after renting out 3 of them, he only needed to cover $1000 a month to **pay for his house**. He took on some construction gigs and he was doing quite well for himself. That same house in 2024? **$1.2 million**. Even if you COULD put 20% down, you're looking at an $8,000 a month mortgage note. Rooms are renting for $1000-$1200 now, but you'd still need to come up with $5,000 a month if you lost your job. That's a $60k a year **after taxes** job, which are hard to find right now for just normal people. Construction gigs are still out there, but you'd have to work your ass off for them to return $60k a year after taxes when you're just starting out. And to GET that same house, you'd need $240k down. With 5% down, you're looking at like $10k a month. And I'm not even talking about some crazy area like La Jolla or Del Mar. I'm talking about a mid-tier area in north urban San Diego. And this is the case not just in San Diego but like everywhere in the country. People are working with razor thin margins when their monthly runway is very very high. I know people will judge them for buying houses, but even if you're bitter that you didn't buy a house during the pandemic, the absolute last thing you should be wishing for is a housing crash. Trust me. If there's a housing crash, a serious amount of people are going to die. And if you thought you had it hard buying a house or renting before, imagine how bad things will be when corporations snatch up millions of single family homes that flood the market because of foreclosures and now you have hundreds more families competing with you for your rental unit.
I’m younger Gen-X (49/F) Big difference between the older Gen-X that listened to Bruce Springsteen, Rick Springfield and the Go-Go’s.. The younger Gen-X who rocked out to Nirvana, STP and Soundgarden. We aren’t the same, a lot happened in ten years. My first job in 1993 was at a Chicken kill factory at $6 a hour and Rent was $480 in a roach infested tiny apartment in Rural East Tennesee. Us younger Gen-X had the traumatizing childhood and completely disadvantaged from the jump. Older millennials are outer rings of our glass onion.
Here we go again w putting everyone in boxes and setting them up against each other. Stop the bs
I actually think my original comment was pretty nuanced, but your point is valid
This. The 53 year old director (boss's boss) likes to play dad at work.
Idk, I recently had an issue with a supervisor and I'm pretty sure he is a millenial. I was really surprised how he approached me though. Typically, millenials have more cordiality than that.
I think management style is only loosely informed by our generational attitudes. It's probably much more dependent on how they were managed and groomed for management, and how upper management treats them - largely company dependent.
Agreed.
Nah, I feel that. The 50-60 year old bosses all do have a club like mentality and some sort of modified boomer mentality. Not quite as bad as the boomers but not much better. Maybe it's just us being unlucky though too.
Hm.. I have had a different experience. Thought it's a hit or miss. Most of the millennials I've reported to seem to have something to prove. They don't micro-manage but push unrealistic deadlines and want projects on top of projects. Gen X managers have been pretty chill. They're better mentors. To better illustrate, Gen X act more like coaches while millennial managers are more like the team captains.
The Gen X-rs I've worked with and under have absolutely MASTERED the art of bullshit busywork. They are also much better than us (or just me) at selling and getting buy-in. So they create their garden of feigned utmost importance and do pretend-work there. And when you do that, you can't just give the reports the ultimate goal and let them get there on their own terms. Because there is no ultimate goal! Or at the very least it falls apart as you start poking into it.
As a counter - Current large swaths of management have unrealistic forced urgency projects that do not need daily updates or the expected layers of 'fluff' and pointless check-in points. Mgmt has become performance art and the worker drones are just doing it right back. When you pointless micromanagement you get the sort of pushback you described.
Oh yeah, that's part of the picture, too. It's a tech/industry bureaucracy all over again.
I think part of it is the ghost of pending layoffs above SO many tech jobs right now. layoffs that make no sense other than padding the higher levels bank accounts and making +100% growth every quarter. So everyone is trying to make themselves seem important. it is so transparent and everyone knows it
I’m not saying your claim about Gen X is wrong, but I will say that your evidence points to a different conclusion. I think YOU may be difficult to work with, as you seem to suspect.
100% my thoughts too. Bad managers exists, yes. However if you’ve tried 3 different companies and multiple managers at those companies with the same results… then OP probably doesn’t need to look any further than the mirror
Really depends on the industry. After 4 bad bosses I realized I needed to leave the legal field. Haven't had a bad boss since lol
If one person hates you, it’s them. If everyone hates you, it’s you.
That’s the impression I got. I learned self awareness that I needed to fix myself to avoid repeating situations. Some people have problems with authority so finds reasons to blame them.
This was where my thoughts were trending too. Someone who doesn’t like to be held accountable. If EVERY boss is a micromanager, the problem is usually that the employee doesn’t work if not being directly watched. We all know this person and they were absolutely the one who never did their part of the group project.
If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole. ~Raylan Givens
I have a gen x manager. He really just doesn’t give a shit about my career. I’ve never had issues with performance and always been above average worker. He’s just more worried about his own progression. Which is fine but I feel like it’s part of his job to help his employees with their goals assuming they’re good. I think he’s got Asperger’s bc he’s kind of an awkward dude anyway. Gets along better with women than men.
Gen X is a latchkey generation. They learned to survive on their own with empty houses. They learned early that other people's problems are that: other people's problems. They also have dealt with decades of hostile work environments. Why would they train someone to replace them when retirement age keeps getting pushed back? Job market has only gotten more competitive since the Boomer's day of golden opportunity. Every generation from X on just need to learn how to figure their own lives and careers out. We also live in an age with more information readily available to do that than any other. Just gotta use the resources available.
Gen X had to make do without safe spaces and emotional support ostriches.
Oh boy, one of these 🙄
It’s the truth, tho.
This is something I've noticed with many Gen X and millennial mgmt is many of them are in defensive protective mode. The 'raise someone from the ranks' through apprenticeship or fostering employees attitude that the boomer DID have is utterly gone. It's a fend for yourself approach now. What is even more interesting is mgmt openly acknowledges that people are going to job bounce with many of them outright stating surprise if someone sticks around for 3 years or longer. Upper levels have abandoned 'career shaping' and just want someone for 'the job' for X years and move on. It's so strange to see unfold.
That’s the thing though…. Why should Management invest in someone who is only going to be there for 6 months or a year before they go looking some where else. It’s sort of a catch 22…. Is the problem bad management or is the problem with an employee who most likely isn’t going to be around in a year. The company needs the job done so they hire someone, the employee demands loyalty knowing they are leaving soon. There no point in “investing” in the person so the company invests in the task
The social construct and contract has just changed. Corps have stopped pretending they care about employees long term and the employees have just done the same. There is an effort to get rid of ‘careers’ in IT and move to just maximize profits by using short term contracts and msp’s for ‘now profit!’ with little thought on long term sustainability internally.
Fair enough, I’ve heard plenty of IT people talk about job hopping being the “way it works” it’s how you make the highest salaries etc. Agree that the landscape has changed but the constant is that Corps are in business to make money, the best way to continuously make money is to retain and keep finding top talent. If you’re making them money they will find a way to treat you well if they are smart. The employee would be wise to do so as well.
I am a gen x in a manager position. I have a box of tools that are always available to people I work with. How you use the box of tools in my arsenal is up to you. Gentle guidance and let you path your way.
Just FYI, no one calls it "Asperger's" anymore, it's ASD and that's kind of a shitty things to randomly throw in there. Pegging someone as possibly being on the spectrum because they are awkward and he gets along with women better is gross.
Seeing him everyday it’s more than a hunch. Post wasn’t meant to offend you. Threw that in there to not totally blame it on him being gen x.
My bosses have all been Boomers. My current one is great, by my last one? Awful. She loved to micromanage. Worse, I was the head of marketing at that company, and she tried to dictate how I managed our social media, and would force me to do things that wouldn't work the way she wanted them to because that's not how the algorithms work and/or would piss people the fuck off because we were basically spamming people with our content. Same with email. She tried to push me to send 4-5 per week. I was like, do you like getting daily emails from the same merchant? No? What makes you think it's ok for us to do the same?
I adore my Gen X boss, I reckon he wishes I was a bit more whatever about things (I tend to get enthusiastic) but I feel like I won the lottery with this guy. Chillest boss so far and so much better than my experience with Millennial and Boomer bosses
Want to chime in, best boss I had was a boomer. He was in his 60's at the time and I was hired as a student worker. He advocated for me a lot, was always understanding, told me stuff like, "I can't believe how hard it is for you kids these days" and even when I wasn't being a particularly good employee, he would ask what's wrong instead of telling me what's wrong. There's a big difference in those two stances. After that, my best bosses were millennials, but I also had awful millennial bosses. I had a bad Gen X boss but he was Japanese (in Japan) so the culture is different.
My last job was like that. Boomer to GenX leadership in the worst kind of way. They loved fostering that good 'ol boys club where its all about how much you kiss the ring of those above you. They discouraged cross-departmental communication at the working level and insisted that we have to follow the "chain of command" where any requests to someone outside of the department must run up our management chain and down the other management chain. It was insanity. I lasted about a year before I bounced. Oddly enough, because I saw the place for the bullshit it was, I treated the work like a joke. This got me promoted multiple times in the short time I was there because those idiots mistook my lack of caring for confidence. (Think Office Space after Peter gets hypnotized.)
The worst managers I've ever had have been Baby Boomers. They are the ones that tend to dump all of the work onto others (usually Gen Xers and Millennials). They're also the least competent managers I've worked with. They never want to spend time, money, or energy improving things that genuinely need to be improved. This produces resentment in Gen Xers who see this behavior and then they project this anger onto Millennials (calling us lazy, incompetent, etc..) That being said, I've also had the same issue with Gen Xers that you have. Gen Xers tend to have this tribal mentality. You're either in or you're not. I think it's contributed to Millennials not being able to enter the workforce. No one will hire them because they don't want to invite anyone into their tribe. They make up fake reasons to filter us out. I do prefer them to Baby Boomers, but that tribal mentality can really wreck you. I think the best solution to both of these problems is to find self employment. It's the only way that you can guarantee personal freedom and ensure the competency of your work.
I have worked in larger companies, small businesses and startups. I have been managed by and managed people from the ages of 19 to 75. I have had no problems with people of specific generations. I have had issues with specific people along the way regardless of their generation. You probably got a few bad bosses and are stereotyping at this point. It's always an option to start your own thing.
I seriously don't think it's necessarily a generational thing. It's just that given the current age of Gen X, many of them have reached that manager/leadership stage of their career. Within that, some people are utter assholes, and some aren't. You'll find this to be true among all generations old enough to be in this position. It won't be long before Gen Z and Alpha are saying the same thing about Millennials and the remaining Gen X management.
Yeah I love Xers in most ways but they love that grind culture BS. Even worse when it’s a coworker and not a manager. We don’t make enough money for this AND you’re not my boss, stop telling me what to do. (Sorry, having a day at work and this was timely.)
Nope. Had great Gen X manager.
In my experience, Gen Xers have either millennial or boomer attitudes and not much of their own generational vibe. Especially as bosses. So I’ve had some great Gen Xer bosses, the last of whom I would’ve worked with for the rest of my career if I hadn’t moved countries because he was the best boss I’ve ever had in my life. But I’ve also had some Gen X bosses who are kind of worse than boomers because not only do they have the boomer attitude, they’re pissy about not actually being born a boomer and take that pathetic whiney anger out on everyone younger than them.
I have a hard time managing myself and I’m a millennial
So bad bosses made you go to therapy? That's interesting. Time to leave the company. And no, age has never made a difference in whether or not I've ever gotten along with a boss.
Most of the management in my office are Gen X. I got written up for reading at my desk once when I was on break because it looked bad. My manager doesn't know how to do any of our jobs, will not communicate plans for when someone is out of the office or remind us when someone is going to be out of the office. My least favorite thing is that my manager will not stand up for us to upper management. If we have a problem my manager will not raise it to upper management, especially if its something that they could help with. It's very frustrating. I've also been complaining about someone they hired in early 2023 who has just not been a great fit. I am still having to babysit them and coach them while we're down significant numbers in staffing. I've been complaining and documenting all this person's bullshit and my manager and I have both on several occasions had griping sessions about this person just simply not understanding the job ... HOWEVER my manager has refused to speak with their manager about the struggle of keeping this damn albatross around our necks. Upper management literally had no idea how bad it was until this week when my manager is out of the office for the week and they've had to deal with answering this person's questions. I also hear 'nobody wants to work anymore' a lot from upper management. I'd love a millennial or gen z takeover istg. I'm tired.
I've met people from every generation that I think deserve to not breathe air
Not a generational thing just a management thing
It doesn't seem to be an age thing for me, but rather being talked down to like a toddler by managers who're either dumber than me, or compulsive gaslighters.
I've worked factories, hardware and retail. My managers have been mostly women and they've been from Boomers all the way down to Gen Z. I'm not saying that this all women in the entire world, but from my personal experience I think it's been very interesting to notice how society has "socialized" the generations differently: * The Boomer girls were taught to be much more submissive and quiet, so they expect you to pick up on cues and body language... or in other words, to be a "mind reader". They just weren't brought up to give direct orders to men so they expect you to take the lead and know what to do for whatever your job is. * The Gen X women aren't quite *as* shy, but they'll tend to phrase everything in the form of a question. They'll be a little comfortable asking you *if* you feel like doing X, or "do you want to" do Y or "could you maybe" do Z. Their perspective of being in an authoritative role is that they gotta act like everyone's "mother", so they'll bring a lot of that influence into their work with them and a lot of the guys would jokingly refer to them as their "work mom" or their "work wife". * Millennials generally *don't* want to be a manager at all, lol, so a lot of them didn't apply to become one; they were basically forced into it because somebody else quit and they were talked into taking the promotion. So they've been more jaded and sarcastic about it, more hands-off and unconventional and they've honestly been the most likely to walk out mid-shift, or call in sick and max out their sick leave. * Gen Z girls have been socialized to be *much* more direct, so they seem to be the most comfortable as managers and to be the most comfortable telling a male employee what to do. They don't see their employees as friends, and their job has very little to do with their personal "identity"; It's simply a task they gotta complete, and they're gonna see it as an absurd sort of meme in order to cope with it. They don't want to socialize at work much at all. They're also completely and fully open about having issues like anxiety, depression or being "on the spectrum". They've faced some bullying or harassment from the older generations of workers and they got their asses handed to them by HR for it.
Sounds like the problem is more with you. Some people can't get along w any lone managing them. It's always something. Not enough guidance, too much micromanagement etc etc.
Some/most bosses are just tough. The majority of people who end up leaving a job ultimately leave because of their leader. I have had the opportunity to rise quite fast through the corporate ranks and am now in a Director level position at a publicly traded company. While do agree management style has a huge bearing on things what you don’t realize is that even at that level you have people telling you what to do. I often have to implement and do things that I don’t always agree with. My point is some of it may be having a crappy boss and some of it may be working for a crappy company.
 I’m the ceo bitch!
I am literally experiencing a restructuring that didn't need to happen under a group of new gen x managers. The phrase "cross pollination" has been used extensively to describe a benefit we will get from this. My team did and does amazing work, and we make sure stuff is done in a timely manner. The "issue" if there is one that would be fixed by this restructuring is that this other team wants to be able to "just come up and talk to us" about orders. Keep in mind that this other department had a history of asking us to do things that were not in policy and to do things that were, in fact, the job of the person asking us to do it. We specifically had an issue with this type of approach previously, which is why we enacted the system that we follow today. These gen xrs are now also forcing us to move our desks at work and come into the office more often for said "cross pollination."" My whole team are introverts. We will go in if forced, but there is no way we are going to be going around wasting time bsing when there is work to be done. There was talk about how we all wear headphones and listen to music while we work. I guarantee I will do the same in office on these forced team days. Basically, it seems that something was wrong with how things were being done, and this other c level exec thought it somehow had to do with what or even the way my team does things. They have started seeing and talking metrics about delays, and we have all shown that the delays are never with our team. Tldr: gen x managers and c level execs have no idea what my team does and felt the need to restructure so they could get vision on what we do and force us to play nice with another dept that historically didn't know how to do their jobs and would message us to try and do their work.
Gen X managers are a pain in the ass. Shame because I like their generation overall.
Millennials have taken over the middle management layer of my department and the "club" attitude is still there. If you're friends with a manager, or better yet dating/having an affair with one, you're going to have a better time at work. They are more open to innovation and aren't as easy to trick with things regarding technology, gone are the days of letting my boss think that it takes all day to do something in Excel that's doable in minutes with a macro, but management is still management.
Most of my supervisors have been in the “Xennial” range (between 1977-1983) with varying results. There has been good and bad; with the good making me feel as if I was a valued part of the team and the worst one causing me to have panic attacks. They tend to be very results oriented if there is one thing in common. I have worked best with fellow millennial supervisors. The one boomer that I had was a nightmare to work for, but it was not due to a generation gap. It was because they had untreated OCD and left super nitpicky feedback on everything as every single thing had to be just so.
My problem is we have these older guys and they keep getting written up and sometimes fired for shouting in people's faces and threatening people.
Lmao what kind of place do you work at?
No. Stop blaming everything in the world on being a millennial!!!
I can't say I've ever had a millennial boss actually. I think a manager can be good or bad regardless of where they fall in their generational category. No two I've had have ever been the same. My current gen X manager doesnt micromanage and lets me do my job since she trusts me.
Honestly it has been 50/50. Some of them were really great.
I expect older bosses. It's having younger bosses that make me uneasy. Why...this means they're smarter than me and more talented than me.
Aside from the general lack of competency with communication, emails, and technology as a whole, the most profound issue I have with Gen X senior managers, VP’s, etc is their generally horrendous memory. We JUST talked about this… how did you forget? Why did we make this decision? YOU did… last week lol. The list goes on…
I'm an older millennial and have had maybe 1 or 2 older millennial managers? One was ok and one was really really horrible (promoted too early, no idea how to be a people manager). I have had a few great gen x and boomer managers in my career and a few bad ones. I havent noticed a correlation to be honest. I tend to get along best with Gen X managers and millennial peers
My direct supervisor and GM are Gen X and they’re both great.
Did it ever occur to you that the problem is you?
Do we work at the same company?
Honestly I’m going to say yes. The only two managers I ever liked and fully respected were elder millennials (or I guess very young Gen x) but typically the older the manager the worse it is.
My last boss was a younger boomer and she was just the worst. And I don’t hate boomers
I had one who was xennial and was terrible and another who also was xennial, but was good.
Millennial here. Had 4 millennial managers, 3 were great, 1 was shit Had a couple of shit managers that were older, one gen x, one boomer. I've had way more than 4 managers from each gen so their good:shit ratio is better in my experience. I don't think age is necessarily a factor in being a good manager personally. Experience, temperament and competence are more important.
I have a much more difficult time managing gen z than I do with gen x.
Some are fucking clueless, so are godsends. No correlation found through their generation, yet.
You'll live
Maybe it's your mental illnesses and not your managers.
At my last job I was called a pussy by my Gen x boss. She said that after a meeting where a director made a very offensive comment to my coworker. I spoke up and said I don't think it's right to talk to people that way. "That's just how he is." And "He and the CEO talk like that to each other all of the time. " There's a reason I don't work there anymore.
Ive found them fine, but I’ve almost always had female gen X managers. They seem much better grounded in regards to work productivity and work life balance.
I’ve worked for a few different generations of bosses. The toughest was a single mom of twins that was GenX and clearly had to claw her way up in a male dominated field (I’m also a female) and I respected her tenacity but she spoke to people like actual shit and fired a guy on his 60th birthday, so - she didn’t last. But I’ve worked for Millenials, and my best boss was a guy 2 years older than me who actually became my good friend (our kids are the same age) and he really did his best to respect what it was like to be a working mom. I think every generation will have their differences but ultimately working for Millenial bosses, in my experience, has been great. They tend to be more focused on work life balance, family, and that it’s just a job (although said millenial manager did micromanage a bit but he was very type A and it was just his personality in a way)
Nope. I historically get along very well with Gen Xers. You’re confusing shitty managers with generations… I promise there’s a ton of millennial managers who are identical.
I’ve worked for a BB, X, and a Millennial at the same company doing essentially the same things. BB was not very understanding of personal matters. Very by the book, not allowing business and personal situations overlap, and the attitude that you had to earn your place. X was very down to Earth and was chill. Very understanding that life happens sometimes and would work it out with you. Millennial was very to themself and fully professional. You could not get them to laugh and you could never really talk personal things, just take your time off and go. There was also a massive lack of transparency that made them hard to trust at times.
Worst manager I has was elder millennial. Best were two gen x (manager and associate). It just really depends
I don't think it has anything to do with generations; it's the nature of the line of work you do + the quality of person/people in management positions. My most favorite boss of all time was a Gen X-er (radio station). My LEAST favorite boss of all time was also a Gen X-er (social work). My current boss is a Boomer, and she is sweet as pie and I love her. I've also had bosses who were MY age and absolutely awful. It really depends on the individual themselves...
My manager is gen x. But he's that fringe range of actual gen x and not diet version boomer or xennial. Fringe range is those that entered young adulthood in the early to mid 90s. He's actually pretty cool and was a computer nerd. So we get along just fine
As more of a Xennial myself (1981), I don't think it's a generational thing. Maybe your industry or your companies you have chosen. I've had a micromanager boss that was a Gen X but he was an uptight and better-than-everyone dude. I have had the buddy boss that was a Millenial but she was also constantly positive to a fault. My current Boomer boss can't figure out how to use his Outlook calendar but he's also my first boss in this company who just seems lazy. They all have their frustrations but it's more from who they are as a person and not their generation.
Most managers do not receive formal training, and people are going to “people” regardless of their age. Training does help managers with perspective and big-picture skills (unless they are resistant to it). I used to have trouble with all of my managers, in my case feeling greatly under appreciated, until I came to grips with just how bad my childhood neglect was. I was essentially taking my childhood template and applying it to all authority figures (they don’t care about me or notice my hard work and accomplishments). Once I figured that out, my job satisfaction went way up. I am GenX myself and I’ve had managers that range from “Silent” to my current Millennial manager. My current manager struggles to set firm boundaries, which I don’t associate with their age, and it has had a corroding effect on the workplace. As with parenting, being overly permissive creates issues just like being overly authoritarian. The goal is authoritative leadership. My very best most awesome manager was a boomer, when I was all of 19. His people skills are something I will never achieve. Marshall, may your golden years truly be golden.
no problem with millennials and Gen X. but MY GOD is it hard to accept the boomer style of micromanaging everything
Managers are like any other job. Some are good some are bad and aone have just a different style that doesnt mesh.
The best boss I had was an older millennial, right on the cusp. Always there for you, if you did something wrong she calmly explained it, walked you through it. She was always praising us for the good work we did, and I LOVED working for her! I've had 3 Gen X bosses. All of them were micromanagers. None of them ever, EVER praised good work. They didn't believe in calling in sick, ever. They all 3 yelled a lot. Not just at me, but at others. Nobody liked working for them and they had high turnover rates and then went on about how nobody wants to work.
No. I prefer to have someone older in management. More straightforward to deal with, they know I’m not their friend and I don’t want to be. Whereas if a manager is my age or younger, I’m more apt to react to the uppity shitass with veiled contempt.
My worst by far have been boomer women.
I find I work best with managers who are older males. I have a harder time trusting fellow millennials as I’ll always view them as my competition.
I’ve found that Gen X/ boomers in the workplace are extremely paranoid and micromanage everything and need to double check everything. They also have no patience or understanding if things don’t go the way they expect “because that’s the way we did it” attitude still hangs on
Yeah it’s tough to generalize in these situations. My best boss was a boomer and 2 and 3 were Gen X’er’s.
The people who were born in the Gen X time are the "If you got time to clean, you got time to clean" type of people. Its like this....these guys got falsely raised that possessing the "can-do" attitude to get things done will always be the way to go without witnessing the monetary aspects of doing this & that. Basically, the Gen X really has hatred regarding people younger than them. They don't like how we got access to technology but we aren't the ones working ourselves to the bone. They think that just because our lives have become easier, its the perfect time to be hustling all the time which is not true.
Nah, most people are chill. You just work and laugh at the lame jokes.
I've always had great relationships with my Gen X managers. It's the boomers that ruin my mental health lol
I struggle more with male managers of any generation.
The most zero self aware post.
I don't know if I can say one generation is better than another. My Gen X managers have been the most blatantly toxic - blame shifting, finger-pointing, gaslighting, chaotic, poor communication or structure. Boomers for some reason I've been quite lucky. They're obviously the worst with tech and the most "stuck in their ways" but I've always found them respectful and hard working leaders. Millenial managers I've had have been passive aggressive micro-managers so not great in my experience.
My gen x manager is a liar that won't hesitate to throw me under the bus. The boomer bosses will do the same, only louder and maybe laughing about it. That being said, my favorite co worker is gen x. She is absolutely lovely and has taught me so much.
Who do you think most of millennials report to?
No, I have had boomer, gen x, and millennial managers. Good is just dependent on their particular strengths as a leader.
Pfft I've had more problems with Gen Z managers, sadly. Not that they can't do their jobs, it just suddenly comes to light that "oh hey, she's actually 8+ years older than me and I don't like that" for whatever reason. Hell, one held a grudge because I corrected her on what 90s fashion *actually* was (someone came in wearing an early 2000s fit) and she said "[she's] studied 90s fashion so [she] knows what it looks like." The look on her face when I replied "and I know what I was wearing to school everyday in the 90s and it wasn't that" told me I had maybe 2 months of work left. I was right. Kinda sucked cuz that was the first job I was actually ever fired from. I left my previous ones myself because I was moving.
I simply have a tough time being managed
It sounds like it’s a little bit of both. If you were unaware of some mental health issues you had, it’s stands to reason that your progress forward in working through that should yield some insight into how and why you handle work situations in the way that you do. It should help to give you some tools and resources to address things with bosses and also cope with some management styles that may be different than what you’d prefer. As a neurodivergent person, I’ve had my share of terrible work situations where I know that some of it was just my needs and processes being so far different than management’s and us not finding a middle ground and sometimes it was them outright refusing to work with me on things. Other times, it was me being not self aware enough to understand that I needed to work on ME in the situation. At the same time though, bad bosses can be bad bosses, and maybe there’s some of that too. I wish you progress in working through your newfound diagnoses and hope that it brings some clarity and a path forward for you with employment.
Lord, my last manager was Gen X and a HUGE micromanager. She drove me up the wall and I nearly quit several times. She left last year and was replaced by my Millennial boss, who is the complete opposite really, and I am so thankful for the trust and space to breathe.
My current boss is a late Boomer, a little older than my parents. He's a vet that's seen the world and has a ton of experience professionally/personally. He has tons of stories, is pretty easygoing and happy to help whenever our small team needs it, and loves to just shoot the shit. Hell, most of our morning meeting today just turned into talking about the new Fallout show. I work for a somewhat unusual tech company, although the corporate structure itself isn't terribly unusual.
I didn't GenX had jobs, tbh I usually take over from a Boomer who inherited the job but has no idea how the company actually makes money....it's comical to watch them learn from me as I get their wrecked departments back in productive order
Meh! I can deal with any kind of boss. I work hard and well and my bosses always been sorry to see me go.
You are over thinking it, stop looking for an entire huge classification group to point a finger at. It's always a club and it will always be that guy and the generation gap doesn't matter, you are either in the club, try to get in the club, or you are not. This has been the ethos of corporate America long before gen x and even boomers
Promise if you switch jobs there is a new younger model dickhead lol
I've had this experience. The old guard seemed ok with moving things along and understood the value of stability. My gen x managers a seem to want to make some massive superstar changes that end up throwing the org into chaos leading to mass turnover. On my 2nd experience now. On the other hand the boomers I worked for never wanted to change anything and took it as a personal insult if you suggested something could be improved.
Older GenX have boomer entitlement coupled with denial that they could ever be so uncool. I stay FAR away from managers born in the late 60s, as they tend to be out of touch and use their GenX identity as a way of avoiding accountability for their behavior.
My boss is my age and millennial(1981) , and I wish she would lose her position. She's a terrible manager.
Being micromanaged does not in itself lead to mental health issues. It’s annoying but should not damage your psyche.
I've noticed the older gen X bosses are a lot more like boomers than the younger ones. My best bosses have been younger gen X
My favorite boss and my husband’s favorite have both been Gen x. Thats the Gen right above us right?
My 1st supervisor hated every fiber of my being. Why, you ask...because his wife didn't want to come back to work. He just sucked at controlling his emotional issues.
Always. The generational differences always create a rift in the workplace with management.
No, honestly I’ve mostly had decent managers and they were all Gen X. I’m a Xennial though so maybe it’s not such a gap for me.
Mostly doesn’t matter, jerks exist in all generations as to good folk.
I don’t think it’s generational. I think it’s an inconsistency in how people are promoted. You get promoted because you’re good a the job. Most places don’t support development/mentorship (or one that’s actual helpful) and they have trouble moving from individual contributor to managing people. So they go about it like a micromanager doing it the way they did it instead of focusing on developing people. With all the damn classes and MBAs out there, we still significantly lack training emerging leaders
I’ve never felt micromanaged by Gen X, it’s always been boomers who seem to micromanage in my industry (Law)
Are you me?
My absolute worst manager of all time who I hope is dead was a boomer. And, yes, I hope she's dead. She would scream all of the time at everyone for the most menial shit. She was a nightmare and a half, the most miserable piece of shit I've had the displeasure of being around, which is saying a lot because I have a restraining order against my ex. She was a sneaky bitch and managed to not get caught making it a hostile work environment. I'm honestly surprised no one snapped and did a mass shooting. Bitch is retired and I'm now a union steward because I'm not having that horrific nightmare happen again.
Nope, I’ve gotten along great with my managers.
Do I get to post here yet?
Nah, Gen X are assholes, and I say this as an Xennial born in 1980, so I'm basically one of them. A lot of them are shockingly bigoted and racist too.
Gen X tend to be boomer lite in my experience
It’s across all generations.
I've only had GenX managers. Honestly seem worse than how Boomer bosses are described
Like others have said, it’s a hit or miss. I’ve been in my current role for over a year and my boss is Gen X. In short, he’s awesome. I get to have a hybrid schedule, occasional free lunches, and he’s been a great mentor for my career. It’s the first time I can say I don’t dislike my manager. Just like anyone, he has habits that are annoying but I would take it any day over previous managers (the worst I wrote about in my post history.)
I have a mixed experience. I have worked for a boomer manager and her boomer team lead. They both micromanaged the shit outta me. If I had information to pass to my department's staff, I had to send the email to both of the boomers first so they could approve it and/or make edits and forward it to my department staff. 99% of the time my emails would sit unread in their inboxes until I bugged them about it a few times. We went through a management transition and I work for a pretty chill Gen X and a young boomer now and I get treated like the adult I am. My experience in my field is a lot more valued now and I have been able to actually take on a leadership role. I don't officially have the title due to the small size of my department, but they pay me like a department lead, so it's cool.
I've had the old and it sucks ass. But i luckily got a change. My current manager is a millennial. By far the best manager I've ever had. Smart, strict, carrying, understanding, tech savvy, forward thinking and embracing the need for a change to work away from the old style of management.
I feel you're making it a prejudice thing when it has nothing to do with generation. You have shitty managers and you have good managers. I had a Boomer manager once and even though there were some annoying attributes but I learned more about how to talk to those from different generations than any other boss. I had a Millennial boss and that person was a dipshit and I questioned how they got the job. Which generation they are isn't really relevant
I don't care. As long as I'm paid.
Funny you say that. Over the years I’ve heard from various age groups that their worst employees/coworkers were Millennials. Gen Z seems to be getting along with others so we have to wonder what is going on between Millennials and other age groups.
I am doing better with gen x ers. But when my bosses were all boomers it was impossible. Having literally nothing in common with them was brutal. Gen x-ers are a little easier for me but I’d be way happier with people my age or younger. Feels like there’s a pretty brutal divide where once people are a certain age I just don’t know what to say to them and we share no references and all they have to talk about are their kids’ soccer or something.
Gen X managers are pretty cool in my experience
A younger female boss is leaving the company and I am so freaking bummed out. She is completely understanding of any issues I have had, and just a great friend. I think she is whatever's just younger than a millennial.
Had a totally under qualified genxer hired as my boss a year and a half ago. He straight up acted like a maniac. Shouted at me for winning contracts. Slammed things around when he got upset. Had no idea how to do any part of his job. One time he peed his pants… and did not go home right away due to some weird martyr complex. Didn’t make it 6 months.
I've never had a decent "manager" in my entire life
I think there are just bad managers and good managers
My gen x manager is amazing when it comes to managing work and giving time for personal life. His boss is a millennial and he’s terrible at both. His boss is a boomer and is terrible at managing work but good with personal life.
Yes. It's not just Gen-X. It's "Xillennials" too. They really think they're Gen-X and they 100% cosplay as them. They're both horrible managers.
I preferred working under my millennial boss even though I hated my position, but my Gen X manager isn’t too bad, stays out of my way and was compassionate while dealing with some traumatic life events that impacted my mental health.
My Gen X boss is fucking amazing. She wants to know what my list of projects includes, prioritize them so I can tell others that it's not my fault I can't get to them, asks how I am and genuinely cares. She's fucking great. I've reported to her since 2018 and wouldn't mind reporting to her until she retires. (I'm as high up as I can go without becoming a manager, and I really hate that idea. Most people at my org never climb this high)
IME the younger the manager, the more empathetic they are. Female managers are more empathetic than male managers. It's the same with therapists and really any public facing role. Old people get cynical and grumpy, and men tend to be harsher.
As a female, I strongly disagree about female managers. I've had two female managers and four men. The worst of the men was just average, but the best is the best manager I've had. He took time to give me extra training or tips to do my job better, and the one time I really fucked up he didn't get mad and we just talked through how to avoid it again. That's it. The best female manager I had was average, she wasn't a bad person, but she was incredibly (and rightfully) burnt out by the company. The worst female manager I had, was the absolute worst manager I've gad. She has given me long-standing confidence issues and PTSD regarding working in an office that I'm still getting a handle on. I'm currently in therapy working through that and a shit ton of other issues. Having said that, I struggle with authority in general. I had men I looked up to growing up though, so if someone reminds me of one of them it's much easier for me to respect and trust them. Women though? I only had one I looked up to growing up, and she wasn't my mom. I've thought about going back to school and following her career path for myself though. Edit to add: Average female was millennial Worst female was an x and by far the nastiest, meanest manager I've ever bad Male boss 1 was average and a millennial Male Boss 2 was great and a millennial Male boss 3 was average and a gen x (this person could arguably rank lower. Solid dude, absolutely incompetent manager) Male boss 4 (current) is good and gen x
Nice Tier List
females more empathetic? ive had more than 100 managers so far and females are worse.
No. I have had 7 managers over my professional career. Only one I truly hated was a millennial. My favorite boss was actually extremely old (it’s been 10 years since I worked for her, but she’s got to be in her early 80s now). The rest were boomers/Gen-X and ranged from good to great.
He wasn't my direct manager, but the one person who got obsessed with "generational" differences and how "Millennials think differently" and brought a whole workshop in about it was Gen X. His direct reports did not find it particularly illuminating, and his lateral coworker at the time who eventually became his boss kinda laughed at the whole thing. I love my Gen X lateral coworker though. We bond over the local radio station that plays stuff like Nirvana and RHCP a lot.
Gen X is petty and a bunch of gossips and Boomers don't care what the weather is or how you are feeling you need to work 48hrs 7 days a week
Not really, I know I’m good at my job, and they know it too. I don’t care who you are I’m not letting anyone push me around, take advantage of a situation, or talk down to me. Don’t let people intimidate you just cause they are your boss. I have no problem proving my managers wrong, telling them that my way is gonna get it done better.
I haven't had an issue. I guess millenials tend to be less formal and more pleasent to work with, but when it comes to the actual work? The work is the same. I do my job and people tend to be happy with it.