Patronising young people at work

[Starland2]

I work in the public sector. We have a lot of graduates. They are all intelligent lovely people but they have such strange approaches to work sometimes. For example I have a job in quite a niche specialism. I love my job and am very experienced. When the younger members of the team find out about what I do they often want to talk about it in great detail and I am happy to do so. A strange thing that keeps happening is that they will then come across people in a similar role in a different organisation. They then “helpfully “ email me and the contact and suggest we meet and chat so I can learn about how they do the job. More often than not I know the contact as it’s a smallish network.

The thing I find strange is why would I need these meetings? I know how to do my job! I think they think they are being helpful but it’s just odd and a bit patronising. You wouldn’t tell a teacher to meet with another teacher to talk about how they do their job!

I think they think it makes them look connected and helpful!?

A lot colleagues often go on about how young the graduates are in front of them. I never do this as it can get annoying for them. At the same time I want them to understand that older colleagues do have more experience!

I assume they'll have it as a development/CV objective, and any actual benefit to the other people is very much a lesser consideration.

I had to sit through a presentation on an area of work in which I have a masters (distinction) and fifteen years' practical experience, delivered by a junior colleague who is not yet qualified to practise in that area. Apparently he needs to do some teaching/training/mentoring to get promoted, and the need for him to be standing up talking outweighed the lack of benefit to his audience.

04FoxgloveSummers

But course suggestor guy is clearly a total wanker. I bet he doesn’t do anything proper just focuses on looking busy and important.

I would wilfully understand and reply to his next email saying “great idea Keith I think you’d really benefit from this, it should cover the things you’ve been asking me to show you”. Copy in everyone.

I love this, im stealing this and on a day where he really irritates me eith this (probably the first day back after xmas!) I am totally using it

@TheTurn0fTheScrew

I assume they'll have it as a development/CV objective, and any actual benefit to the other people is very much a lesser consideration.

I had to sit through a presentation on an area of work in which I have a masters (distinction) and fifteen years' practical experience, delivered by a junior colleague who is not yet qualified to practise in that area. Apparently he needs to do some teaching/training/mentoring to get promoted, and the need for him to be standing up talking outweighed the lack of benefit to his audience.

I think this too. I think they've all done some training where this was given as one (possibly under-thought) example of something helpful they could do, and they've all seized on it and done literally exactly that. Like when I was teaching undergraduates I learned to be really careful about giving 'for instance' examples when talking about their coursework ('so you might, for instance, use a question about X to discuss Y', which was meant to be an off the top of my head illustration) because if I did more than half of them would do exactly that, repeating my words back to me...

Or I’d ask if he meant to send it to me, then when he says says I’d ask why?

I'd ask them to attend every single meeting. They'd soon stop

Networking then. I get it, they would not have a good reason to contact that person (with a view to adding them on LinkedIn) unless they put in the spurious notion that you OP would like to meet them. Now the new employee has made contact with this person so can with a wobbly degree of reasoning add them to their LinkedIn account, regardless of whether you OP want to meet them, have met them, don't need to meet them, hate them or whatever.

Gosh! The young and confidence eh! It's all about the LinkedIn profile and never mind annoying my new colleagues!

I would not be pleased with anyone who sent me information about how to be kinder. It would be hard not to tell them to stuff it.

Well, partly about the LinkedIn profile and also about being on as many LinkedIn networks as possible - as those are where you read about new jobs apparently. right, I am boring even myself now so the ironing it is.

@SheWoreYellow

Or I’d ask if he meant to send it to me, then when he says says I’d ask why?

Sorry, when he says “yes” I’d just ask “why?”

I think it's more positive than you're crediting. Grads have a growth mindset and expect to never stop learning. They aren't meaning to patronise just being helpful.

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow

I think it's more positive than you're crediting. Grads have a growth mindset and expect to never stop learning. They aren't meaning to patronise just being helpful.

Everybody has a growth mindset. Most people take time to find out what the other person wants to learn before wasting their time with spurious opportunities to 'grow'

The corporate world is such utter bollocks! I would rather do just about any other job than have to worry about growth mindsets and networking and LinkedIn.

Young graduates have always been a bit like this.
My dad's favourite cartoon, which he prominently displayed at work was of a graduate and an experienced employee:
EE: "...and then when you be done all that you need to tidy up and sweep the floor"
G: "sweep the floor! But I'm a graduate!"
EE: "oh yes, I forgot. Don't worry, I'll show you how"

Yes, I have seen that behaviour in my work place.

The worse thing is that they think they are more important than anyone else. We work with the public in rather a difficult environment (they can often be drunk, for example). The new grad recruits cannot and will not put their 'phones down at all despite the fact there is a rule that you put your 'phone away when you come into the premises. They will eat throughout the day when they are supposed to be helping the public. They all have a flat affect - like severely depressed people.

None of them smile at the public. So much screen time and interaction online? They are shit workers tbh, and despite the fact that we are all graduates, they think they are superior and rules made for good reasons don't apply.

None of them can spell. We often see there/their/they're mistakes, your/you're/ could of instead of could have, and other illiterate written errors that are an embarrassment that no bright 12 year old would have made 20 years ago, let alone a graduate. All their written work has to be checked. Kisses on the bottom of work emails and other crap.

The argument that because they’re inexperienced and lacking in knowledge themselves means they think the same applies to others is really interesting because that view shows an arrogance and lack of being able to understand someone else’s experiences and perspective. It says “I don’t know that, therefore nobody else will either.”

A milestone in my own professional life and life in general was learning that older / more senior / more experienced people don’t know everything. The skilled and smart ones know how to approach a problem and they’ll have a certain baseline knowledge, but a lot of being competent in work or life is knowing when it’s ok to wing it or ask someone else. But that initial tendency - thinking other people know what they’re doing and have all the answers - is pretty instinctual and I see it in others too. By contrast, to imagine that someone with 20 years experience in the workplace has the same gaps in their knowledge as a fresh grad is actually a bit mindblowing to me!

The linked in, erm, link is a good one I think. The online networking thing feels alien to me and I’m only 35 😳🦖🦕

I love grads! They are like little pet puppies, very anxious to please, but at the same time very annoying

The argument that because they’re inexperienced and lacking in knowledge themselves means they think the same applies to others is really interesting because that view shows an arrogance and lack of being able to understand someone else’s experiences and perspective. It says “I don’t know that, therefore nobody else will either.”

This sums up a lot of younger workers, I've wondered for a while whether something in schools fundamentally changed in schools that's led to these types of attitudes.

@TheAntiGardener that's not what I meant

Op seemed puzzled they would think someone could get a job with no experience, which of course all of them have. I don't think its that puzzling really or bizarre a scenario that someone could get a job without having much experience in the area if you are a new grad.

It's not arrogance ffs, and it doesn't mean 'I don't know that so no one else will'. OP herself can't seem to see out of her own scenario and understand that lots of people I.e. grads get jobs with no experience

I didn’t mean to come across like that @KeepApart. I have said that they are very intelligent people and some I am sure have done placements so have experience. To be clear I don’t manage them. I am only sharing the weird experience of being introduced to people by graduates so I can learn from them. Which would be fine if I didn’t already know them and didn’t need to learn how to do my job!

I have attended training the graduates have run and found it excellent. They definitely have skills I don’t and I want to learn.

It’s only this one thing that is annoying and that I find so baffling and embarrassing for them . As people have said I think it’s networking culture?

@TheAntiGardener that’s exactly what it’s like. They discover something for the first time and think other people don’t know about it!

I try my best to always assume knowledge when working with people. It doesn’t matter if they are a graduate or been there for 40 years!

I am also new to the organisation but don’t go round setting up meetings for senior staff! I am taking time to learn what others do and support as needed.

@KeepApart - apologies for misunderstanding. The point I thought you were making - and it was an interesting one I’d never considered before but actually could explain a lot - was that because they didn’t know a lot they assumed others didn’t either. That is how your previous post reads to me. And I do think that is a mindset that is solipsistic at the very least.

I don’t follow what you’re saying now tbh. Grads and some others don’t have experience, but it’s not unreasonable to think they recognise an experience gap in someone in a more senior role is it? When I started work I didn’t think that because I had no experience that was likely to be true for my manager or their peers.

I also think some people just need to put themselves in everyone’s business and feel important. This conversation is reminding me of a friend I made whilst on maternity leave many years ago. She used to intensely try to give me career advice that I didn’t ask for or need! I just wanted to hang out and chat about babies! Some people always think it’s their job to develop you. I am a very chilled personality and some people mis read that as needing help. It’s not that, I just don’t wang on about my career unless asked!

Yeah, they love a bit of networking/name dropping.

If you're you can get the person you're being helpfully connected to is also

Don't you remember the Mark Twain:

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

@100problems I love that quote

Yes I think the other person is suitably baffled by the “help”. Tbh this embarrassment is punishment enough for the graduates! I think they will soon pick up what is genuinely helpful to others and what’s not!

It’s the constant emphasis on ‘networking’ and ‘communication’ amongst younger workers (but also some older ones) that really annoys me.

I’ve been working on a large scale project on topic X for the last three years. I therefore already know a lot of people working in other organisations on the same topic. I am also fully able to use the internet to research other individuals and orgs working on the topic if and when needed, and get in touch with them.

Yet some of my colleagues often do this thing where they’ll meet someone working on topic X and then ‘do me a favour’ by emailing us both and suggesting we meet. As it’s public sector and both of us are usually too polite to say no, I then have a meeting with this other person working on topic X where we outline the work we’re each doing, make some general comments, exchange pleasantries and promise to keep in touch/invite each other to relevant events. And then never speak again.

Utterly pointless waste of time, but I’ve realised that for many of my colleagues having these kinds of meetings is deemed a success in itself. The networking and communication is seen as an important end in itself, whereas to me it often seems pointless and a waste of time.

@TheAntiGardener @Tabbacus

I’m not sure how much of it is school & how much is the commodification of education with the huge increase of tuition fees. Students & their parents consider themselves to be paying academics to dance attendance on them; they have no concept of self-directed learning; there is massive pressure to mark far more (& ever-more) generously; extensions are demanded on flimsy pretexts at the last minute & [almost] invariably granted; students think nothing of emailing academics who are on sick leave & who they’ve been repeatedly reminded not to contact…

Removing the cap was disastrous too, because it’s having such a horrendous impact on student experience & is going to completely break the sector if something isn’t done about it. Doesn’t matter to, say, Exeter if the student they give a place to with predicted CCD & actual DDE drops out within weeks because they can’t cope on a[n overcrowded] course geared for students with AAB grades. They’ve got the money. Students who would have flourished at “new” universities are getting vacuumed up by the Russell Group & either miserably scraping through, dropping out, or, vanishingly rarely, it all clicks & they have a splendid time (hurrah!) which is of course great, but the odds are not awesome for that. (And again, with the destruction of a whole education sector…) Anyway, point with that bit was not simply to allow me a therapeutic rant, but rather, students who don’t see the bigger picture - as in, some of their peer group would have done much better at other institutions - get a sense of… success simply from surviving? If you think “my course was so hard loads of people dropped out & there were some people who could barely scrape by but I got a First ” rather than “my university has neither shame nor scruples & overstuffed my course with people unqualified to be on it who, understandably, then struggled” it’s going to bump your self-confidence & your faith in your abilities to cope/rise to challenges/generally succeed.

That said, [a lot of] private schools - especially boys’ public schools - genuinely do seem to teach a kind of unabashed & unswerving self-confidence. It - genuinely, truly, honestly - led to men getting more firsts in the subject I read than women (particularly women educated at state schools): & a dissertation was introduced purely to try to ameliorate this somewhat. My God the absolute confusion when they discover that nonsense does not, in fact, always work.

It does seem that there is increasingly a general trend for I didn’t know this so clearly nobody can have - a striking example being all the people bobbing up on social media during the BLM protests to inform us all that black British history isn’t just about the Windrush; & to complain that it’s not taught in school. Leaving aside the fact that to cover the history that would keep everyone happy pretty much the rest of the curriculum would have to be abandoned; in lots of the conversations, anyone who pointed out that they’d studied black British history; &/or that they teach or taught it; &/or that it’s part of the curriculum their child follows was either ignored or shouted down. And absolutely nobody wants to engage with the idea that they were taught it but simply don’t remember it. Does everyone really remember all the topics they covered in history from Infants onwards? I do, but I courtesy of ASD apparently have an unusual memory. I wonder if it’s a side-effect of being in an age of information overload - it’s unthinkable to admit to being behind on a trend or having missed the new thing; & that’s now shifting into something both wider-reaching & more self-absorbed.