A recent report, based on a poll of IT managers, says that managers find younger IT workers hard to manage due to their "unreasonable" expectations about pay and working conditions.
"Atlantic Associates polled more than 100 Massachusetts executives on the challenges they face and more than 50% of respondents described those teen and 20-something employees as the 'toughest generation to manage, wrote Denise Dubie in Network World. "Generation Xers (ages 32 to 42 years old) placed second with 17% of respondents saying they pose a management challenge."
"Millennials are coming in with high expectations and are disillusioned about the reality of a work place," said Jack Harrington, co-founder of Atlantic Associates, a staffing firm, in the article. "They feel they should be rewarded and start at the top, when we all know you have to work your way up. They have been raised to be rewarded often and when you get into the workforce those rules change a bit," Harrington says.
Yet, managers acknowledge that the pool of qualified workers is shrinking and that some openings are going unfilled. Many of the polled managers identified hiring and retaining qualified workers as their primary staffing challenge for the coming year. Apparently, the salaries and working conditions they're providing are not adequate to attract the capable young people the industry needs.
When a company and an industry is struggling to find qualified employees, the obvious response is to offer more money and better working conditions. I can't help wondering whether it's the managers, and not the young employees, who have unreasonable expectations.
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