03-10-2017, 04:07 PM
Now that we are well into the 4th Turning, what started as a trickle is becoming an outgoing flood tide.
A 1945 Aquarian I've been working with turned in his spurs a couple weeks ago. With him, much tribal knowledge of certain embedded systems and very legacy code. He did his best to document contextual stuff that you can't get from reading normal specs, code reviews, readmes and in line comments. I joked to him, be sure not to give anyone your number, because otherwise you'll be getting some consulting gigs when you are supposed to be out in the tules duck hunting.
That was a lighter moment.
Last fall, there was some darkness. A 1944 cohort who worked for me a few years ago, then for other managers since, had gone out on disability to fight cancer. Over the holidays I saw the obituary. Ugh ...
Just today, I was going through an old issue of my college alumni mag (I had some of the paper version around in "stuff" I'm downsizing). There was a short article by a guy from the Class of '66. He was sharing his journey and his current perspective. It was good writing - the dude was an English major who'd become a prof, then went into journalism and doing a PR start up. He had a blog. Prompted by the article I looked at his blog for the first time in years. Seeing the entries suddenly stop a couple years back, I suspected the worst. My fears were confirmed when I searched him on our alumni site. He passed not long after the last blog entry.
Most people imagine that the tech industry I've been caught up in now for 30 years is a bunch of Uber riding, iPhone jockey Millennials. Sure there are companies, especially start ups, where there are many Millies. But this biz was loaded with Boomers for many years. At the larger firms there are still many Boomers. There is a never ending stream of retirements, plus, the more maudlin outcomes of illness and death.
I've stopped having lots of anger toward Boom as I age. That's a bit remarkable given how Boom were the Grey Ceiling hindering me until I was too old to be the young up and comer. For all the venom thrown their way by us Xers and increasingly, Millies, there is a lot of good in the Boom cohorts. There is so much experience and knowledge. Given the horrendous lack of Knowledge Management in most American business environments, we are going to really miss that experience and knowledge. Not everything is an iPhone ap. Even some of the stuff running the cloud is the province of Boom. Beyond the newer whiz bang, there are still many mainframes running substantial parts of the world. Keeping it all afloat is not going to be a picnic.
A 1945 Aquarian I've been working with turned in his spurs a couple weeks ago. With him, much tribal knowledge of certain embedded systems and very legacy code. He did his best to document contextual stuff that you can't get from reading normal specs, code reviews, readmes and in line comments. I joked to him, be sure not to give anyone your number, because otherwise you'll be getting some consulting gigs when you are supposed to be out in the tules duck hunting.
That was a lighter moment.
Last fall, there was some darkness. A 1944 cohort who worked for me a few years ago, then for other managers since, had gone out on disability to fight cancer. Over the holidays I saw the obituary. Ugh ...
Just today, I was going through an old issue of my college alumni mag (I had some of the paper version around in "stuff" I'm downsizing). There was a short article by a guy from the Class of '66. He was sharing his journey and his current perspective. It was good writing - the dude was an English major who'd become a prof, then went into journalism and doing a PR start up. He had a blog. Prompted by the article I looked at his blog for the first time in years. Seeing the entries suddenly stop a couple years back, I suspected the worst. My fears were confirmed when I searched him on our alumni site. He passed not long after the last blog entry.
Most people imagine that the tech industry I've been caught up in now for 30 years is a bunch of Uber riding, iPhone jockey Millennials. Sure there are companies, especially start ups, where there are many Millies. But this biz was loaded with Boomers for many years. At the larger firms there are still many Boomers. There is a never ending stream of retirements, plus, the more maudlin outcomes of illness and death.
I've stopped having lots of anger toward Boom as I age. That's a bit remarkable given how Boom were the Grey Ceiling hindering me until I was too old to be the young up and comer. For all the venom thrown their way by us Xers and increasingly, Millies, there is a lot of good in the Boom cohorts. There is so much experience and knowledge. Given the horrendous lack of Knowledge Management in most American business environments, we are going to really miss that experience and knowledge. Not everything is an iPhone ap. Even some of the stuff running the cloud is the province of Boom. Beyond the newer whiz bang, there are still many mainframes running substantial parts of the world. Keeping it all afloat is not going to be a picnic.
