When I first got my job, I had to trim some Boomer fat too. Sometimes for the reasons you say and other times because some of them didn’t seem to want to take orders from a millennial. I saw a lot of a entitlement which is funny because the Boomers usually accuse the millennials of being the entitled generation but they’re really no different. Lots of “I’ve been here forever so I’m owed this and that,”type of attitudes. The ones that I had to let go had gotten complacent. But I also have many hard workers from that generation that are close to retirement age and haven’t taken their foot off the gas. Their nose is to the grindstone daily and I appreciate that. It motivates me to pick up the slack as well. It’s nice to have those kinds of knowledge workers on your team.
Yea i ran into a little of that as well, although it wasn't very wide spread but there were certainly a few people that resented me for the position that I was hired into, despite the fact that the position was vacant for about a year because no one internally wanted the job because... drum roll.... it had a big work load lol... they resented me for it none the less, probably because they didn't like that I was higher in the hierarchy than they were and some of them have been there 20, 25, 30+ years. I would say this was more of an outlier tho, I get along with almost everyone
There are quite a few boomers tho that have mentored me and I'm forever grateful for the things that they've done to help me professionally.. I'm very much a believer in building people up, not tearing them down. I don't care if someone is a janitor or a CEO, everyone deserves a basic level of respect and I always invest my time into people to help them be successful, regardless of their rank/title, or silly things like what generation they come from. That is the type of culture that I try to promote and encourage, even if i run into resistance at times
There is definitely a huge level of complacency tho among a lot of the older people in my organization.. Its this attitude that they've been there the longest and are basically resting on their laurels of past accomplishments, thinking that should feed their paycheck indefinitely until they decide to retire. I've walked in on some developers just sitting back, computer monitor blacked out from being idle so long, reading a stephen king sized novel at their desk. Granted, this isn't all of them, but like anywhere you have to find the hard workers and learn who the people are that you can be successful with and who to avoid
I'm 35 and the average age in my organization right now I believe is 55+, which is going to cause a crisis at some point because 60% or so of the staff could retire tomorrow if they wanted to, but a lot of them won't because they're trying to milk the system for as long as possible.. definitely one of the Cons on the Pro/Con Union list for sure. I think Unions can be wonderful, and are responsible for pretty much all of the current labor laws that we all work under and enjoy today in terms of 40 hour work weeks, weekends off, paid holidays, paid sick... but man, they definitely have a ponzi scheme aspect to them as well
