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just want to add, it's not the zoomer's fault. they were intentionally raised in ignorance because its apparently profitable
fuck the corporations who've deliberately turned our living computers into soulless commercial brainwashing surveillance machines
It's their parents fault for not using GNU/Linux
True, and Alpha are even worst, most of them never touched a real keyboard, only use 2 thumbs on a phone. Don't tell them about windows (or/mac/linux) or what is a UI or how to use a mouse and navigate in a OS, they don't get double click or right click, resize a window, minimize a window (OMG THE WINDOW IS GONE!!!!) it's impressive.
I have seen a lot of late Z/early Alpha who cannot make some special characters on a keyboard like " or $ or even worst using AltCar. Using Word to write a letter, using keyboard shortcuts, etc. they are completely clueless with computers.
Look I don't doubt you've met these people but it's not everywhere. Here in Australia the kids still learn this at school.
My daughter is in primary school and they've learned to use a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software etc.
So they can all use a keyboard and mouse and she's done some school projects as PowerPoint slideshows.
Xennials are fascinating to watch navigate through tech hurdles. They have a custom built toolbox built purely through trial and error.
I think you misspelled experience.
Training some younger people at work: "click the cog in the corner to pull up the settings". "What's a 'cog'?" Some things people miss out on life when you've never seen a Jetsons episode.
I just described a cog as a circle with teeth and my son thought it was funny to call the sticky out bits as teeth.
I'm just hoping he doesn't ask about crenellations next.
Cogs are gear teeth.
That's not a cog, it's a sprocket! George Jetson works for Spacely Sprockets.
Messing around with your old WinXP/95 computer and then fixing that mess before your parents come home and scold you does wonders to one's troubleshooting skills. People of this generation never got to hear that scary XP error sound, and it shows.
I work on a help desk. We hired multiple Zoomers and they literally don't understand how computers work. They don't know what the registry is. Or what POST means. Or how to properly back up a user's data without using automated software.
They're fucking dumb. Nice. But dumb.
To be fair, I'm a millenial who's fairly tech savvy and I barely know what POST means. Then again, I don't work in IT.
To be fair, POST could mean a number of things. Are we talking in a webserver context? BIOS context? The POST Office?
Why would someone on a help desk be expected to know what POST is? A software engineer, sure, but helpdesk? If it's needed knowledge…that's what training is for. Businesses' expectation that people will come into the job already knowing exactly how you do things and never require on-the-job training is absurd.
Guessing they’re talking about Power-On Self Test rather than the HTTP verb. I’m assuming you were thinking of the latter given you mentioned a software engineer.
Half of software engineers don't know what a POST is either
Software engineer here, can confirm I've never received anything by post in my life, it's always couriers. My assumption is that post stamps are boomer NFTs.
Zoomer in computer science here: I've noticed that there are two types of people in my age range, you have the people who are really passionate about technology for the sake of being technology and want to know how things work under the hood (like me) and people who see technology only as a means to accomlish a goal like writing a document, maintaining a social media presence, playing a game, etc, and can't care less about how it actually works.
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the latter, but there can be conflict between the two groups because their priorities are completely different.
This is not unique to technology and you see this in other fields too. For example, you have the car enthusiasts who do their own oil changes and are constantly tuning up their cars, installing aftermarket mods, etc, and then you have everyone else who see cars as just a way of getting to where they need to go, have never even opened the engine compartment, and bring it into the shop when the scary lights on the dashboard appear.
To use your car metaphor, there was a time when you basically needed to know how a car worked in order to own/operate one. I'm talking like the 1910s-1920s. They were unreliable, simply made, manual transmission, hand crank start, and needed a lot of maintenance.
Millennials grew up at a time when you needed to have some understanding of how a computer worked in order to do basically anything.
I suppose the issue is that the car metaphor breaks down because a vehicle really only does one thing. Push pedal and go. Maybe worry about snow conditions if that affects you.
Meanwhile, computers can still be used to do thousands of different tasks and the only thread tying all of those tasks together is that they're done by the same machine. So knowing fundamentals about the machine gives you access to a lot of capability vs. just memorizing how to do a few tasks.
Lot of boomer-like fist shaking in these comments.
Newer generations are going to find different things to excel at, and they'll inevitably give up on some of the old ways.
Companies used to train workers, now they just complain that workers aren't pre-trained by some magical process. (And millennials are old enough that we've forgotten how dumb we were in our 20s.)
In my experience, Zoomers largely lack a lot of computer skills (specifically in troubleshooting), but, for me the huge difference between them and the older folks has been that the older folks will say things like "I'm just not a computer person ::laugh::" and refuse to be shown how to do anything whereas the Zoomer just doesn't know, yet, but are more than willing to learn.
ETA: NOTE: that's just the generalized trend ... some of the most knowledgeable technical people I've met are Boomers and some of the best computer techs I've worked with have been Zoomers.
Oh god this was my previous colleague. "Hey MBech, mind showing me how I do this thing in Excel you've shown me 100 times?" Sure thing, but at least try to remember. He even told me he forgets it instantly because he just doesn't give a shit about computer stuff. Then you probably shouldn't have a job that has you working on a computer 90% of the time.
Don't show. Guide them to do it themselves. Never be the one to actually do it beyond the first time.
If they still refuse to learn, make them take notes. Make them read to you their notes from last time. Make them tell you what each step is and means.
Make asking you the hardest option for them to get what they want.
I started as a graphic designer back in November with absolutely zero experience. It's crazy being whown how to do stuff in Adobe suite by a 68 year old man
My favorite:
"Where did you save the file?"
"I saved it in Excel"
Gen Z here, in college.
Some of these people are braindead when it comes to tech.
Like, I get if you're not used to technology because you're poor/had a lack of access to it, as many people might not have a home computer. So there were kids who were absolutely hopeless when it came to using windows at my tech school because they were broke, and the school only gives out Chromebooks (cause they're shitty and cheap).
But outside of not knowing a UI and different file formats, you should absolutely know how to use anything on the web, unless you literally lived in an area with absolutely no internet and electricity.
Some people at my college STILL don't know how to share Google documents correctly, and it's the most insane and frustrating thing to me. Literally any device with an Internet connection can use it. Windows, apple, Chromebook, Linux, you name it. HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW TO WORK GOOGLE DRIVE?!?!?!
Like many comments have said, devs have dumbed down a lot of shit in the name of protecting users, and people expect stuff to just work without any issues/effort, which I get, but damn, you've never simply done a 5 mins search on Google or YouTube for a quick fix?
My hand-me-down phone journey started with a Samsung G Note 4 as a kid, then a old iPhone (don't remember which), moved to a Moto G Play 7 (I adore that thing today), moved to iPhone X, and now I'm at a Pixel 8a cause I put GrapheneOS on it. My mom got me it as a grad gift cause I hated my iPhone so much for all the shit I couldn't do while I was on it. I've always just liked Android and Windows more for the freedom to fuck up (which I never did), instead of Apple's shitty walled garden. And now I'm on Fedora, because I know I don't have to subject myself to a shit user experience on Windows just for simplicity.
But other people my gen who aren't willing to be adventurous for a bit and even try will never do that. Hell, you get shamed in school for not loving the Apple overlords and wanting Apple deciding everything in your life (green bubble shaming is real, I hated middle and early high school...). We want quick and easy, and we got it, but at what cost?
Last night I offered to help my Zoomer classmate torrent Kamen Rider and he told me he was afraid of going to jail.
One friend of mine told that he read once that kids these days doesn't even know how to create a folder (or directory), is that true?
Back when computers were a novelty, we had schools dedicated to teaching people how to use them in my country.
The classes ranged from the most basic stuff, such as how to use a mouse, to more advanced topics, such as how to use the Windows registry.
We might need to bring these schools back in the near future.
I had to teach my zoomer intern how to use alt+tab and that you can just keep ctrl pressed and then just press the other key, they didn't need to be pressed on the exact instant to work.
Don't blame the people, they often cant get a mobile and tablet and computer... blame the awful corporations who made everything an app and pushed locked down mobile and tablets environments
Did these kids grow up not using computers at school? When I was in school (1999-2013) we had both Mac and Windows desktops that we used during library visits, computer lab, and art periods. Did schools just replace that hardware with iPads? Writing/editing an essay, manipulating a photo, drafting shop drawings, or learning to code on a tablet sounds like a fucking nightmare.
The key concept they're missing a lot of the time is that software sits within the file system and not the other way around.
This is largely because apps hide this and data is generally stored in one place on your phone (the downloads folder).
Best way to fix it - have 1--2 lessons entirely devoted to finding shit on their computer. My favourite activity is "ok, save your word file, close word, you now have 10 mins to find that file without opening word".