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It could be. The other thought is, these managers are as old as my parents, and have been with the company as long as I have been alive. They were obviously here before e-mail, and I am sure the computers weren't as easy as they are now. Maybe I'm just a new kid to them, and they still expect me to be unsteady on my feet.
Time for folks to get over the idea that no one before them had computers. Pretty much everyone in the workplace today has used them most of their careers. The generation that didn't have much direct contact would be in their 70s by now. I've been using them since Fortran and punch cards, Apple IIs, Commodore PETs, MINCs, DECs, and VAXes. Do I know everything about them? Of course not; there's too many different things for anyone to know. Nor do I even know most of the features on the email I use every day.
Why you might ask? It's not because I'm too old and senile to understand computers, but because I don't have the time. And that's what you're going to discover in a few years. You'll get that MBA, get a couple of promotions and find you no longer have the time to keep current because you're too busy managing a department, coordinating with couple of others that are behind schedule and have now started impacting yours, doing and re-doing the budget a hundred times, doing performance evals on the young guns who still get to do technical work and have all the fun, and maybe find time to walk around the office to say "thanks" to those who do the work.
Um, I wrote my first program in '63, for an Xerox 920, in assembly language. Later in college I wrote FORTRAN IV (all capitals). And even COBOL! The horror! The horror! Today I prefer OO languages like Visual C++ with MFC for PC software. No, don't do PHP OO. My sites are written very similarly to what I'm sure C-D uses.
I keep my hand in today by writing PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, server admin I set up myself running Debian OS, nginx serving websites. LAMP rules! Or in my case LnMP. I think nginx is superior to Apache but this is not the place to discuss that.
You can't teach an old dog new tricks, but old dogs mess you up by learning new tricks themselves.
The big question is why I do this as a hobby. OCD? My sites have no advertising.
At the time I matriculated my college still had a real, vacuum tube computer with drum memory storage. I think it was an ENIAC. Even then it was a museum relic, kept merely for nostalgia.
Today I vastly prefer my office in my lap(top). Amazing to think that the computer on the first moon mission was inferior to later day calculators. Today calculators are so obsolete they don't have any AFIAK.
Some people have a hard time accepting genuine compliments. Sounds like you might be one of those folks.
Always important to be aware, the compliment may have little or nothing to do with the skill or complexity of the task. It has to do with how much the complimenter appreciated that you did it satisfactorily and without hassle. Instead of slicing and dicing and analyzing a compliment, better to just say, "Thank you," and to accept it in the spirit offered. Not really hard. You can add,"I'm happy to have been of help. Let me know if there's anything else I can do," if you can actually mean it. Not sucking up; just good manners and good business practice. Diminishing or demeaning a genuine compliment or complimenter serves no good purpose.
Attitude can be key to building positive attention, supportive relationships and currency toward your future in a company. If you're planning to be there long term, there will be lots of opportunities to question the whys and wherefores of actions and issues which displease you. Don't waste your energy on something that puts a plus in your column.
Wise to learn to give sincere compliments of your own to those who help you. Giving credit to others takes none away from you.
The ability to demonstrate the above are reflective of a degree of professional maturity. Get a jump on this while you're young, so it doesn't hold you back. (Leave the snarkiness and immaturity of youth at the door when you get to work.)
This is great advice. No matter how the compliment might make you feel inside, say thank-you and smile. You have to assume the compliment came from a place of good intention.
This is great advice. No matter how the compliment might make you feel inside, say thank-you and smile. You have to assume the compliment came from a place of good intention.
Yes, I guess part of me feels like its the same when you say "good job" to a little kid.
Snow-Thank you. I am surprised by your reply, as that wasn't what I was going for at all. Yes, I am at a HUGE company, and plan to stay here until retirement (another 30 years). I am actively looking at other job openings. No one knows that I was passed up for the position here in my department, and my new boss doesn't even know me (yet). I was speaking to one of the IT people in a different department. I know in that specific case, he's older, and I am sure doesn't have a degree, so perhaps he assumes that a very few have degrees around here?
I guess the compliments make me feel dumb, and I am sure I am taking it the wrong way! I feel by complimenting me on these easy tasks, it makes me look weak like "I thought it would be a challenge for you, but you did it! Yay!". If I am putting out fires on complex situations, then sure, compliment me, but on routine, mundane tasks, nah.
They probably don't mean it that way. A lot of people wish management would do that just for the positive atmosphere, not even because they 'need' it to be said.
I can't relate. No one ever said that to me unless I pulled off a FEAT and even then, in sales, you go from hero to zero at the end of every month.
Also they taught us we were sort of running our own business. So anything I did was really for me, I guess.
I have to reach back further to remember appreciating praise for small things. I guess the closest I got was waiting tables. Being new at a place, and being thanked all the time for doing the smart things to do. Doing my section and then helping others and stuff like that. Big smiles. Big thank you's! And knowing that I'm on my way to promotion and I am very welcomed by the staff/management. It's a nice feeling - I hope you can enjoy it, and then when you do have more experience you can get that promotion you're after.
It happened again, and I see what's going on. I work overnights, and they think nothing goes on. Nothing. I just sit at work with nothing to do. When I do have the required task, they "thank me" in heavy sarcasm because they assume its the ONE thing I did all night.
I don't know why I get upset at compliments of a "job well done" at work. I suppose because I find it ridiculously easy, in my mind I see a compliment as almost a put-down. I've been with this department for about two years, so I could understand if I was a brand new newhire, but I've been long enough. Maybe to those that have been here 10+ years, I'm still seen as a new hire, and furthermore, the older folks around here that did not grow up with computers may still find the work challenging enough....
Sounds like you feel the work is very easy, and perhaps much too easy for your level of skills.
Find yourself a job where you have tread water fast as all hell just to keep your head above water; then compliments - if you get any - will mean something to you. And problem solved.
Time for folks to get over the idea that no one before them had computers. Pretty much everyone in the workplace today has used them most of their careers. The generation that didn't have much direct contact would be in their 70s by now. I've been using them since Fortran and punch cards, Apple IIs, Commodore PETs, MINCs, DECs, and VAXes. Do I know everything about them? Of course not; there's too many different things for anyone to know. Nor do I even know most of the features on the email I use every day.....
I'm seventy-nine, I was working in a computer center in the mid-1970's. So, for sure you are right, at this point in time most people have been using them for most if not all of their careers..
My office compliments a lot. I later figured out it was a reaction to work ptsd. Either the previous person. In your role was horrid. Or they left at a bad time. They hope the compliments will keep you around.
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