More like 3x my salary, but yup…
Happened to me the other day. Computer (work laptop) got stuck in a loop in one of our closed systems, and I didn’t have access to the thing that unlocks it and yes…I had to submit a ticket. Just put me in the ground now.
The reason they are paid more than you is because they have a skill you will probably never possess.
Through a mixture of selfishness and manipulation they are able to evade ever having to be self reliant. This means they are experts at getting work done through others.
Which, unfortunately, is what management is all about.
Had me in the first half there.
The computer literacy of the younger generations is also alarming. While they’re pretty intuitive about using an app’s advertised features, they don’t seem interested in “exploring” computers and their capabilities like slightly older people.
What I’m saying is that the ability to convert to PDF lies exclusively with Millennials
There is a small subsection of gen z that is absurdly tech literate and the rest can mostly operate a search engine
I’m older Gen Z and I notice the same. I’ll ssh to a computer across the house rather than go turn it off manually, and my friends use tik tok for their search engine. Its an ever widening gap too since things have become so convenient for the uninformed.
Oh wow you are indeed a lot smarter
this is how it has always been
The same is actually true for millennials as well. And gen X and boomers. As if it was a specific skill set one can learn.
Yeah, I was shocked when I learned about that. I’m a millennial. I was under the impression, that since we were so far ahead of our parents concerning tech, the next generation will all be hackers. A friend of mine works in high school teaching IT. He told me, that today’s teenagers don’t know how to download a file from the internet. And when they do, they still don’t know where it is on the computer.
Let’s not excuse the tech industry on that one. Data has been getting more and more walled off on many platforms. I wouldn’t be surprised if they never had to download anything.
It’s all streamable and accessible but downloading from places takes a little more knowhow. Not a lot but more. We have access but they keep ownership.
It’s not the only reason but it’s Def part of it. That and using tablets and smart phones which are also more locked down.
TBF, my (work) computer relentlessly tries to hide it. Why do things go to different files based on where I download from?
It’s due to the fact that we are the BRIDGE GENERATION … the generation that lived in a world without the internet or modern technology but got a front row seat in seeing it all come to what it is now. The generation before us were too old to care about the new things that were coming out so they never took the time to learn about it all. We were just the right age to be young enough to be interested and old enough to learn about it. The generation after us have only ever know the modern internet and modern locked in devices we have today, so they didn’t have the interest or patience to want to learn about it all. We grew up in a time when computer systems ran like molasses so it was slow enough for us to have an opportunity to learn about how they worked and ran. We learned to tear apart computers and computer parts, put them back together and figure out how to run them. When we couldn’t afford to buy the latest software, we became pirates and crackers … and eventually, we learned to use Linux and open source software while also keeping our foot in Windows and for some of us with a bit more money, a foot in Mac as well. Now the tech world is becoming more and more locked in with software and hardware … it is getting harder for anyone to see what’s inside the box or to even figure out how to take it apart, rearrange it or swap parts or even to adjust anything. Young people just buy a solid state phone and they will never know or want to know what a CPU, RAM, SSD, HDD, GPU, PSU mean … and whenever that thing breaks down, they just chuck it, buy another one and start all over again.
I mentioned this before in another thread
So many of my millennial colleagues don’t know shit. Tell them they can click with their mouse wheel and you blow their minds.
I think it’s just about what interests people. And most people on Lemmy are more tech literate and have more tech literate friends in the same age bracket, thus skewing their perception.
There was a long time when the middle mouse button didn’t do anything, because the standard PC mouse was 2 buttons. I had a Logitech 3 button mouse where the middle button didn’t get much use. In I think RiscOS it had a function, then there are some actions like “both click” where you click both left and right buttons at the same time, which is sometimes also implemented as middle click. In Linux, middle clicking pastes from the primary buffer. And when you know what that means, it’s actually pretty damn handy.
Lot of younger gen x did all of that shit, with even less documentation and less mainstream support and community.
To be fair, they’re rare. Most Gen X are boomer-lite. The adult learners and tech enthusiasts built the digital world we live in though.
I once had to (try to) explain to a millennial how to type an URL into his browser’s address bar. To him, Internet and Google were literally synonymous. To this day, I can’t get over it.
3 years ago i gifted my (then 6yo) son my old computer and basically left him alone to figure out(with parental controls). Whenever he wants to do something complex he asks me, but he is learning stuff on his own. I uninstalled YouTube (it had a shortcut on the desktop. I just removed it) and he figured out how to browse to it. The other day he remember a browser game he liked so he googled it and then asked me how to scroll down to see the full game.
I hope this becomes a real useful skill that is not forgotten once AIs can do everything and we probably interact by voice commands
I just had this exchange with my few years younger girlfriend who counts as a zoomer:
Me: So go into the Canon app and select from there the file you want to print
Her: …
Me: (showing on the phone) So go there, and now just browse for the file.
Her: uhh…
Me: Where did you save the file?
Her: I don’t know.
Me: Uh, so where is it?
Her: In the PDF app
She’s really smart, she uses Linux, she laughs about some of her same age and younger friends not having a clue about files and folders and stuff but phone is where this happens hah
To be fair, phone OSes go out of their way to obscure where files go for some reason. Android’s filesystem is somewhat arcane even when it’s completely transparent, and it’s mostly hidden behind apps that just say “Saved” or “Downloaded” and I’m left asking “okay but where!?”
EDIT: I suppose it’s not necessarily the OS’s fault but more of the app culture
People should install a good file explorer like Cx, it actually shows where the files are…i also use it to access my nas and stream video from there.
This os only true if the apps play nice. Some save stuff in their own arcane space, never to be seen again.
I believe this was the reason hah. Pictures are in the picture app, documents are in the documents app…
Tbf, phones needlessly obscures file storage. Like why do I have to have a specific third party app just to have the normal file management functionality
How can someone who uses linux not establish knowing her phones folder structure and app folder usage?
She uses Linux but mostly out of dislike of Windows and not because she’s tech enthusiasts. I’m her on-premises tech support for the system
Even with millennials, I feel like there’s a big chunk who still barely have any understanding. At least I assume most know a file system exists (ie know of folders and such), but most would think it’s synonymous with the gui software they use to explore it and would have no idea how to even start navigating it by command-line or even imagine it’s possible to using an alternative interface to the one that came with the OS. Whereas younger gens that grew up on iPhones that hide the file system would have no clue. And the older generations frequently just used the desktop for everything.
Meanwhile, Gen X:
As a Gen-X, I taught my millennial son how to build a computer (and he knows much more than me now). I assure you I know how to find where on the menu to convert to PDF. I also know how to do it via something like Gimp, or other tools. I also know when to not convert it to PDF. :p
From my observation there is a rare subspecies of gen xers who are frighteningly good with computers and by that I mean they cause me the biggest headaches and then there is the ultra rare gen x pc god who will flex their powers at every chance.
Shoutout to that dad who helped us find and fix an error in our spf record 😅
Yanno I thought about ending my post with “of course there’s exceptions for every generation”, but I thought as much would be common sense and could be assumed.
My father, born in the 50’s, is also very tech literate, but his existence doesn’t mean there’s not a trend with boomers to be technologically challenged.
You could also just admit you forgot about Gen-X, who grew up in the time when computers became houshold items.
That may be more Xennials, a limited cross-breed of the two that grew as computers started moving into public use. Older Gen-X grew up knowing both the world before computers and the one during their spread, so some of us had opportunity to learn as it evolved.
I’m always on the fence with the generation stuff. I think logically it’s about as valid as astrology, and yet sometimes it seems that it fits people.
True about the astrology part. Also, I’m Dutch, and some of our sociologists have a different take on our generations. They usually have the boomers born between 40-55, gen-x between 55-70, the “pragmatic generation” or “fries generation” between 70-early eighties and then the millenials. The pragmatic generation would probably overlap with your Xennials.
It’s a close match. It seems to get messier as the generations get younger. Xennials in the US were a very narrow window that mirrored the entry into the computer age. Of course the easier route many take is to just call someone older a Boomer and younger a millennial, ignoring the fact that millennials are reaching midlife now.
I didn’t forget about them, I’ve just met many tech illiterate gen-x’ers which has informed my opinion here.
Fair enough, but I’ve also met plenty of millenials of whom I could say the same. Which actually isn’t that much of a problem, I’ve also met plenty of people from all ages who would hurt themselves with a cordless drill. Somehow the world is still turning.
There is absolutely exceptions, and the whole generation thing is a bit ridiculous if carried too far. I didn’t take your point that seriously, just saw an opportunity to provide my own example. I will also add that my father (a Boomer/silent gen) was a smart person, mechanically gifted, even a patent holder, yet he could not for the life of him figure out computers. It was a baffling disconnect. My son, who I mentioned as being far smarter in tech than I could be now, is not mechanically inclined and will admit to that. So yeah, everyone has their skills… if anything I think of myself as a jack of many trades that I’m decent in, but none that I excel high in.
That’s honestly quite interesting because all around my presense I hear a lot of sw engineer guys my age or younger.
Like outside of my computer engineering uni, one of my dancing teacher is aspiring to learn coding, I hear guys talking about software dev stuffs on my bus occasionally and such. I’m 24 for reference, so that’s just barely gen z tbf
Hi I’m not a millennial, yet I do enjoy my beloved pdftk.
Though it may have to do with a suspected level of neurodivergence.
I got my then 5-year-old a laptop and put Linux on it for exactly this reason. So far they’ve only used it to play Minecraft (fortunately they didn’t like Roblox) but I figured this way it’s here when they are ready to learn.
They’ve just started getting good at reading, so I’m really excited to hopefully share some basic stuff with them soon.
Good parenting! I hate to see most parents nowadays give their children unsupervised access to the mindless brainrot boxes that are smartphones or tablets. Personally, having grown up with computers (and an analogue screentime limit), figuring things out through one’s own curiosity is the way to learn about how things work and how to solve problems on your own.
Your words are kind and, for the most part, accurate. I will say the kid still has a tablet (in fact I can hear them watching it now while playing sorting games with fabric boxes). Initially we got them a Kindle due to the price, but pretty quickly I switched them to Android because, while I’d prefer them not to be locked into any ecosystem, if I have to choose one Android seems like the best option (and the Amazon variant possibly the worst).
I’ve toyed with the idea of getting them a used iPad so they could practice with most of what they’re likely to encounter, but I haven’t been able to justify it in my head.
That said… Having a kid interested and well versed in Linux sounds like an amazing thing to me.
And burn CDs 💪
Honestly it’s been easily 20 years since I burned a CD or DVD, my knowledge is stuck at pirated Nero 6 for windows XP level.
Watched someone copy an entire file of Python code, paste it into an LLM, ask the thing to ‘remove all whitespace’, copy paste it back, and then be flabbergasted that there’s even more whitespace than before.
I’m thankful it was over a video call and not in person.
But… Python
Python has…
Python has whitespace semantics
You can’t just-
*sigh* we’re doomed
This is one of those rare occasions where the AI was apparently smarter than the person asking the question. It was smart enough not to remove the white space
I feel that’s not a very rare occasion at all.
I’m sorry I made you feel those feelings, truly, but yes, we’re boned ☠️
Then ask it to remove parenthesis from your C code.
Or Lisp
lol that’s even better. I meant to say curly braces.
To be fair, PDFs have always been complete and utter cockshit to deal with and how you deal with it has changed over time.
For awhile there, you used the Print dialog. Because the PDF authoring software was implemented like a printer driver. Because if you know the history of PDF, it makes a certain kind of sense to do it that way because the bones of PDF is PostScript. Except it’s a dogshit way of implementing the UI, because the user is trained to create a file, you click Save. To create a physical sheet of paper, you click Print. Now you’re asking to create a file, by clicking Print. Makes as much sense as the FCC’s website.
Some programs now implement it through the Save dialog, others have a “Save as PDF…” option in the File menu, and others have an “Export” and/or “Export As…” which I bet a lot of folks who know what that means and would know to look there would struggle to turn it into words.
Oh, and then…when I was in high school, they trained us on Office '97. When I was in college, they trained us on Office '03. My first non-minimum wage job? Equipped with Office '07. Ribbon interface, no more File Edit View Preview Tools Help. Microsoft especially has a bad habit of moving shit around so that your tools don’t work the way you’re used to and offering no training or hints that anyone can actually find.
My favorite was when an update would change, hide, or remove a feature I had never heard of that was absolutely critical to one person’s workflow for an essential task that affected everyone, like payroll.
It was real fucking fun arriving in the workforce college educated with computer literacy classes on my transcripts not knowing how to run MS Office because they changed it out from under me. Even if the ribbon interface is objectively superior, they just dumped it on people.
My father found, buried on Microsoft’s website, a tool (I think written in Silverlight because it was about that time) that simulated MS Office 2003, you could click on a function, and then it would play an animation about how to do that function in Office 2007. This wasn’t advertised and it wasn’t shipped on the disc with Office '07, which NEEDED a retraining tool.
Office '10 was different yet again, and they also shifted a lot from XP to Vista to 7 to 8 to 8.1 and that’s when I switched to Linux.
Real. It’s almost painful to watch some people struggle with such simple things while I’m literally coding my own utilities for fun
Bruh, I worked in a university for some time and the number of high-level staff and tenured professors who have no idea how to use basic tech in their courses is alarming. A lot of them earn six figures and can speak so eloquently, but can’t function without course assistants or adjuncts.
Today I had to explain to an a linesman (electrical infrastructure technician) what a website was.
He could not get the concept you could just go to a website and he kept googling stuff which doesn’t work because I wanted him to go to an intranet site
Well, were you able to repair a high voltage line? There’s stuff that was very easy for him that you also don’t understand.
Just out of trade school, or old as the trade itself?
I think he was around when the electron came into existence and the dawn of the universe.
I was driving limo and the CEO client (who I knew quite well, client-wise) spent the first 30 minutes of a trip on the phone insisting that his original password be restored, as the ‘system’ was insisting it be changed.
He told me he has to repeat this every 4 months…To be fair, simply forcing users to create a new password every X weeks is bad security policy.
It is and it’s actually not even recommended best practise to change passwords anymore precisely because of this. It hasn’t been considered best practise since I think around 2016-17 so businesses are really lagging.
If you get governmental contract work and pretty sure not resetting the passwords too often is actually now part of the security requirement but outside of that businesses just do what they think is best regardless of research.
deleted by creator
It’s actually even outright discouraged by NIST.
For those who don’t see the reason why, forced password resets lead to users using predictable passwords like “password2025october”, “password2025november”, etc.
Yep. Back when I was being forced to reset my passwords every 90 days, I needed some way to remember the new password, so I developed a strategy like that. Whatever beverage is currently on my desk plus @ plus the time. Water@1257, for example. It’s so nice to have the option to randomly generate a strong password these days.
my four shitty boomer bosses dont even know how outlook works, let alone basic excel. they all make six figures.
my four shitty boomer bosses
it takes 4 of them just to keep you busy - you have become unmanageable.
huzzah
I swear, that actor captures the face of psychotic, narcissistic rage so well it’s scary.
He did beat up a 21-year old while drunk, so maybe he’s able to channel something from deep within when he takes on the role.
That’s an actor? I thought he was a generic marine from a video game.
You go to your room and watch The Boys right now, young man! And while you do, you best feel very ashamed that you haven’t done so sooner.
Oh. I watched that show … Probably up to season two? … A while ago. (And enjoyed it! I had a very little kid at the time and baby Homelander metaphorically moved me.)
I’ve self diagnosed as face blind, so maybe that’s the issue here.
edit: This gif makes him look way less cute and way more scary than I remember. I remember him fiddling with his blanket and looking for parental support, not casting a terrifying and disappointed gaze.
Was in a “meeting” yesterday being confronted with this and I finally lost it on the guy. He told me I was being very unprofessional, raising my voice at him. Me? How about you asking about things that were taught on day one repeatedly and not retaining any of the answers I have given you in all my futile efforts? There is no fucking way in hell this guy would be qualified as an entry-level direct report to me after four decades in industry. I finally realized that level of wilful incompetence, in addition to posing as a colleague, adds up to stolen valor and complete disrespect and dishonor for those of us who put in our 10,000 hours 30 years ago.
It is unprofessional to raise your voice in the workplace. His incompetence doesn’t justify your attitude.
I never got to attend school beyond high school but I’ve been able to get by in many things. I know quite a bit of technology, I build my own computers, used to tweak, adjust, maintain, fix and install/uninstall/reinstall my Windows software all the time … I’ve kept just about every electronic device I’ve ever owned over the past 20 years - and they all still function. Now I’ve moved onto Linux and open source software and now enjoy spending my time tweaking, testing, destroying and playing with it all as much as possible in my spare time.
Meanwhile, I have a couple of friends who are the same age as me and they came from well-to-do families who helped them go through years of university and now they’re doctors, lawyers, dentists, teachers and administrators.
They have a ton of training and schooling … yet I’m the one they come to for help when it comes to their home computers, work laptops and any electronic device. When they can’t get my help or I’m not available or I don’t have time, their usual solution to electronic problems is to throw the thing away and buy something new.
The disturbing part of seeing them throw away old devices, laptops and desktops is that no one ever thinks of wiping or destroying the drive. I’ve picked up so many old drives, laptops and devices that still have so much sensitive data on them its unbelievable.
I think doctors and lawyers needing help with their computer is fine. That’s the “I have a deep knowledge in this specific subject at the expense of not knowing much outside of it.”
But I’m more interested in knowing how you do your testing? Is it some super specific set of hardware / software? I ask because sometimes I have an issue and I don’t know if it’s some mixture of software packages or versions or hardware, or maybe I just found a bug and should report it.
Save it from what?
A video!
from deletion
Adobe?
Reality check: you don’t make boatloads of money for having useful skills everyone has (or should have). You make boat loads of money when you have useful skills that few people have.
Reality Check: You make, or don’t, make boatloads on money based on your social skills, and your status at birth.
You can literally map zip codes at birth to salary.
Reality check: your relation to capital determines how many boat loads of money you make
The useful skill of being born rich so you could go to an Ivy League School.
Instance doesn’t check out.
I just assumed it was some new refugee who landed on the flagship but nope, two year old account that’s been dodging .ml State Security somehow
Or just be born into a rich family. Not sure that counts as a skill really.
Been born into a rich family and then murdering your way to your inheritance without getting caught, now that’s a skill.
So you believe we live in a meritocracy? I find that staggering at this point.
The useful skill of being able to sack hundreds of people to make a few dollars for shareholders and still be able to sleep at night.
Or, in simpler terms, a lack of empathy.
what illiterate upvoted this grift?
20 upvotes and 16 downvotes. Crazy work.
That is definitely not true when everyone seems to have that one horror story where they have an incompetent coworker a level above them.
