senior programmers: how do you relate to younger team leaders?

Question

A Q for truly senior programmers: how do you relate to team leaders who are younger than you, during an interview and on the job?

I would also like to hear advice from team leaders who are younger than their reports.

Answer 1

There are a few different sides to this, as I see it:

1. Personal discussions - What movies/music/TV shows/food/hobbies we like or enjoy. This is outside of work and technical stuff. Sometimes it isn't hard to relate on these topics and a dynamic can form where each plants ideas in the other to check this or that out. Having lunch as a team with the lead is a way to have the opportunities for this to happen.

2. Professional discussions - This is a step into technical stuff but isn't necessarily tied to the office. What career aspirations each has, what trends in the industry do we see, what cool thing will Google/Microsoft/Apple do next? This can be somewhat limiting since it isn't the discussion one can have with the average Joe easily.

3. Professional work discussions - This is the deepest stuff since this is what I'd see day in and day out. How is this project going? Are those goals on track? Are there problems with the process we have? Having some respect and maturity can go a long way here as I don't care if you are 20 or 80, just have some respect and know your stuff are my main concerns. This is also tied into something being done in the office and tends to be more of a question/answer format than general sharing though performance reviews are a combination of this and the previous one in some ways.

I like to see people fired up, enthusiastic and wanting to talk about this and that. Sharing that fire of what gets our juices going can be something special.

I'm 34, doing web development for 12 years just to state my background here. I've had a couple of times where the team lead was younger than me, but physical age is very different from emotional or intellectual age to my mind. Emotional age is the maturity that comes from developing emotional intelligence and tapping into that side of the brain while the intellectual age is just knowing stuff about the world and how it runs which can be outside of emotions completely.

Answer 2

The same way I related to anyone I know. Perhaps you just need to learn better relationship skills in general? I.E. How to make small talk.

Answer 3

Treat everyone with dignity and respect. Listen carefully, and make decisions with a level headed mind.

Answer 4

I've had bosses twenty or more years younger than I was and here's my advice.

First if you are a senior professional who has decided that management is not for you, then who cares how old the person is who did go into management? If you wanted to go into management and were never chosen, it's a little harder to see some young person in the job, it's true, but then you need to be examining just why you were never chosen for management, not resenting the person who was.

If the issue is the different cultural expectations between you and the manager concerning things like attendance, work hours, etc. based on your ages, then recognize that as the manager, she sets policy and you do not. You can respectfully discuss those policies though and explain why they bother you or how you would do things differently. But in the end, it is her choice, not yours.

Younger doesn't mean incompetent. Especially as you get much older, this is true. I'm in my fifties now and out of a hundred employees at this site only one is older than I am. But most of them are very competent. Heck when I was 26 or 45 or any earlier age, I wasn't incompetent either (not to imply that I am incompetent now, you know what I mean). So take your boss on her own terms, some will be good and some will be bad and age has very little to do with it.

An issue that can arise is the young boss who doesn't think anyone significantly older can be competent or able to learn new things. If you feel you are being treated differently becasue you are older, then discuss it (professionally not argumentatively). Ask for those more interesting assignments, show off the new things you've learned, make sure the person understands your background and how in depth it is. Show the person why you are a valuable employee. If he or she still doesn't get it, perhaps it's not the place for you to stay.

If the young boss is so young that she doesn't understand the needs of an older person with family ("No I don't want to stay until midnight every night because coding is fun, I need to go home and see my kids and spouse!"), then explain it them rather than just bitching about the issue. Show them you can get the work done in the regular hours. If the expectation can't be changed, perhaps you are in an organization culture that doesn't suit you.

The real issue is respect and it goes both ways. People you show respect to will tend to treat you more respectfully. Even if you disagree with your boss, you can do so without implying you think she is a moron or too young to know the ramifications of her decisions. It is the boss's job to make decisions and your job to implement those decisions. The time to discuss them is before they are made. Afterwards, respect the decision and try your best to make it work. If you do that and have a track record of being right when you object to something (even when you clearly tried hard to make the bad choice work out), then the younger boss will start to respect you more and listen more to your input.

Try to understand the cultural references of the age group your boss is in. This is actually easier for the older person because you lived through the Nineties whereas she didn't live through the Sixties. If you understand what is culturally important to the person significantly younger than you, it is easier to meet her expectations. It is also easier to talk to her if you can use examples from her lifetime rather than yours. In this respect, when they make cultural references you don't understand, laugh at yourself and ask them to explain to the old person.

If you have a boss (younger or older), who doesn't respect your contribution after you havea made a genuine try to show them your value, then it's time to move on.