If you grew up listening to Pearl Jam, you can kiss your high-tech dream job good-bye.
Source: The Unforgivable Sin in Silicon Valley: Being Gen-X | Inc.com
Many thanks to Rachel Houghton, fellow technical communicator and Gen X’er, for finding this article and passing it along to me.
Oh, I’m so delighted by this article! This is a very good explanation of what’s going on in the tech field, and it does affect those of us in technical communication as well. Even I admit that I don’t put my college graduation year on my resume, and even the least recent thing I have on my resume is about 18 years old (it’s when my shift to IT/tech comm happened, so anything before that doesn’t really matter much anyway)–with a gap, no less, where I leave little part-time jobs that don’t pertain to tech comm out, and were also the years that I spent as a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom). We can’t forget that part–that parents who take time off to care for their children, or people who have to care for someone ill in their family and need to take extended time off–get penalized, too.
But this has become a bigger and bigger problem as time moves along, and this article validates this problem. The author of this article suggests that we form unions and such. Well, our generation isn’t used to doing that. How many tech unions are there anyway? I would join up if I knew one existed. How do you join a union if you are a perpetual contractor, because you can’t get anything but contract work rather than full-time employment? That’s an issue in our industry. This is where the professional societies really, REALLY need to start stepping in more. That means STC, IEEE-ProComm, ISTC–you name them, they should be helping with this endeavor, or providing more support on these issues, as we are not only a large group, but we are also the same ones who are trying to keep these professional societies afloat.
What do you think about this article? Include your comments below.
–TechCommGeekMom
TechCommGeekMom 
Imagine how I feel as a Boomer!
I hear ‘ya, John!
John beat me to it. Per the article, if Gen-X’ers are up against it, then Boomers are simply beyond the pale. My goodness.
We (all of us) do indeed need to push back. One way might be to say, “No — I’m not a digital native. That means that everything I know about digital technology, I learned. Purposefully, with a view toward developing expertise in this field. My knowledge of technology isn’t accidental. It’s intentional.”
Will they listen? I don’t know, but it’s worth a shot.