Gen X Is No Different from the Baby Boomers

It’s almost impossible to get into a discussion about talent acquisition without the dreaded “M” word coming up—millennials. But the question of a rapidly changing workforce—and the problems it presents—is starting to appear in a range of areas.

For example, this month on WatersTechnology.com, my colleague Anthony Malakian spoke to several senior buy-side technologists who bemoaned that they are stuck in a permanent balancing act. They have technologically brilliant people entering the workplace, who are fluent in the new languages of the modern world, be that Python, Julia, R or even the proliferation of JavaScript libraries and frameworks. But that’s also a problem. One head of technology at a large asset manager, in Anthony’s piece, said his developers always want to use the latest toys with little regard for the consequences. “Unfortunately, they don’t always consider the longer-run, is-this-maintainable aspects of their decisions. So, you get each firm using a ton of different stuff for really no reason,” he said.

Senior technologists are stuck between keeping control of technology practices and giving their young minds the creative freedom they crave. Others are less critical about the influence of younger, digital-native professionals, but are clear that their entry into the workforce has had a profound impact on how they approach their products.

Robert Roley, general manager of SS&C Advent, pointed to this as a driver behind SS&C’s recent focus on user experience. That has involved a revamp in terms of how it develops its software—in part to mirror the usability and convenience of consumer applications. “That investor experience is best-in-class, and as Gen X or millennials are becoming the core clients of wealth managers as opposed to baby boomers, that digital presence is becoming even more critical,” he says.

Older generations complain about the younger ones—reinforced in modern times by a short walk through the neighborhoods of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, or Shoreditch in London, which serve as monuments to the excesses of this generation.

However, this has a tendency to blind people to their own history. Indeed, previous generations have been just as disruptive to the workforce as Gen X, or millennials, or whatever the appropriate label is. “I remember when my generation was really pushing electronic trading, during the Big Bang and after,” says one baby boomer at a Long Island-based fund, who worked in the City of London during the 1980s. “Back then we were also told we were a pain in the ass, that we were reckless, and you see the same things being said to millennials today. The real difference between then and now, I think, is that technology has emphasized the generational gap to a larger extent than it might have done in the past.”

Key Observation

This is the key observation when it comes to analyzing the impact of millennials in the workplace, and how they are changing industries. Arguments about critically low work ethic have the faint odor of similar stories about walking 15 miles in the snow to get milk—the impact that can often be seen in financial services firms is one that is driven by the adoption of technology at the behest of Gen X staff, or in order to attract them in the first place.

For other examples of generational similarities, look at the Cobol programming language. Created by a group of programmers in the 1970s, many have had to come out of retirement to fix banking systems that were built on the language, according to a recent Reuters article. These “Cobol Cowboys,” as the article calls them, are not dissimilar from the young minds creating platforms, investment book of record systems and trading engines today.

Perhaps, 40 years from now, we’ll see a similar group of graying, open-source enthusiasts unpicking the dying art of R from matching engines. All while navigating the perceived shortcomings of Generation Z.