Jason is a 27 year-old recently promoted to operations manager. Donna, 53, held Jason's position for several years before receiving a promotion of her own into a supporting technical role. By all accounts (except Jason's), Donna performed the role very well. She beat budget, achieved high customer satisfaction scores and won awards for her business unit. In addition to her new responsibilities, she is charged with serving as a mentor to Jason.
Jason, however, believes Donna never did the job right and those upper managers at corporate who think she performed well and this job can be done with what he sees are impossible financial constraints are idiots and he's going to prove them wrong (presumably by spending as much as he wants). Jason either ignores or very publicly chides all of Donna's efforts to help him learn the ropes. Jason makes it clear in his rants that if he had the authority, he would fire Donna so he wouldn't have to listen to her anymore. Jason has run off or terminated several over-50 supervisors and replaced them with workers in their 20s. Jason's boss, who is also a millennial and was influential in getting Donna promoted out of the unit, is committed to Jason's potential and Jason is empowered by that support.
This is a true, though slightly modified, example of a disturbing trend. Age discrimination cases have been increasing. Part of this is demographic - there are more older workers today than there were in 2000 due to birthrate trends after World War II - but part is cultural.
I am on record as saying that much of what is being taught in seminars around the country about millennials and generational differences is hokum. For some reason it's acceptable to stereotype individuals based on the year they were born in ways we would never stereotype people based on their skin pigmentation or national origin. (For more on this subject, read my earlier blog).
Overall, I'm bullish on millennials. The purpose of this article is not to indict talented, young, millennial managers, it's to warn business owners that if they are investing in talented, young, millennial managers, they need to keep an eye out for potential biases against older workers. Your confident, aggressive millennial manager could land you in hot water.
When I turned 14, my father told me that for the next 7 or 8 years, he'd be the dumbest human being I ever met, but by the time I was 22, out of school and on my own, I'd eventually figure out he wasn't so dumb after all. He was absolutely right!
My theory about the prevalence of age discrimination by some millennial mangers lies in my dad's observation. Because some millennials have been much slower to mature due to a combination of economic factors that kept them home longer and parenting styles that kept them dependent longer, we have many young adults in their mid-20s who still regard adults in their 50's and 60's the way we did when we were 16. We figured it out by age 22 or 23. Some of them still haven't figured it out by age 29 or 30.
So, my advice is to continue to promote millennials like Jason. It's good for them and good for American business. Jason will either learn that some of those boomers and Xers at the corporate office aren't so dumb after all, or he'll bounce from job to job never advancing nor achieving the potential his millennial boss sees in him. But if you have a Jason, make sure you have some checks and balances in place so that you're not standing before an EEOC officer or a judge trying to explain how after Donna was replaced by Jason, your hiring and firing statistics show a clear trend toward age bias. You won't win that one.
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