Do you feel the age gap between you and your colleagues?

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negged0014@reddit

I've worked with 50+ women and they're actually way more friendly and chatty than some people my age.

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SongsAboutGhosts@reddit

For a moment I was like 'why does it matter how many women you've worked with?'

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There's almost 20 years between me and the oldest on my team, and about 8 between me and the next youngest. Mostly I don't notice, but then I end up explaining roblox / amoung us to the mums because I'm closer in age to their kids than to them.

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Gasblaster2000@reddit

Only when they talk about something they loved as children and it turns out to be a film from about 10-15 years ago!

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floydie1962@reddit

I'm the relative new guy, working part-time post early retirement. There is a 10 year age gap between me and my small team. I'm 61 51 41 I feel like the new boy with almost zero computer skills. I feel like I did in my first job. The team is absolutely brilliant and has made me feel so welcome. I'm truly lucky to have found this job

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carlovski99@reddit

Not massively. My actual friends range from 20 years younger to older though so doesn't seem that weird. I did feel a bit bad when I set our work's 'fun' quiz a few weeks ago and it was mostly full of 80's/90's pop culture references and our apprentices, none born before 2000 were doing it.

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Past-Educator-6561@reddit

No, they need to learn at some point!

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Tao626@reddit

Yea. I'm the second youngest here (32) I just don't relate to any of the older (55+) people here and even the younger guy (24) is just an old person trapped in a young person's body. He's probably more likely to say "back in my day" and complain about "ruddy immigrants!" than the actual older people.

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dtudeski@reddit

Lol where’d you work?

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Tao626@reddit

Engineering firm. I've found it's pretty common for people in the industry to mostly be older than time itself.

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Past-Educator-6561@reddit

Where are the young engineers at?

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fgzklunk@reddit

Engineering does seem like that, I am in the 50+ age bracket but I seem to get on with people of all ages. We have conversations and laugh about similar things.

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Ikilleddobby2@reddit

Do we work at the same place? Average age at my work is 57.

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mangomaz@reddit

I think I’m about 10+ years older than most people in the same band as me at work (I’m 37). And a few years older than a lot of people in the band above me lol. I’m about 5/6 years older than my manager I think?! 😅 I had a 5 year career break and worked part time the past few years. I don’t think about it that often also as I don’t look or act 37 lol but sometimes I’m like wow I’m so much older 😅😅 but I have a great balanced life so no complaints.

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Puzzled-Barnacle-200@reddit

I'm the other way. I'm 24, so one of the younger ones at my work. I have great chats with people 40+. I also tend to find I have more in common with people 3-10 years older, as my life is currently full of DIY and wedding planning. The new graduates seem to think I am mad.

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prentz9@reddit

I’m 32 and have a best mate at work whos 56. We often go on weekends away in Europe drinking and watching football etc. Much prefer hanging out with him to guys my own age. Age doesn’t matter at all as long as you get on and have lols

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Taiyella@reddit

Nope it's usually like having a guest on a podcast

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Portugindian@reddit

Only when I mention Space Jam and they all look at me with blank faces...

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Minimum-Pay-4169@reddit

No everyone in my team, including the boss is under 27. I am 22.

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cminorputitincminor@reddit

My part-time job (I’m a student in my 20s) has me working with forty-fifty year olds. Honestly, I feel the age gap so much. They treat me a lot like a teenaged intern sometimes, which can be frustrating but, on the plus side, means they cut me a lot more slack. I don’t feel like they feel 100% comfortable having the same work banter in front of me, as a lot of them have kids and talk to me in a similar way that they’d talk to them. At work events (it’s a very tight-knit group), if they bring their kids along, I’m usually only a little older than them, so it’s understandable I suppose.

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Particular-Echo347@reddit

I'm in my early 40s and I'm open minded enough and have teenagers that I can understand what's going on, provide an appropriate gif and generally get on with the 20 somethings. It also helps I am a massive manchild and naturally connect with those at work of the younger age

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wjt7@reddit

I'm only 33 which I think is quite young to think this, but I definitely do and it's come on quite suddenly in the last couple of years. We always have a couple of school leavers in the team, but recently it's all tiktok and influencers I've never heard of and striking up any conversation seems more difficult. It seems a big cultural change to even a few years ago, and I'm aware I'm Abe Simpson in his I used to be with it speech.

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sophtttt@reddit

Yes but not in a negative way. I'm 23 working in healthcare with people who have children my age lol.

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yoghurtangel@reddit

In my 20s and I work with 50s. It's not weird but I find that I care about health more than they do e.g. they don't think about what they eat or they'll come to work unwell etc. Not great. A good chunk of menopause chat too.

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SongsAboutGhosts@reddit

If people at my work join when they're quite a bit older, they struggle - it's a no experience required coding role, and older people struggle to learn the coding (as everyone does with any language as they age). Older people with experience is different, of course. For everyone else, it's more of an experience gap than an age gap; lots of people are fresh out of university, no proper job experience, don't understand rights, expectations, what is/isn't appropriate. Uni grads are almost a decade younger than me now, one of my new starters is only a year younger than me, but he spent so long at uni it's also his first job, so I have to explain just as much to him about what's inappropriate to say, how to maintain a work-life balance, and what corporate speak actually means and how it should be responded to.

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ero_mode@reddit

Yes. I work in construction and most of my co-workers are at best middle aged immigrants, or if they're young they are already married and have kids. So I don't really have many opportunities to talk to someone about typical things I go through, assuming they have conversational English.

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WiseBelt8935@reddit

when i attend the department meetings at my work and I'm the youngest by ten years. it feels odd but a little smug

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destria@reddit

A bit, I'm 31 and all my colleagues are at least 10 years older and they'll make references or jokes that go over my head. There's a lot of talk about menopause. It's a bit of a change from my last job where I was the oldest in the team and they were 3-5 years younger but that gap wasn't so big.

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Obvious_Flamingo3@reddit

Quite often! At my old job I was the youngest there (21). The only people close to my age were 28+ and some of them were having kids and were married. I came into my current job expecting the exact same but can say, very luckily that it isn’t the case. Our small team of 3 are all 25 and under (rare I know.) If I wasn’t working within my specific team though, I know it would be the same and I would feel isolated again

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windol1@reddit

Not really, but once I talk to some of the new staff it actually hits me as some of them were starting primary school around when I first started working.

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cowbutt6@reddit

I didn't, until I joined an employer where everyone in my team bar my manager (a couple of years older than me) were a good 20 years younger.

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sady_eyed_lady@reddit

Not really, I work in a vets our age ranges from 18 year old students to mid 60’s people who’ve been here forever, the only way I kinda feel it is that the baby students who started a few years after I was hired aren’t so baby any more and while it’s been great watching them grow, where did that time go? But that’s just my on going existential crisis talking 🤷‍♀️

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Cabrundit@reddit

Yeah I have a similar age gap at work with some of my colleagues and while we can get on great the difference because of age feels astronomical sometimes.

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Xandertheokay@reddit

Sometimes I do, I'm 29 and most of my colleagues are 19-25. Most of the time it's like there's no gap at all, but then someone will talk about college, or a song will play that came out 10 years ago and they will say how much they loved it as a kid, whilst I was dancing to it in clubs. Sometimes I will make a reference to something like Friends and they look at me like I have 2 heads because they've never seen it.

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QSBW97@reddit

I'm the youngest in my team by 4 or 5 years. The team I work close with are all 40s. I get on with everyone just fine, although it's a little weird I'll be talking about someones kitchen extension at the same time as I send vile memes to my mates.

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bookishnatasha89@reddit

34 and I work with a fair few 16 year olds - ish! Sometimes they treat me like the mature responsible adult where life in general is concerned - I feel neither particularly mature nor responsible. 🤣

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a15154738@reddit

Not at all tbh. The ages in my job range from 18-55 normally. If your good at your job everyone respects you.

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Witch_of_Dunwich@reddit

I’m the oldest in my team - even my manager is 10 years younger than me. Makes no difference to me - age is just a number. We still all hold similar interests, and can hold conversations with each other regardless.

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dtudeski@reddit

I’m in my early 30s and was chatting to a three younger colleagues a while back, randomly referenced Barry from Eastenders and they had no idea who I was talking about. That one stung a bit.

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Equivalent_Scar4706@reddit

I was 15+ years younger than my colleagues before leaving my job but usually at work we’d tend to talk about: -Work, the good & bad -What we were having for lunch/tea -Any weekend plans So long as a person is able to hold a conversation I don’t think age differences are a problem within a work place. The only thing is maybe films/ sayings/ people you know and someone else doesn’t, but then that’s just a new topic of conversation! Maybe that’s the northern in me, I love a good chat (:

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vegan_voorhees@reddit

I was 15 years older than my colleagues when I changed career a few years ago, but it was always fine. They'd occasionally ask me about the 80s (thinking Stranger Things was an accurate portrayal), didn't know what VHS tapes were, and tended to get offended very easily (by each other). I was essentially a peacekeeper.

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AbsoluteScenes4@reddit

I am 36 and when I first started here a couple of years ago most of the team had been here for ages and were all 50+ (out of a team of 20 staff we have had 4 retirements since I started and at least 3 more are approaching retirement). There was only 1 person who was younger than me and they were in their early 20s so still a fairly large age gap. However as people have retired or left for other jobs we have hired more people in my age range.

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frithrar@reddit

Some of the people I work with were born after I started working for this organisation. Our cultural references are very different at times.

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ConfusedViolins91@reddit

My favourite group of colleagues I've ever worked with were 18, 20, 30, and 45 years older than me. We haven't worked together for 4 years and still all meet up twice a year for a meal. It didn't matter to them at all that I was so much younger, and I was unofficial tech support so I guess that also worked in my favour.

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811545b2-4ff7-4041@reddit

Yep. Many 'cultural references' of my youth (i'm 43) go over the heads of my 30-something collegues. No one else had heard of The Wonder Years :( Youtube link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s8J5s\_xfU0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s8J5s_xfU0) It had a soundtrack that was so awsome, they couldn't get the rights to all the songs so it never made it to VHS/DVD.

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JeffBroccoli@reddit

Yeah, quite a lot. I’m 40 now and manage a lot of uni students. Pop culture references that I don’t realize are even that old often pre-date them.

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Big_Mac_Is_Red@reddit

Only when they're very young and they seem abit lost in the working world because its all new. You only really remember or notice age differences when topics come up and the little whipper snappers haven't heard of Bernard's watch etc. One of my favourite colleagues was in her 60s. She's retired a few years ago but we used to get along great and age didn't matter.

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YchYFi@reddit

Sometimes yeah. Usually when relating to pop culture. The young ones don't know much of stuff even released music or movies when I was a teenager 20 years ago (2003). It can be a depth of knowledge that I remember my generation having.

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