Revisiting Intergenerationality in the Workplace: Too Young, Too Old
The workplace (and company policies) is one of the clearest spaces where a society’s ideas about different ages (and their coexistence) are reflected. Not only because of the legal margins that define who can work and until when — between the ages of 16 and 65 or 67 — but also because, as in many other areas, stereotypes and prejudices become intertwined, shaping relationships, career paths, and opportunities. Let’s emphasize that companies continue to be one of the main spaces for socialization (the lifelong learning of norms) and sociability (the ability and act of relating to our peers and others) in our communities, and therefore, we tend to reproduce within them the same mistakes that characterize our understanding of other environments.
In many organizations, a 50-year-old is already seen as “old” (and even more so if it’s a woman, since that threshold tends to be lower), whereas in other aspects or contexts of society we usually reserve that label for people of a much older age. It may seem like a subtle difference, but it has deep consequences: it shapes expectations, influences decisions, and contributes to making work a space where age is not always valued — and often becomes a source of suspicion or (direct) exclusion.
The ageism behind these ideas is not helped by the fact that we keep talking about work as if it followed a straight line: you enter when young, you “move up” (if you’re lucky — because hard work is not enough; you also need the possibility, the space, to grow), and you leave that job (to which you’ve devoted much of your life) when you’re older. But that logic doesn’t match real career paths or the changes we are living through — and, above all, it doesn’t match our desires. Some people enter the workforce later, some change course, some take time to care for others, some pause, some come back. And yet we continue to imagine youth as the gateway and aging as a reason to leave. As if personal needs and desires had nothing to say in this excessively linear equation.
That (ageist, let’s stress it again) perspective translates into many things. For example, in how people communicate within a company. If from the top it’s conveyed that older people are no longer useful, that they are out of touch, that they don’t master certain tools and have an expiration date, these views end up seeping into workplace relationships. This not only affects the self-perception of these workers but also transforms the way teams interact. And so, what is sometimes labeled “generational conflict” is nothing more than the result of policies that fail to promote collaboration (or interdependence) or to recognize the value of different life stages.
We also carry a series of functional stereotypes: it’s assumed that some departments belong to young people — like marketing or communications, or IT — and others to older people — like legal or administration, for example. These assumptions ignore how work has changed, how tasks are distributed today, or even how the jobs themselves (the tasks performed within them) are interrelated. Undoubtedly, it’s not our age that determines our capacity, but it still influences the position we hold. At both ends of the spectrum — those just starting out and those with long careers — we find more vulnerable situations, with lower-valued positions, at greater risk of disappearing (even in the case of senior workers with years of service, who can be dismissed due to changes like company ownership transfers).
But let’s not think this ageism affects only newcomers and older workers. It seems we rarely “hit” the ideal age (though we should ask: ideal for what? Or for whom?). There are also positions where we go from being “too young” to “too old.” In these judgments, the worker’s future performance is often doubted. This view is not only wrong — it is harmful. As long as we continue to measure people’s worth by their date of birth, we will keep reinforcing the idea that the inevitable — the passage of time — is also a threat.
As for the so-called “intergenerational problems” (so often promoted by certain media outlets), they are not that different from what we see in society at large: little patience for those just starting (so-called “snowflake generations”), little value given to learning time (which is often assumed to be brief, initial, or — at best — temporary and a patchwork solution), and little recognition for those who have been doing the work effectively for years. Young people are expected to perform quickly and without real time to train. Older workers are told to update their skills, but without being given fair conditions to do so. And all this happens in contexts where training often takes place outside working hours, with no compensation or recognition.
The result is a kind of vicious cycle: no conditions are created for generational coexistence, a strange (and unrealistic) competition is fostered, and then individuals — and their age — are blamed for the problems (tensions, poor interactions) that arise. As if age were the problem, and not the way we organize work.
Perhaps we need to start with the basics (the company itself and how it structures labor relations) and stop talking about the “intergenerational problem”; maybe we should finally start talking about the problem of how we understand work — and why it has become such a central factor in people’s unhappiness and conflict.
