Dealing with the ever-present 'e' word

One of the toughest challenges IT leaders face is managing twenty-somethings.

Many IT executives I talk to who are in their 40s, 50s and 60s bemoan this aspect of their jobs. They complain that many Gen-Yers carry a sense of entitlement and have pre-conceived expectations of what their hours, roles and career paths should be.

Many entry-level IT workers "have been given everything to them by Mommy & Daddy, right through college" and even after they've entered the labor force, said a CIO for a defense contractor whom I spoke with at Computerworld's Premier 100 conference in Orlando last month. Several newbies he has hired who didn't like the idea of having to come into the office at 9 a.m. or who didn't feel they were being promoted quickly enough simply quit without any future prospects, the CIO said. "They figure they can always stay with their parents or with friends and borrow money until something else turns up," he added. "And they can."

I don't mean to denigrate the next-generation of IT workers and potential IT leaders. There are a lot of sharp young people out there and IT hiring managers are hungry for eager job applicants who already know more about technology than silver-haired managers will ever learn. But there certainly seems to be a disconnect between the expectations that entry-level IT workers and hiring managers each have regarding new entrants.

One CIO who seems to have a good handle on this is Lew Temares at the University of Miami. Sure, it helps that the university helps mine some of the IT workers that Temares can place on his team. But he's also recognized that he's needed to become more flexible in understanding the needs of Gen-Yers and what makes them tick.

"We try to accomodate people's schedules as much as we can," says Temares. "But we still need people on campus to oversee day-to-day operations."

To help do that, Temares has equipped his staff with Blackberries, laptops and other mobile devices in order to make it easier for them, particularly mobile twenty-somethings, to log in and do work from home or other locations. "It's not unusual for many of our younger IT workers to put in a full 8-hour day here and then log in for another four hours later that night," says Temares.

"You will absolutely get your return-on-investment by equipping IT staffers with these devices," he says.