‘Scanners are complicated’: why Gen Z faces workplace ‘tech shame’

See ‘Scanners are complicated’: why Gen Z faces workplace ‘tech shame’ on www.theguardian.com

The PC Gamer heading says Young workers don’t know how to use office printers, scanners, ancient desktop PCs and I’m like who the fuck does? Working as help desk a lot of my issues have to do with figuring out how to use the printers and scanners. Windows supporting AirPrint would help a lot but it doesn’t look like generic AirScan will happen ever.

Sure there’s an interesting discussion about how Gen Z don’t understand file systems (probably due to how it has all been abstracted away), but honestly computers can get complicated. Worse still, because of how shit it can get you develop tacit knowledge just to get your work done, which is hard to communicate to others. The biggest computer skill I wish I could teach is having a sense of curiosity. Like, try click on that button and see what happens, which is what the article says Gen Z is good at.

…there’s at least one thing that sets tech-hopeless Gen Z workers apart from their older coworkers. Younger people seem more willing to learn, and can quickly adapt to new skills – even if it takes a few rounds at the printer to fully master the art of scanning.

Gen Z is very comfortable navigating software they’ve never used before, because they’ve been doing it their whole lives, Bench said. They are used to trial and error. They may not be this godsend to the workforce who come in automatically knowing how to do Excel, but they’re fast learners.