20-Somethings
Now that we’ve corralled some interns here at JFM (they started 3 weeks ago and are off to the races on their project), we’re trying to shake loose the rust on some actual management skills. Not that there’s much “managing” ever going on around here.
That said, this writeup making fun of a U.S. News article on how to manage 20-somethings was super helpful. ;) My favorite two examples of their “perspective” are:
- Food: Can we get some free food up in here?
- Shut Up: Dude, you are old and we already know how to do this stupid job, so please just shut up.
Is it wrong that I identify more with the blog post making fun than I do with the sage advice from U.S. News? Or would the 20-Somethings just tell me to stop kidding myself.
Join the discussion 3 Comments
brodie
June 26, 2008 at 2:37 pm
It looks like this would be an interesting post, but I can’t click on it. All that free candy and soda made my mouse sticky.
Kevin Zink
June 26, 2008 at 7:47 pm
That article is hilarious.
I think the trick to it all is finding the right interns (or 20-somethings). That is, the ones who require little-to-no management.
With our two programmer interns, our management strategy has been, basically, to come up with a big list of tasks, then not bothering them for about a week. We do use trac to help keep things organized.
It seems to be working pretty well, as the list is generally empty by the time we drum up the next set of tasks for them to work on.
The one aspect of our company that we’ve failed to manage is our Campfire chat. See link:
http://www.feistypiranha.com/from-campfire-to-forest-fire/
Hillel
June 30, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Hey Kevin. Thanks for the view into your interns. Hope they’re having a great summer. I will confess that we’ve only given one task to our interns — ship a product we can all be proud of by the end of the summer. And fortunately (?) we have no project management software to screw up. ;)
Fingers remain crossed. :)