Working for a Younger Boss? Join the Club

Seniority no longer rules, as a significant share of U.S. employees now work for someone who is younger than they are, according to a recent survey from CareerBuilder. In fact, for many professionals, their supervisor didn't even have a driver's license by the time they were already working for five years or more. "Age disparities in the office are perhaps more diverse now than they've ever been," says Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder. "It's not uncommon to see 30-year-olds managing 50-year-olds, or 65-year-olds mentoring 22-year-olds." Given the edge that younger generations bring with their tech and social-media savvy, this is not surprising. Yet, it's interesting to see the generation gap in their varying views on office topics ranging from work hours to project management to preferred forms of communication. More than 3,890 U.S. workers and nearly 2,300 hiring managers took part in the research.