TREND PIECES—ARTICLES ABOUT NEW DEVELOPMENTS seen by a people in an industry or generation or the country as a whole—are designed to be broadly applicable, but I often find myself on the outside looking in. For instance, I can think of dozens of everyday headaches and rites of passage that a middle-age, Midwestern-born professional like me is expected to have faced. But so far, I have never purchased a car, signed up for cable television, or even owned a single-family house.
Whatever the trends are, I’m not trendy.
That quality of being a bit out of step extends to intergenerational conflicts. I keep reading about how Generation Z, the cohort of young people who were born between 1997 and 2012, are the worst generation to work with—to quote a recent Newsweek headline. Crusty old Gen Xers like me are supposed to despise their work ethic with a fire usually reserved for participation trophies. And yet, the one Gen Z engineer I know the best (my son) and his friends don’t strike me as potentially bad employees at all. They are smart and creative and wear their hearts on their sleeves.
Is it really Gen Z that’s the problem, or their older managers who may be carrying along antiquated views on work and life?
This month, we had writer Robin L. Flanigan look at this generation gap, especially with regard to engineering companies, which tend to have strong internal cultures that might not mesh that well with the Gen Z holistic approach to life and work.
In her reporting, Flanigan found some definite areas of contention. Communication is one: The Gen Z reliance on text messaging rather than face-to-face meetings can drive older managers batty. And there’s a tendency to eschew hierarchy, which can feel insulting to an older colleague who spent years developing skills and experience.
But Flanigan also heard praise. “One of the pros of Gen Z is their entrepreneurial spirit,” Guillermo Aguilar of Texas A&M told her. And she uncovered ways for better integrating these young workers into companies.
Elsewhere in this issue, Tom Gibson wrote about some of the engineering behind electric bikes, which are transforming not only the bicycle manufacturing industry but also the lives of avid riders—like Gibson himself. The relative simplicity of a bike means additions such as batteries and electric motors need to be optimized to their smallest form factors, but the impact of each of these advanced technologies is enormous.
We also had writers investigate work by researchers who developed a new computer model of running shoes to help better design versions that work for different feet, an implantable device intended to stem the rising tide of opioid overdoses, and control systems for enabling a pair of autonomously driven cars to drift around a test track within a few feet of one another—an ability that should one day help self-driving cars avoid out-of-control skids on icy roads.
We are also featuring a lovely video profile of Christine Reilley, who recently became the managing director for publishing at ASME. Reilley shouldn’t be an unfamiliar name to ASME members, but I’ve known Christine for a long time and I learned plenty from the video.
Also, as an acknowledgement of the passing of President Jimmy Carter, Lee Langston wrote about a personal connection to the famous solar water-heating panels installed on the White House roof.
That’s just scratching the surface of what we have on offer this month. And remember, if you for some reason missed the January 2025 issue, it is only a click away. Enjoy!
—Jeffrey Winters, editor in chief
There’s more to ASME than the magazine. Be sure to check out these features.
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