Baby Boomers
1946–1964
Also known as Boomers
Met the internet mid-career and were told to adapt, which they largely did, twice.
Key traits
- Mid-career adaptation
- Established professional identity
- Process memory
- Practical resilience
Defining moment The internet arrived in the middle of established careers.
Baby Boomers didn’t start their careers online. The internet turned up after the professional identity, habits and expertise were already built, and then asked them to reorganise how the work moved. They learnt email, search, digital records and platform systems while still carrying a memory of the machinery underneath.
Someone who once reconciled a ledger by hand can see exactly what an electronic spreadsheet takes away and exactly what it can’t: the moment you know a number is wrong for reasons arithmetic will never explain. The same gap is open now. AI can swallow another layer of procedure and still not inherit the responsibility attached to the answer. So Boomers have nothing to do with refusing to change because they have already changed, repeatedly and on demand, and the expertise worth keeping usually sits beneath the tool rather than inside it.
