Battle of the ages

Charleston Southern University CIO Rusty Bruns has a secret weapon to handle needy users -- Buddy Gray, a 63-year-old network manager.

"His customer service is impeccable. He has the patience and knowledge to sit with a user until all their questions are answered," Bruns says of Gray.

Bruns' reliance on Gray, one of three workers older than 60 on Charleston Southern's 17-person IT team, is a rarity. Many CIOs are reportedly turning away from older workers in favor of 20-somethings, causing a battle of the ages in IT.

Click to see: Mix of generations

"Blogs everywhere are filling, debating whether the older workers are past their prime and only the young employees have value moving forward," says Phil Murphy, principal analyst at Forrester Research. A 2006 Intelliquest Fall Business Study bears this out as employees 50 years and older accounted for less than 20% of the corporate IT professional workforce.

Murphy says older workers are seen as having out-of-date mainframe skills while younger workers have new technology smarts. He says the answer to stopping this generational conflict lies with CIOs. "This misconception is unnecessary. CIOs should not let things get to the point of war. If they do it's a failure of management," he says.