Managing a younger boss - how to finesse working for a someone who has never seen a functioning typewriter

While you may not be keen on having a very young supervisor, your best strategy includes:

1. If you are really unhappy with the selection process and believe that you are the victim of age or other discrimination, follow the appropriate legal steps and be prepared to accept the consequences. Talk your HR department; talk to a lawyer. Don't talk about this to every single one of your co-workers.
   
   
2. If #1 is not true, stop whining. Right now. Whining and back-biting were unattractive and inappropriate in junior high, and they can cost you your grown-up job in the next 90 days.
   
   
3. If you want to keep your job and to be valued for what you know and what you can contribute, you have to make perfectly clear from Day #1 that you are deeelighted to be on your boss's team, that you will do everything you can to assist him in the transition, and that you are invested in his success. If this is not true, start looking for a new job. If you sit at your desk and stew for the next five years (assuming you aren't fired), you will be a seething mass of inefficient hostility.
   
   
4. Scrub from your vocabulary: "In my day.." "In the old days..." "We tried that once..." "We've never done it that way..." and anything else that smacks of your knowing how everything is and always should be done. You are not the leader of the band.
   
   
5. On the other hand, you do have mission-critical information, and it is your job to very professionally broach the subject of that knowledge to your new boss. Suggest that you would like help in defining your new role -- you want to be able to provide useful information, you don't want to appear to be sniping from behind your desk, and at all costs, you don't want to appear to be undermining new leadership.
   
   
6. Remember that your new boss may not have supervised anyone of your generation. If this person is as smart is senior management believes her to be, she should welcome your assistance if you present it with generosity and without being an overbearing know-it-all.