While attending my first tech conference as a journalist last year, I couldn’t help but snicker to myself as I watched the gray-haired CEO of a large software company dedicate a large portion of his two-hour keynote presentation to “the millennial in the workplace conundrum,” as 100,000 middle-aged attendees rapidly scribbled in their notepads, laptops, and tablets, hanging onto every word.

The clichés about millennials–those born approximately between the early 1980s and early 2000s–were the same that I’ve heard repeated countless times since: we are entitled and hard to manage, we need to be praised, coddled, given perks and flexible working conditions, and we have unrealistic expectations.

Of course this wasn’t the only time a middle-aged person stood at the front of a room and preached to other middle aged people about a generation they are neither part of nor fully understand, and unfortunately it will likely not be the last.

“I do find that quite ironic when folks have very strong viewpoints of this generation when they not only don’t come from it but they clearly are not very close to it,” said Jeff Carr, CEO of PeopleFluent, a Boston-based talent management and strategic human capital software company.

Carr adds that this misunderstanding has in fact had adverse affects on young people entering the workforce. “I think this comes down to a misunderstanding between the generations, and in some cases it’s led to some hesitation to hire or promote or spotlight some of these folks in the workplace.”

The conversation about how to manage such a hard to understand generation is nothing new. In fact it’s one that happens with couple of decades as a new age group enters the workforce.

Of course there are some factors that make millennials unique—many of us came of age in a time of ubiquitous technology and social media—but many of the stereotypes used to describe the mysterious millennial are simply attributes of youth.