One more reason I’m glad I dumped my Blackberry

For the longest time now, I’ve lived with the burden of being one of the last people on the face of the earth still using m Blackberry.

Not that I was especially enamored of it. It certainly outlived its usefulness a couple of iPhone versions ago. But I was just too lazy to replace it.

What got me unlazy happened a few weeks ago.

I woke up at about 4:30 a.m., checked my e-mail, looked at the headlines, and then – I actually had a reason – looked up Carl Yastrzemski’s birthday. I then set my B’berry down on the nightstand, only to hear something that sounded like the phone ringing. On the other end.

I picked up the phone and saw to my horror that my not-so-smartphone had random dialed a friend and neighbor who lives up the street. I quickly turned the phone off, hoping that the call hadn’t gone through. (Hah!)

Sure enough, at 8 a.m. I got a call from Bill asking me if I were okay, and telling me he’d missed my call because his phone was charging in the living room. At least it hadn’t gotten him and his wife up in the middle of the night, panicking that there was some kid or grandkid crisis.

I explained that the phone had just gone off on its own, but I’m sure he was thinking drunken, middle of the night, stalking widow.

So I figured it was time. And now I have swell new Galaxy S6 that’s probably the size of the screen on my parents’ first Philco TV. But it’s nice. And hip (enough). Or would be, if I weren’t old enough to actually remember Philcos.

Anyway, I was especially relieved that the Blackberry is no more when I saw an article in the Boston Globe on the difficulties of aging in the tech start up space, which had as it’s URL Does This Blackberry Make Me Look Old?

The article talked about how difficult it is to be in your 40’s and 50’s and working in a tech startup where everyone else is in their 20’s or 30’s.

I can sympathize – in spades.

I work almost exclusively with tech companies, occasional startups, and it’s a rare event to see anyone my age on prem, unless someone’s hosting “Take Your Grandparents to Work Day.”

Recently, I was at a startup client’s with workspace at a trendy NYC tech incubator. The head honcho is no kid – he’s 50 – but he’s not old, either. Yet he had a good twenty years on everyone else I saw buzzing around the space. Our meeting included his PR guy, who’s about my age. When we went into the communal kitchen for coffee, we stood out completely (not to mention raised the average age by a decade or so). Sure, we all looked plenty hip and current by my standards, but we were the only people in that room who weren’t lanky twenty-somethings in skinny black jeans, Chucks, and hipster glasses.

A week or so later, I was on the elevator at another of my client’s when the CEO stepped on. The woman I’m working with introduced me, and we looked each other up and down, age-gauging. He’s younger than I am. But not by much.

I’ve yet to see anyone at this company other than him who looks north of 40.

I’ve worked for these folks for years, and the people I originally worked with are all long gone. Most of them would now be somewhere in their late 30’s to late 40’s. They’re all still in tech, but were they starting to feel age inappropriate in a business that, while established, tries to maintain a startup culture?

More to the point, would I still be working for them if they had any idea how old I am?

They all know I’m old enough to be their mother, but I observe ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’

So I won’t be volunteering that Medicare coverage is great and that I just got my geezer pass for public transportation.

I’m just happy that they’re still throwing work my way. And in any case, it’s their world not mine:

There are 53.5 million of them, and their ease with all things digital, social, mobile, and Meerkat is making even fortysomethings feel like old timers…

In the first quarter of 2015, millennials surpassed Gen-Xers as the largest generation in the US labor force, according to the Pew Research Center. (The millennials, generally considered to have been born after 1980, blew by the baby boom generation last year.) (Source: Boston Globe)

And none of them use a Blackberry:

At 51, [Maria] Cirino, the venture capitalist, has not only observed others struggling to avoid the dreaded “in my day” syndrome, she’s living it. She recently ditched her beloved BlackBerry because it was pegging her as old.

“I’d go to meetings and a lot of guys had never seen one,” she said. “They’d say, ‘Is that a BlackBerry? I didn’t think those were still around.’ ”

The article also threw in the Mark Zuckerberg quote: “Young people are just smarter.”

I will  note that Zuckerberg is now in his thirties, so I’ll remind him what we used to say: Don’t trust anyone over thirty.

We weren’t right, and neither is he.

But it may be worth listening to Satchel Paige:

Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.