I recently read that people over 40 struggle to adapt to new technology. I'm Juan Manuel Garrido, founder of EGA Futura and co-founder of Vantegrate, and that claim doesn't match the history I lived.
A quick memory check
Many of us started on black screens with no mouse, typing every command by hand. We saved work to floppy disks and hoped they wouldn't fail. Getting online meant waiting until nobody else needed the home phone line. We listened to the modem scream and watched a page load one line at a time.
Then came Windows and the mouse. We sent our first emails when we still had to explain what the @ symbol meant. We moved from fax to email, from paper planners to phones, from phones that only made calls to smartphones and WhatsApp, which permanently changed how we work. We watched office servers move to the cloud. Every time we finally knew a system by heart, a new one showed up and we started over.
In 2020, overnight, we learned to work from home, run video meetings, and keep whole teams going remotely.
Starting from zero again (on purpose)
Today we're learning to work with AI. Exactly like someone who is 25, who is also starting from scratch. Nobody handed us a manual. We learned by doing, asking, and getting it wrong. Often while raising kids, paying bills, and holding down a job.
So when someone says people over 40 struggle to adapt, I feel they don't know our story. We're the generation that lived through the most technological change in a single working life. Adapting is what we've been doing since day one.
1994 to today
I founded my company in 1994 with software that ran on MS-DOS. Today we build AI agents for mid-sized companies. Along the way I reinvented myself more times than I can count, like almost everyone reading this.
If a recruiter still thinks age predicts the ability to learn, share this with them. Age isn't the measure. The track record of adaptation is.
Full version (Spanish) on EGA Futura Discover. We also run free live Salesforce classes.
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