The BlackBerry As Liberator

John LeFevre, former banker, 2000s: Investment-banking culture for analysts in the early aughts was all about face time. We were just glued to our desks. We’re talking hundred-hour weeks. We could not leave our desks even to grab lunch—you couldn’t be gone so long that the screen saver kicked in. When we were given BlackBerrys, it completely changed all of that. There was a movie theater not too far away that started selling unlimited passes; a group of us first-year analysts, anytime our bosses were traveling or out of the office, we would go to the movies and check our BlackBerrys. If they called, we could just say, “We’re downstairs, we’ll be right back up in like three minutes.” It was this small act of rebellion. We got to the point where we were “going to the movies” three or four times a week—it would take us that long to see a single movie because we got interrupted so many times.