10 dying IT skills (No matter how good you are with these skills, you won't get a job today)

Tech Republic ^ | June 28,2009 | Linda Leung

[TrueKnightGalahad]

LOL - Fortran was the first thing that sprang to my mind, too. That was my first language...which I suppose qualifies me as a dinosaur.

Keep your soldering iron hot for tubes, though - they still rule the audio roost. :-)

[Tanniker Smith]

I know COBOL. Give me money and I’ll update your stuff.

[SamAdams76]

My wife has been employed as a COBOL programmer for almost 30 years now and she’s almost never been out of work. She will laugh when I show her this article. For the past 10 years, anybody under 30 will ask “What’s that” when she tells them what she does for a living.

[kdot]

30 years ago I was running a state of the art business computer system. It was the size of my refrigerator. The drives were separate with 6 megs of storage. The disks were the size of LP's and there were 6 of them in one array IRC.

Let me guess - VAX 11/780.

[spintreebob]

snip “ I came across your resume, and would like to check your availability and interest for the following opportunity.

Position Title : Sr. Application Developer
Location : New Hudson , MI “ snip

This old COBOL/DB2 guy who refuses to retire receives emails like the above all the time. My only resume on the internet is my FR homepage. If you are not receiving these emails, you need to learn the skill of how to market your self. Both where I’m at now, and where I have contacts in Chicagoland Fortune 100, there are thousands of new COBOL programs being written every year. Over 500 COBOL Stored Procedures where I’m at. And that doesnt include maintenance of the millions of lines of existing code.

Most job openings I receive are from Chicagoland (because I’m known there) and the VA to Az sourthern L where I’m not known. But MN and KS are also seen. I never see any for me from the west coast or NE.

This is the first in a few weeks from Michigan. I checked and they first looked in Michigan and couldn’t find anyone willing and able to work. Last year I probably averaged over 1 a week from Michigan.

Jobs are out there, even in Michigan. The crisis is not really that big of a crisis. But knowing how to find the jobs, and how to market yourself is key.

[Current Occupant]

My first language was SPS and then Autocoder for the first IBM computer, the 1401’s. Yah back in the 60’s. Last 17 years before I retired was COBOL. Great language. Co. DMV wanted a GUI interface and started a conversion process to get off COBOL. 1st attempt failed and have no idea if they ever got it converted.

I hung around for a while and could see it was headed for disaster so I decided to retire. COBOL rocks.

[SES1066]

Pardon me, are you the SysAdmin. I have a small problem. My time slice and priority has kept my job from running for 4 weeks now. My boss said that you were the person to talk to for getting my priority upped.
...
Yes I do have my JCL control deck with me. Oh, I see, you say the memory allocation is a problem? All I am asking for is 128 ... oh I didn't mean gigabytes, Oh now I see, That explains the terminal room operator's comments and laughter.

[jpsb]

Hey I am expert in Java/J2EE, Database Administration, and pretty good with Oracle too. EJB3, hibernate and a bunch of other stuff. I’m only 61 and available for work in a smoking environment.

[edge10]

Can’t disagree with you, I work at an XP (Agile) shop with elements of Scrum.

[familyop]

"obsolete IT skills in 2007...6. C programming"

...except in university C++ classes and job interviews. ;-) It's best for C and C++ developers to build and market their own projects, IMO.

[Glenn]

I work at an XP (Agile) shop with elements of Scrum.

I work in a totally devoted Scrum organization. Two week sprints. It's a pressure cooker.

[ASOC]

Dude, it’s all hollow state electronics....

[chesty_puller]

Does this mean my X.25 is still in demand?

[IronJack]

how many of these applications will remain in COBOL for the long term

Every single one of them. Until the bean counters pony up the dinero to migrate them to one of the newer languages.

If it works, don't fix it. And some COBOL apps, creaky and ancient as they are, have had almost half a century to get the bugs out.

What's the advantage to converting them anyway? It's no easier to find Java programmers than it is to find COBOL coders.

[The Duke]

Promal on the Commodore 64 computer. (The first language that used indentation as part of the syntax - move over Python!)

Promal was actually a pretty darned nice language in its day.

[discostu]

Wow I’ve been in QA for 14 years and never met one single QA engineer that is as you describe. We know we’re not programmers, that’s why we work shorter hours, and every knows it’s marketing’s fault for giving us an idiot deadline.

On the other hand there are many terrible programmers out there that insist every error found is a “user error” because their code is so great. These guys force a combative relationship with QA, and their code always sucks rocks.

[IronJack]

I started out as an Assembler programmer. I’m a fossil.

Pull up a lily pad, Dino. Let's pop a few brews and talk about the good ole' days.

[ptcmama]

Hey, me too! Did you do CICS programming? I loved it. I bet there’s lots of it still around. I could make CICS and COBOL sit up and beg! These days I work for Oracle writing design documents, and young guys and gals in India turn it into some kind of code. I miss knowing all the tech stuff.

[discostu]

I hate agile. User stories are greasy kids stuff, horribly insulting. Not to mention that you can’t get any real work done in 2 and 3 week sprints. And every half dozen sprints we etch-a-sketch shake the whole damn thing. We do an amazing amount of work to accomplish absolutely nothing.

[Billthedrill]

I took the Novell certs off my resume about five years ago. Pity, too. IPX rocked.

Now I shall leverage my mad BASICA skillz to world domination! BOW DOWN TO THE GOTO STATEMENT!!