Posted on 04/05/2020 9:49:43 AM PDT by fuzzylogic
I should have been more clearer in my original post. My old employer rather than my actual old job itself. I know nothing about COBOL, AS400, etc. my old coworkers were still working with COBOL when I left my old employer a couple of years ago. I was on a different “team” and no COBOL where I’m at now.
Yep, all 3 new Communism was BS. If anything good comes out of this COVID19, is people we see that Trump was right on China. Believe it or not, I went to real politics and the Atlantic, of all organizations, had a article on Trump being right on China and Dems not realizing that are letting their personal dislike of Trump not letting them see he is correct on China.
Wow. That’s I started with 40 years ago. Hadn’t used it in 35.
Laz, you’ve been around in a lot of circles. We’ll have to meet again once this political scare is over.
Excellent reference on the other end of the scale there were the ill fated thermal printers, whisper quite but not very reliable or consistent and needed special paper.
Holy crap, I learned COBAL and BASIC in college...in 1983!
When this came out yesterday & trended on Twitter, the Governor was looking for COBOL volunteers. If New Jersey relied on Indian outsourcers to save money on maintenance, let them wallow in their mess.
My introduction to computers course in High School was done with COBOL. It wouldn’t be hard to pickup. As one of my friends at Accenture told me: “you’re more qualified than most COBOL resumes they’re seeing today.”
If state governments are willing to make a decent offer that includes a reasonable career path, call me.
For giggles, I stuck COBOL back on my online resume. I want to see what happens.
If you want to volunteer, look at this:
https://www.usdigitalresponse.org
Several years ago CT had a problem with the last remaining COBOL programmers retiring in the unemployment office as well. They were desperate for people to fix it but once forced to admit they had been patching and tweaking the system for the last 30 years with little to no documentation no one wanted to touch it.
I don’t blame them either. NJ is probably the same a antiquated system with little to no documentation of how it works is a recipe for disaster if you make one mistake. I know someone who worked for one of the larger insurance companies and numerous COBOL programmers were being hounded by CT to help when they had their crisis, most refused due to the lack of documentation the state had. They were basically told, “we need you to make the system do X, we have almost no idea what has been done over the last 30 years, figure it out.”
So was I! My screen name is often RPGLEGIRL.
Yep. Typical slug government bureaucrats. Finally exposed for their malfeasance, and I’ll bet anything they were rude and ignorant to the few people left who would have even been able to help.
No IT department in business would have ever been allowed to have a situation exist like this; heads would have rolled 3 or 4 decades before now.
That’s exactly correct - no documentation. These idiots think they are kings and can just snap their fingers and the serfs produce whatever they desire.
Even if I could help, I wouldn’t lift a finger to bail them out of the mess they created over decades. Let them receive the public’s full wrath. Maybe they’ll get bounced and lose their exorbitant pensions.
My contact didn’t work with the COBOL stuff, but knew they people who did. They could produce thousand of pages of documentation on what they system was supposed to do, how it was programed to do it, how X interfaced with Y, etc. that was updated any time changes were made.
The state had notes like “1/14/17 - Steve changed process for new applicants due to passage of such and such law.”
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