Posted on 08/03/2010 8:13:42 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Help wanted: business application archaeologists…
Teaching mainframe skills is out of vogue at many universities with the advent of newer approaches to solving the biggest computing challenges. At the same time, many of the engineers capable of tinkering with the refrigerator-sized machines are nearing retirement. The average age of mainframe workers is 55 to 60, according to Dayton Semerjian, a senior vice-president at CA Technologies (CA), the second-largest maker of software for mainframe computers after IBM. "The big challenge with the mainframe is that the group that has worked on it—the Baby Boomers—is retiring," Semerjian says. "The demographics are inescapable. If this isn't addressed, it will be trouble for the platform."
From the second page of the article:
The number of mainframes today has dropped to about 10,000, from 30,000 to 40,000 in earlier decades, according to research firm IDC.
(Excerpt) Read more at pbokelly.blogspot.com ...
fyi
I thought I was one of the last of the Mohicans when I graduated college with a concentration in COBOL programming in 1987. Well, it kept me fed for eighteen years before I moved over into quality assurance, so no complaints.
Mainframes work. Only now are server clusters even getting close to the data throughput speed and bulletproof reliability. The problem is getting “latest-and-greatest” obsessed execs to realize this.
}:-)4
Bah. That's a mini. A mainframe is trailer-truck sized.
My wife graduated in 1972 and has been working with mainframes and COBOL ever since.
With a 9.5 percent unemployment rate, it shouldn’t be too hard to find people willing to work cheap and be retrained in Mainframe systems.
Started working in Cobol in 1985...haven’t touched it for about 4ish years, been doing Java...I have a feeling my career may wrap up doing Cobol that the cool kids won’t do...But it is gonna cost ‘em...
There is no reason to keep a 40 year old mainframe.
Communities are getting swindled out of millions because they don't have people competent enough to understand computers running their computer systems departments.
I know this because I worked for one. There was a database administrator who did not know how to turn on the database.
A senior level programmer who took 6 months to write an application that I finally wrote for him in 6 hours. He had to call a MEETING of 6 people to debug some code that turned out to be something as simple as trying to write 50 characters into a space allocated only for 40. It took me 3 minutes to find this- before everyone even sat down at the meeting.
They spent $250,000 for a ‘xml interface’ to copy data from one table to another. At the meeting where I called them to explain this, I DID IT in front of them in about 5 minutes. They just wanted to be able to market that they had an ‘XML interface and expected us to pay for its development.
When I asked my manager to get our $250,000 back she said that there was no process for returning funds that were already spent.
When we brought this up with the company they said they would give us 'free hours' of ‘tech support’. I asked them how much tech support would I need for a 5 minute operation. (As an aside they told me that once I left the remaining employees would probably need every minute of it- because they would not remember how to do it)
This is your tax dollars at work. And it is exactly the same people who will be running Obamacare.
And when I finished my contract there they hired cousin Jeffrey from the Parks Department to fill my spot- This guy was mowing lawns on Friday and writing software on Monday. I had to show him how to turn on the computer.
I started with the stuff before that....
Yep. I got out of Boeing’s Cobol/IMS computer school in 1982 and started at Boeing at just under $7 an hour. At the time, UPS was hiring drivers at $10 an hour. I thought computers had more future. I became a contractor in the mid-1990’s and my pay peaked at $125 an hour until early 2002. I’ve been a business analyst ever since but the hits I get from Monster for cobol jobs have always intrigued me.
But you are right. I was a damned good programmer/analyst and school was only ten months long. The market could be flooded with cheap foreigners at the drop of a hat. And the ONE thing that is causing me to change careers is that I am getting sick and tired of working with people that cannot speak clear English. If I’m not careful, my complaints could get me fired.
Likewise. I just got a hit from monster for a cobol developer position where the location is “work remote”. That is EXACTLY what I am looking for. If my interview for the other remote position goes south, I’ll pursue that one.
Does it go to 11?
Where I work everything for one of the systems I work with is done in Microsoft Sql server. There is this one guy on the team that is the absolute guru of all that is this system. The system is VERY clugy and we are trying to replace it with a new one. He is constantly stepping to the plate to analyze and adjust for new requirements. It is very time consuming and costly.
Two weeks ago, for the first time ever, I had to actually look at some of his code to create some requirements because the business could not articulate them well enough. It was the worst spaghetti code I had ever seen. It was only 8 pages and was virtually indecipherable. My MO is to understand a bad program by rewriting it. I did this to his 8 pages over the weekend and ended up with less than 2 pages that did the same thing. From that I easily created business requirements that were accurate.
No wonder their system is so messy. GRRRRRR!
Saw an article in a paper some time ago about a guy who had a thriving typewriter sales business—until the computers took over and he had to close.
But as Paul Harvey says, here’s the rest of the story. He started getting calls from old customers who didn’t like or convert to computers and needed their typewriters repaired. He now has a thriving repair business.
So it doesn’t always happen that obsolete tools/machines immediately disappear after a new product comes on the market. (The exception being the 8 track tape player—which if you are too young to remember, don’t ask.)
Who knows? Maybe clever and inventive buggy whip makers evolved into S&M shop owners.
I agree with you on this point, but how can you convince modern schoolkids who:
Never read the manual
Learn by the 'flying fingers' approach
Have been brought up to accept "the blue screen means reboot it"
Are also brought up to know that "the network is slow"
They don't know what they are missing, BUT they teach themselves and they come cheap.
IBM Mainframes
Mainframes photo album
You've got a book (to write) in there somewhere... a funny one...
System 34/ System 36/ System 38 - Rocking now!
I think we have uncounted numbers of as/400’s currently.
I don’t do programming though.
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