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 ...
You know a developer is too young in an interview when you ask him, “What’s a S0C4?”, and his reply is “Too keep your feet warm.”
I spent 20 years as a mainframe systems developer writing assembler code, with expertise in job accounting, performance management, MQSeries, VTAM, etc., etc. If you know anybody who is hiring, let me know.
-PJ
Who would want to put the time and effort to learn skills that are applicable to ONE SPECIFIC COMPANY? It is a pure dead end job. A skill that is of value to NO ONE ELSE. It’s almost cruel to put someone desperate for work through that. Especially since you know they’d dump the guy in a heart beat as soon as they don’t need him anymore.
A job like that is a terrible career move.
True, the mainframe skills were good for baby boomers who stayed put for 30+ years to build that pension, but in today’s market where people hop every 2-5 years, those old things, as good as they may be, need to go.
LOL!!!!
You have no idea of the data throughput mainframes put out, do you?
Universities not knowing what the private sector wants and needs? Who’da thunk it?
The problem with the people who say “just move the app over to SQL or C#” etc. - businesses just won’t do this unless there is ABSOLUTELY no other alternative. Too risky. If you’ve got an app that is 1M lines of code and battle tested over DECADES - it’s just too painful to think about starting over.
Since we’re stuck with legacy code we’ll be stuck with legacy machines for some time to come. It’s the way of the world.
Loyalty is a two way street. Kind of a chicken or egg question, do people jump because they are fickle? Or because they know every morning they come to work could be their last.
| //SYSIN DD DUMMY
BALR 14,15 |
Started out on a UNIVAC 1283 in 1972.
My boss came from ‘the model railroad club’ at MIT and had helped develop first burrough’s computer.
When we got our first ‘key to tape’ unti, we thought it was buck rogers time.
Kind of hard for me to imagine a business that stays so stable for decades that they can live with an unchangeable legacy system.
It was always PFM that fixed them.
LOAD”*”,8,1
ping
Around the year 2000 legacy code upgrade “panic”, I’d been retired and away from COBOL for about 5 years. I visited various contract agencies who sought mainframe programmers. When I went to apply for various positions, you’d have thought I was a second class manure shoveler. My skills didn’t matter. Increasingly the IT attitude toward the mainframe world has driven good people away.
Ah, the memories.....
Utilities
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