Mainframe Techies Are A Dying Breed 566
dipfan writes "Great piece in today's Financial Times on the surprising survival of mainframes - but the problem in the US is finding experienced techies to run them: "55 per cent were over 50, compared with fewer than 10 per cent of those with Unix or Windows NT server skills." Cobol programers, still needed for legacy applications, are mostly in their 40s. Help is on the way, though, thanks to IBM's use of Linux, which "freshens the labor pool" according to the article." (See also this earlier post on the mainframe-operator labor pool.)
Employers' fault... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think being a mainframe admin would be a blast (maybe I just don't know better), but in my eight years of sysadmin work, I've never touched a mainframe. Every job posting I recall coming across required previous experience.
Mainframe development work (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh? Stuffing FUD in there or what? (Score:5, Insightful)
How does linux freshen the mainframe labor pool, and not the Unix/Windows NT pool?
Linux ain't System/36 or MPE or any other mainframe OS. And show me one linux app that's written in COBOL. (The language exists, but I've never seen it put to use).
This is a self correcting problem. A good admin/coder can pick up mainframe stuff when he needs to. All the 50+ year olds are still working the jobs they got when they were 30. When they die off/retire, younger folks will pick it up.
I mean, hell, I picked up enough about MPE and FORTRAN and COBOL to do my job inside of a week. And I got competent with S/36 and RPG at my last job.
It aint rocket science. It's like a skilled machinist learning to shoe horses.
So, the admins are old. (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the problem, here? If the 50-year-old programmer is the only one who knows jack about mainframes, hire the 50-year-old programmer. Don't whine about not having enough qualified programmers, when what you really want is just-out-of-college programmers that you can bully into working for you at half the salary of someone with real experience.
training? (Score:1, Insightful)
main frame techies (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Huh? Stuffing FUD in there or what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah right ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically the "Computer Science Business" degree plan is designed to make cobol monkeys for either the school, statefarm, kraft, or caterpillar who still rely heavily on cobol for day-to-day operations. What's the catch? In less than 10 years all the formentioned companies will be converted to either a .NET or Java platform to control all their operations. COBOL's last major reworking was done 18 years ago, it's time to switch to something new.
I hate cobol and I always will, if I ever see an VSAM or coding paragraph again I'll probably freak. I'd rather work at McDonalds than be a COBOL monkey. I don't think I'm alone with my views either, as this article proves. These systems are old, prone to crashes, and not supported by level one support anywhere. They have heavy maitenance price tags and it's for this reason that it is more economical for these companies to completely rewrite their systems. IBM Running on Linux will NOT save COBOL, it's a dead language, just some people still speak it.
Death to cobol you worthless language.
We are not dead, we just (Score:5, Insightful)
But M$ exchange cluster design and management pays MUCH better.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Don' t Go There (Score:2, Insightful)
I am sure some people like it but I hated it and had to leave the company to get away from it since no one would transfer to my position.
--Kurt A web developer's weblog [freeroller.net]
A Non Issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Employers target these people and train them. I know. I was one of them.
I went to a school called Chubb in New Jersey, which is run by the Chubb Insurance company. It was originally an inhouse training development center for Chubb so they could train new employees on their mainframe systems. It got very popular and they opened it up to outside companies to make a few bucks. It has gotten very popular and is located in several states now.
The companies who need mainframe workers know about schools like Chubb. The only thing that has changed at Chubb over the years as it became less of a Chubb training center is that they have to cater to the people who do know about current technology, so they also offer non-mainframe curriculum. But as far as I know (haven't been there in 10 years), mainframe is still their bread and butter.
Re:So, the admins are old. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the general idea is that the 50-something programmer will most likely wish to retire soon.
I'm old enough to remember when companies kept their employees on long enough to offer them retirement plans. . . and I'm only 28. So if the 50-something wants to retire "soon"--which is probably on the order of 10-15 years--that still gives you several years where you'll have his expertise available not only to do the job but to train newer and younger programmers as well. There's really no good reason not to hire a 50-something, from a long-term economic standpoint; but then, no one's accused American companies of being able to see beyond the next fiscal quarter.
India to the rescue? (Score:3, Insightful)
They have a habit of showing up at our doors for that kind of thing, whether we need them or not.
Re:Legacy (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the scenario: A hdd fails, the system automatically calls IBM and a tech is dispatched the same day. I get paged, and meet a tech at the front door.
IBM Tech
I heard you have a drive failure here
Me
I do??
IBM Tech
No problem, I have a drive right here, it will only take a second to swap it out
He swaps out said drive, zero down time, and nary a performance hit because a hot spare came online. You have got to love that kind of service and uptime, and just plain reliability.
Re:Employers' fault... (Score:5, Insightful)
> previous experience.
Takes a long time, but it will become a self-resolving problem. The existing "old guard" will eventually die out (either literally or via retirement) and create a demand in the market.
This will either cause companies to lower their standards or discard the old mainframes.
It would make good business sense to address the problem before it reaches critical mass (ie, so much of the old guard is gone that there's no way to train newbies), but if the Y2K problem was any indication, foresight isn't a prerequisite for running a business.
Re:Yeah right ... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's what they said 10-20 years ago, when those systems were new.
"Don't worry about that pesky 2 digit year thing. These systems will not be around that long."
Re:Employers' fault... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would of course agree with the frustration tech workers seeking employment right out of college, and workers in general for that matter. It's hard to get experience when everyone wants it to give you a job, but that's not really the problem when it comes to network and sysadmin positions.
It's perfectly sensible to require people who run something as complicated as a mainframe, or even network administration, or a half a dozen other things require strong experience. However if these companies want to have people available to work on these systems in the future they also have to provide opportunities for people to gain this experience without having to rely on them for full administration. That is to say companies should be hiring more PFY's so that they can train the next generation of administrators through real life experience.
Employers don't want to do this of course because it involves having an extra employee, but they would be much better off in the long term if they had people who had real experience.
Of course an additional problem with this sort of thing is unrealistic pay expectations among tech workers in general. No one is going to hire a PFY for 60,000 a year, but there are still many people on slashdot who believe that 50,000 is a ridiculously low salary for a full time job. So while a lot of it is employers being cheap, it's also somewhat us being unrealistic.
Re:Legacy (Score:5, Insightful)
A case can be built for the verity of that assertion as applied to the mainframe situation.
Learn by doing it... (Score:3, Insightful)
And no, the mainframe cannot be replaced by a client-server solution. I listened to this moron chant throughout school - mainframes are not dead. REALITY CHECK - there are just some applications where a mainframe makes more sense. Mainframes can handle enormous amounts of data without having to break it up for a cluster, or without being bogged down with I/O like most client-server type solutions. Mainframes are great when you need to handle databases with tons of information in it - and you need to consistantly dig through it. Most machines cannot handle it, and will buckle. Mainframes almost never buckle, unless you are testing new stuff on them (naughty newbie - that's what a test LPAR is for) or you do funky things to them.
please mod parent down (Score:2, Insightful)
I am a 25 year old programmer who spends 96% of the time working on OS/390 mainframes using JCL and MVS COBOL. Any other time is divided between Java and VB for special apps.
The team I work with (5 of us, total) is officially dubbed the "Legacy" team. Our total IT department is comprised of roughly 80 employees (so you can see how few are able to do or want to do what we can). I am the youngest on my team by 12 years. I would guess that the average age of our team members is 45 (not including me in the calc). The great thing is, because I am willing to work and I lack the offensive attitude of the parent comment, I make BANK.
I fear for you, but I don't fear you.
This Article Sets Up Future H1B visa increase (Score:3, Insightful)
Some things never change......
Re:So, the admins are old. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Employers' fault... (Score:4, Insightful)
I was under the (possibly mistaken) impression that most CS schools were harping on C/C++ because if you knew them, you could learn almost any language quickly because >50% of them are based on C, use C syntax, use C++ object constructs, etc...
Re:"mostly in their 40s" -- oh no! (Score:3, Insightful)
Law firms have lots of younger junior partners just itching for a step up, and paralegals and other staff behind them.
But who's waiting to take over for the COBOL programmers? No one now, no one coming soon, and no one in the forseeable future. That's the problem.
Re:Or... (Score:3, Insightful)
My understanding is that some 20-30 year old predecessor to MVS (or OS/390 or z/OS) is in the public domain, but obtaining more recent versions is very expensive (unless you use a pirated version - anyone know a z/OS warez site?).
And what you will need is more than the OS, there are other utilities that are also licensed by IBM and cost a fortune.
You might be able to learn a bit of JCL and some basic TSO commands on Hercules + an ancient mainframe OS, but you would not be qualified to do more than the most elementary tasks on any modern production mainframe.
If IBM was smart, they would release a z/OS for Linux package, including basic compilers and utilities, just for hobbyists and students.
Is anyone at IBM listening?
Locomotives are still around (Score:5, Insightful)
Locomotives / freight trains are still used regularly. They serve a need that cannot be met with automobiles or even 18-wheelers. For Joe Sixpack and his family, an automobile is definitely a more efficient way to cross the country. For ABC Florist who relies on fresh cuttings, locomotives take too long - trucks are better. But for XYZ Furniture ordering fifty sofas, twenty-five coffee tables, one thousand various lamps, etc., it would take a large number of trucks (each having a driver to pay) vs. twelve cars in a freight train (one driver to pay).
There is a use for mainframes in particular industries - personal computers and servers aren't the be-all end-all answer to every computing need.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"mostly in their 40s" -- oh no! (Score:3, Insightful)
Where I work, their idea of "retraining" us COBOL jockeys was to send us to MCSD 5-day cram refresher classes--never mind that none of us had coded VB6 before in our lives--and then expect us to get an MCSD certification, without EVER using the stuff in the wild. Once they realized that we couldn't do that, all training was withdrawn. Anything we want we have to get on our own, which is OK, that's the way things go--but we won't be given any opportunity to actually use the stuff unless we take a 50% pay cut to go to work as a "junior" programmer somewhere else.
Meanwhile, we see MCSDs,
If somebody is smart enough to be a good COBOL programmer for 15 years, they can learn new tools, even ones radically different. But instead companies will throw their older workers away--even though they're the ones that know the business processes--and bring in younger ones that they can work 90 hours a week and/or underpay.
From the Devil's IT Dictionary (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Employers' fault... (Score:2, Insightful)
In this economy? IBM can hoover up entire graduating classes with the promise of steady jobs then send them to Mainframe School. What're you gonna do, sit round for 6 months, 12 months, longer, working in Starbucks and waiting for a hot dotcom job, or go work for Big Blue with its health and dental and matching 401k and bottomless pockets? It's really not the problem the scaremongers are saying it is. Any of the big systems integrators - Accenture, CSC, EDS, Unisys - could do it, and they will, as soon as it's necessary to their businesses.
Re:Or... (Score:3, Insightful)
What no vi??! You've got to be joking. I've yet to meet a platform without at least a couple crappy clones. Next you'll tell me regular expressions are not available and you're using a C compiler without ANSI support.
Seriously though, any system not supporting the tools you mention would seem halfway dead already. I'd figure the only thing such an environment would be good for is jumping to something more useful. Perhaps in some cases it really would be more feasible to consider emulation instead of porting and/or rewriting. But if the question of getting onto something a little more mainstream isn't even being asked, that sounds like a recipe for disaster. (ie: someone else will do it for you, and gain a huge competitive advantage)
You want experts on Rexx, JCL, RACF/ACF2 and such? Train them *after* you hire them. Additional languages (and platforms) should be easy enough to pick up for any halfway decent programmer or sys admin.
For the record:
z/OS has POSIX 2 support.
os370 blech! Keep it away!
MVS has at least POSIX 1 support.
etc? not sure...
I'm a fugitive from the law of averages? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:60,000 too high? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now the junior admin is still necessary, but the "junior" is something of a misnomer; The job is hardly entry-level now. Another factor: the job pool is still overflowing with the gold-digging inept. So many untechnical (at heart) people are masquarading as IT workers, that it becomes necessary to offer more money simply to attract a level of competence.
Or these are just clever rationalizations. Funny, you speak of paltry living wages as a positive thing. You see, the corporate people on top of the pyramid will still be making "New York wages" while the techies join the rest of the wage slaves making "Missouri wages." So yes, the companies cannot afford to employ everyone at exaggerated salary levels: in the future, the executives will simply make certain to keep it only for themselves. This suspicion will always make me advocate higher wages for skilled labor.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)