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Mainframe Operators Needed
blueforce writes "Computer World is reporting that there's a shortage of skilled mainframe workers on the horizon. Quote: "Getting IT professionals, especially young ones, interested in learning mainframe work isn't easy." No kidding. While I've never worked on a mainframe, I have worked on AS/400's. 3 words - Mind Numb ing. Perhaps it's time for a more long-term solution to the problem. Interesting nonetheless. Who'da thunk it - a shortage in IT. What's next, COBOL?"
Guess you haven't heard of MQ message queueing, TCP/IP sockets, Websphere all on the mainframe, and even a Unix (no not Linux) native environment and filesystem and a JVM as standard parts of IBM's Z/OS.
Your comment about the mainframe is as clueful as if I'd said, "Have PCs made significant progress? Last time I used MS-DOS I had to program in QBasic and dBaseII and I only had a monochrome Hercules graphic card."
"...is that you can't easily learn as a hobbyist. You probably can't play with one at school, either."
Hercules.
Adam
Please let me know what, from a business point of view, a mainframe can't do that a Solaris (or *laughs sarcastically* a Windows) box can?
Mainframes are in a different league, when it comes to reliablity, scalability and raw transaction power. Take a look at this article.
My other OS is the MCP!
As someone previously said, It's a different world out there. OS/390 is an amazing OS, we had 5 instances of it running at once on the mainframe (2 production and 3 development regions) and then I installed Linux too :-D
Initially I was given a measly 5% CPU for my Linux region....but that's more than enough for Linux to make a mark!
Coming back to the point, the reason for the different world can be summarized in two words - Batch Jobs . So the task of the operators will be to keep staring at the console to look out for requests to load up cartridges (yes, thats the primary backup medium) that a job needs to read stuff off or start some massive printing and computational jobs from time to time. I worked for a large conglomerate, employing more than 30,000 people, so every month the pay-check printing job on huge line printers took about 4 days to complete. Other task included checking DASD usage (mainframe harddrives) to check upcoming shortages , etc.
Even programming for it was fun, I was primarily in charge of the opensystems portion of it, including Domino Go Webserver, O-MVS (unix) and Linux. But I can understand why there is a shortage of manpower. The cool technology does not hit the mainframe world, so you won't get to work on wireless communications, kernel hacking, etc. I am now a Linux systems programmer and I dont wanna go back too, but it was an experience worth getting.
Arrgggh..i have been barfing too long...back to work!
There is no patch for stupidity
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If companies are whining that there is a shortage of AS/400 (or other mainframe) operators out there, then they should blame the mainframe manufacturers for making their products inaccessible, not the young IT people for being uninterested. Believe me, I TRIED to learn about the AS/400, but just finding scraps of information is a chore in itself (aside from superficial marketing crap).
I have worked at a bank for two years now. Before I arrived, I had never even heard of the AS/400. On my first day my manager took me into the computer room and proudly pointed out what looked like a black dishwasher sitting in the middle of the room. "And this," he smirked, "is our AS/400!"
I could bore you with stories about how nobody taught me anything, how I had to figure everything out about the vaunted AS/400 just so I could do my fucking job (and subsequently got scolded for "going where I wasn't allowed") and so on, but I won't.
Instead I'll just say this: whenever I tried to ask my manager or co-workers for an overview of the AS/400, he could only say "oh, it's NOTHING like a PC, it's COMPLETELY different." Me: "okay, but how is it different?" Them: "Oh, it's just different, you wouldn't understand."
I have come to is that my manager doesn't know jack shit about his beloved AS/400. He knows how to "make it work," and even though he claims to have some sort of certification, IBM obviously just gave him scraps. If you can't explain a technology in 3 sentences, then you probably don't understand it at all.
But why does he know jack shit, despite working with an AS/400 for 10 years? It is because IBM has purposely kept him uneducated. Everything is hidden in subscription professional sites and bank-account busting certifications from IBM.
I have searched the web over and over again for information on AS/400 crap. All I can find are IBM's boring information libraries for the "iSeries," mysterious subscription sites for AS/400 "professionals" and this page. Try finding a book on AS/400 online or at your bookstore. They suck. If you want to wade through the IBM manuals online, be my guest. My suggestion is you do it just before bedtime.
Ok, MAYBE you could teach yourself to be an AS/400 expert by wading through said manuals...but everyone here who learned about PC administration by wading through a Microsoft manual - or, for that matter, an Intel manual - raise your hand (and we're talking actually black-and-white MANUALS here, folks, not online tutorials or knowledge base articles)...well...still waiting...Thought so.
My manager has told me that if you want to learn ANYTHING about AS/400, then you should forget about a career in anything else, because you will have to become an AS/400 expert. Who do you think told HIM that? Why, the current AS/400 experts who want to keep their salaries up and the their jobs secure! (natch)
So here's to the Cult of the AS/400. May you all fade away into well deserved obscurity.
Now imagine that suddenly your clientele (college students in my case) suddenly want all their data to be accessible via the web. Now do you chuck the old busted system? No, you instead place more systems on top of it to interface it with your web system. Synchronization? Forget about it. Transactional data over the web? Not gonna happen.
Seeing as my job these last few years has been designing, building and supporting a system that provides web-based access to mainframe transactions, I recommend you do a little more investigation before quitting. Let me give you a starting point: COM Transaction Integrator on Microsoft SNA Server/Host Integration Server.