Mainframe Techies Are A Dying Breed

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.)

Comments

Not too surprising really

[Jack Wagner]

I've done a smattering amoung of work on mainframes and I always find it quite refreshing for myriad reasons. First and foremost I can charge premium bucks since it's all about supply and demand. Secondly, it's always a pleasure to get to work on a real computer since most of my work these days is spent on that heinous X86 scrap that society seems to think passes for computers these days.

Lets face it, working on a FreeBSD box after working on an old mainframe is like driving a VW bug with flowers all over it after driving a boss 69 camereo.

And finally since the skillset to work on these is above and beyond that which your average windows admin/coder has, I am fairly secure in my knowledge that I have job security.

It's like Rick Brooks said in the Mythical Man Month, if you are in the upper 5% of computer scientists you will always be employed making in the upper 1% wage group.

Warmest regards,
--Jack