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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.)
What the hell is a "mainframe"?
I have learnt Basic, Turbo Pascal, C, C++, Perl, Java, Python, Ruby and what not... But noooooo! Today, you must know Cobol to get a job!
Darn, I was just starting to get working on my Fortran...
I code, therefore I am.
Us younger people don't have mainframes to play with. I'm 22 and I have never ever seen a mainframe. Anywhere. I don't even know what kind of software or operating system they have. Other than they might have a cobol compiler.
I can code cobol. But I'd rather gouge out my eyes with a sharp stick.
I actually have an old IBM system 38 at one of the buildings that my company owns. It's still there because we can't get it out without destroying the building. I'll let it go cheap :)
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
I believe that you mean Fred Brooks. Unless he has a brother named Rick that wrote an identically titled book.
Mainframe Techies are a dime a dozen--the real challenge is finding competent PDP8/E techies these days!
Plunk your modern so-called "computer whiz" in front of one, and their first reaction is invariably one of the following:
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Commence Freaking. Thanks.
10. They are those nice 80 year old men in the clean white coats...
9. "If you can't submit the program in batch mode, it just ain't worth submitting"
8. They're the guys with spot welders in their briefcase.
7. Compared to what they are used to, any PC or Mac is a portable computer
6. They know EBDIC, but to them edlin is a newfangled thing.
5. They know DB. They don't know Debian
4. They don't trust any machine under 3000 lbs.
3. They come home from a hard day's work with hands covered in soot and burnt oil.
2. The telltale COBOL on the resume
1. They knew all about dangling chads and punch cards without having to read Slate
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Tell me about it.
/bin/sh (why waste space on GNU bash?) and typed
(And no, it wasn't a problem with PATH)When I had deployed it and started testing, the app seemed to have a problem connecting to another host on the network. So, I
jumped into
I am constantly being ribbed by a younger guy here about being an old ex-mainframe guy. He is always going on about how there were dinosaurs crawling about when I was programming on them. Now IBM comes out with a new model called "T-Rex". I can feel a new verbal assault coming on ...
Couldn't IBM have call it something like Mainframe Extreme or something a bit more trendy?
NoW (Networks of Workstations) will in time push both the mainframe and nearly anachronistic programming language Cobol out the door
Yup, I first heard that back in 1981. Given enough time I'm sure that will be true. Of course, given enough time a room full of Eminems with tape recorders could eventually record some music.
Sweet! Those Cobol classes I had to take over the last two semesters are finally going to pay off!
Oh, not THAT kind of RPG... ;-)
What path would a kid take to get into real datacenter hardware?
Go work for Unisys, IBM, CSC or EDS. Volunteer for the mainframes - there probably won't be much competition. Your colleagues will laugh at you, and tell you all about their "hot" Java skills. Quit after 5 years and become a contractor. Laugh at your former colleagues who're discovering that their skills are a cheap commodity now.
Were you to try to do ANYTHING with a mainframe (I'm thinking s/390 or z/OS here) armed with the knowledge you mentioned you would be so horribly lost it wouldn't even be funny.
;-)
Actually, it would be funny
Years ago I worked for a group that ran a bunch of systems that didn't fit in with anything else in the MIS department. One of the systems was a very old IBM 3081. This thing had water cooling and boxes and boxes of storage devices. It was a serious bit of big iron.
Sometime in 1993 we had meetings where the clueless manager would ask us the uptime so should could put it on her report. Our group would report the different servers we ran with a 50 to 100 day uptime but the old guy who ran the 3081 would claim 4767 days or 13 years or 17 billion microseconds depending on the week.
At some point we were told everyone was going through "team training" and we were the second group scheduled. We made the people running the team training cry and the had to postpone it for a few days while they could collect their thoughts (and feelings?) A second revolt was led by the Old Bastard Sysadmin at teh mention of a group hug.
At the time I had been doign sysadmin work for 8 years but the Old Bastard Sysadmin taught me some of the finer points of being a BOFH.
I'm not quite dead, you insensitive clod :-)