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The Greying of the Mainframe Elite
bobcote writes "The Boston Globe is running a story about the maintainers of the mainframes getting older and facing retirement. One of the problems is that many computer science programs don't include mainframes in their curricula anymore. From the article: "Amid concerns that America doesn't produce enough technically trained young people, mainframe computer users and developers are especially concerned. Most computer science students concentrate on small-computer technology, such as Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating systems, or the popular alternatives Unix and Linux. Few have been trained on zOS, the operating system that runs IBM Corp.'s massive mainframes."
Here's a link for those of you who would rather not register just to read the second half of the article...
Who'll mind the mainframes?
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
I miss Univac 1100 and Honeywell 6000...
But to run the latest mainframes, IBM and its customers need a few thousand youngsters to replenish the ranks.
At this sentence, my first thought was that if IBM wants to make sure there are people to support/run/develop on their mainframes, then why don't they start providing more training? If the colleges won't do it, then they need to take matters into their own hands. And then I came across this sentence:
Companies are taking matters into their own hands. Whitaker learned her trade at age 18, through an intensive six-month training course sponsored by Total System Services, her future employer.
Which is great, but I still think that it should be IBM doing the training. If they want to make sure that companies keep buying their mainframes, then they should make sure that there are trained people out there that can go work for a company that is buying a mainframe. It seems completely in their best interest to provide the training at a reasonable cost to get those few thousand youngsters into the ranks.
A man with a gun is called a citizen. A man without a gun is called a subject.
Sounds like too niche an area to teach at a university to me.
My pics.
Computer Science programs dont teach nearly any applied operating system management. Not that it nessecarily belongs in a Comp-sci program, but if most comp-sci grads cant even navigate linux with any competancy, then why should we be looking universities to fix this?
My issues with comp-sci programs aside, why cant these younger people simply take the normal approach of learning on the job? Dont worry about it, just start training people.
.
Don't worry, this is Unix system. I know this.
''Some of us started dying," said Robert Stanley, 56, director of research for Air Traffic Software Architectures Inc. in Ottawa. ''Heart attacks and the like. Thirty years of Twinkie-eating."
Finally, scientific proof that twinkie-eating has some positive attributes. They certainly don't taste good.
A B A C A B B
Getting a computer science degree isn't about understanding every technology that's been built out there. It's about understanding the principles, theories and practices that apply broadly across the field.
Every other employer I've known with what might be called "specialized" or "exotic" hardware or equipment (and yes, mainframes deserve to be in that category very soon if they aren't already) provided training on that equipment. A sharp student with a good understanding of fundamentals will be able to learn the specifics quickly enough.
Snipes, the boogeyman, mainframes - all a bunch of crap grandpa used to talk about until we got tired of listening to him and put him in the home.
Maybe they will start using email now then.
Old Koreans will have more pen pals.
liqbase
I wasn't aware that CS had anything to do with the type of maintenance and administration they're talking about here. Of course, had I actually read the article I might have more insight as to what they're getting at, but most of the old guys I know that do this thing were either trained in the US Air Force as a computer tech in the 60's or 70's or went to someplace like Control Data Institute.
Just what exactly did CDI teach, anyway?
Why should I learn those mainframe operating systems?
Most people learn the popular systems because of just that - they are popular. They are more likely to get a job with those systems under the belt.
In my view, companies that are in need of these specialised skills should be the ones responsible for the training up - the computing courses should teach the skills required to learn the new OS quickly, not bog down with one or two.
Is this anything like the frightening shortage of Cobol programmers? 'Cause I think business should demand more Cobol in the CS curriculum too.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
The lack of zOS training on CompSci courses shouldn't make the slightest difference. Companies could easily hire graduates and train them to the ideosyncracies of their mainframes. Any computer science course that produces people who are only capable of using Unix/Windows and so inflexible that they can't cope with change isn't worthy of the name.
That isn't to say there aren't a lot about.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
When was the last time you saw lots of jobs for mainframe techs? The jobs that are out there are filled.
CS degrees should be about Computer Science theory and understanding. The rest is just syntax and training.
The skills they DO teach are the ones that they are most likely going to use in the "real world" at that time. Aside from giving a student a well-rounded education, colleges are also responsible for giving the student skills that will apply once they enter the workforce.
Why not just ask Tank and Dozer to fill in?
''Some of us started dying," said Robert Stanley, 56, director of research for Air Traffic Software Architectures Inc. in Ottawa. ''Heart attacks and the like. Thirty years of Twinkie-eating."
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
I had another studant scoff at me when he heard I was talking Cobal programming, about it being a 'dead' language so to speak.
My response is what do you think most major applications were and are written in mainframes and the like, VB?
Not that I ever used it again, but I rarely program anymore anyway. (when I do its more scriping than anything)
After all, there's no such thing as digital. Just as all the old analog dinosaurs were retiring the high-speed digital crowd discovered that maybe everything wasn't all ones and zeros.
Same applies to mainframes: mainframe technology has been dissed as obsolete for decades. Just as the microprocessors that (mostly) displaced them finally get to where they can use some of that "ancient" mainframe technology, the people who know how to apply it are leaving.
I'm sure a few will be willing to stay on the job if they're asked nicely enough.
Karma is a bitch -- especially the "comes around" part.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
No, really.... Is it? ;)
Absent is importance placed on "capable of learning", "able to take on new responsibilities", or even just general intelligence.
It's amazingly short sighted. Technology changes, and within almost any company, there's regular change. Hiring overall good people who can adapt and learn new systems ought to be the mindset, but usually it isn't.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Simple supply and demand, once there's a demand there'll be a supply. There might be a period of time where people are short handed but I'd say it'd amount to a blip on the radar
Or is it that people in IT generally suck???
"It's not attractive", I hear a geek say. Well, running big iron is bound to be expensive, so the suits should have no problem in plunking down extra green to attract more people, no?
Keep in mind, this is everything for us... and most of us don't even know it.
When you go to the dr's office, guess what's running your insurance data (usually....) ibm.
A friend's dad is 1.6 yrs from retirement and one of the last of the people in his area that run the zOS machines. It is scarry. Truely scarry.
I can talk some hardware with this guy, and a little bit of "good comptuing practices" sort of stuff, but I can't touch him for his knowledge of the workings of the code and systems. And *forget* finding those little "google:howto+topic" miracles like I do daily for my linux admin stuff.
I'm sure most linux savvy ops who know a little about databases could fill in, but there's going to be some issues in the next 5 years or so.
It reminds me of the Cobol joke... about the bloke who earned so much money fixing peoples cobol systems to make the y2k switch that he was able to buy himself a deep freeze. Only to have the 9999 bug crop up. They unfreeze him, tell him all kind of good stuff that's gone on in the world, and then mention to him that since he had Cobol on his resume he was drafted to rewrite some code by the community. (hehe...)
-=fshalor
Our Universities are doing the right thing by exposing students to the technology used to write the large majority of new softwre being written. It would be a mistake to train students to prop up a dying segment of our industry. This is almost like a lament that all of the remaining blacksmiths were getting old in the days of Henry Ford and the Model T. It was true, but so what?
If they were smart they'd be training their own services people...so the customer would just be a user...dependent on a service contract for administration.
Blar.
If companies are able to see the problem coming, shouldn't they be able to provide their own resources to circumvent it?
Why rely on outside forces to supply your labor if its that big of a deal?
Most computer science students concentrate on small-computer technology, such as Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating systems, or the popular alternatives Unix and Linux. Few have been trained on zOS, the operating system that runs IBM Corp.'s massive mainframes.
Comp Sci students are not (or should not be) training to be system administrators. That is a vocational program. That would be like complaining that electrical engineers are no longer taught how to manufacture and assemble vacuum tubes. Serisouly, why complain that students are not being taught long obsolete technology?
Not only that, but the point of a college education (and sadly this is rarely the case) to imbue the students with the skills to think critically, reason effectively and adapt/synthesize information to deal with new challenges. If they walk into a job that requires mainframe skills, they should be able to pick them up as they go. That is, if they have received a quality college education. Other than that, they should be looking to hire DeVry or ITT graduates that have been trained in the vocation of mainframe operations/maintenance/programming/whatever.
Thankfully, I've been able to continue to work on that platform (and its descendants) over the years.
Once the airline industry recovers, there's probably be openings for folks with 1100 experience again...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Yep. To put it in perspective, most of the mainframe people where I work came here from NASA after the Apollo program shut down.
No, I'm not one of them. At 36 I was a kid when most of them came to work here.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
I work with mainframes myself and I can whole heartedly agree with TFA.
:)
Mainframes may not be the fastest growing area in IT, but they will be around for decades to come.
Remember: All your savings and all your bank debts only exist on mainframes. They control your reality.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
One of the problems is that many computer science programs don't include mainframes in their curricula anymore.
How many of the current mainframe gurus were taught mainframes as part of a curricula? I would expect not very many. In fact, most of the mainframe guru's I have met didn't even have an educational background in computers- computer science as a seperate course of study hadn't barely begun to get off the ground at that point, so they were mostly engineers, scientists and mathematicians who happened to get to work with mainfraimes as part of thier job or studies, and discovered they liked it.
Schools should not be teaching mainframes, nor should they be teaching MS Windows. They should be teaching CS fundamentals, and providing general-purpose software development experiance. I wasn't an expert in embedded software or Windows programming when I graduated college, having most of my programming experience on unix boxes. But that is what I am doing now, because a company hired me on as an intern and gave me the opportunity to gain experience in the field.
The problem is not with the schools but with the employers who were too short sighted to apprentice anyone under thier gurus.
As a former Mainframe programmer I can tell you that Linux is quickly replacing zOS. IBM is really pushing linux on their big iron and I give zOS about 10 more years until it has completely been removed from major production sites. Well I take that back, they SHOULD be moving away but I know certain companies (COUGH) TSYS (COUGH) will continue using zOS and writing all their code in assembly. Companies that have not set a timeframe for moving away from this piece of garbage are really shooting themselves in the foot (clients laugh at you when you ask them to MDM a file to them).
...start billing the suckers $2000/hour because the entire community has retired, you'll see a push come from the top to replace mainframes with small computers real fast.
do these things run Lin -
Bah, next box please.
If the demand stays the same, and supply shrinks, it just means those developers/admins will make more money, or cost more in terms of training. That, or the whole thing will just get too expensive and cheaper alternatives will be found.
This situation of smaller, less-capable, cheaper technologies undercutting a market leader is what's described in The Innovator's Dilemma - new, disruptive technologies (Unix, Windows, etc...) originally aren't powerful enough to do what the "big boys" want, so they find uses in other applications. By the time they catch up with the established tech, it's often too late for the established systems to fend off the competition.
As the article says, there are still important areas where that hasn't happened yet with mainframes, but I suspect things are headed that way, sooner or later.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
... and people will come.
Companies shoul not whine, but pay if the really need people. Just let the money do the talking.
JCL too. Heck, I used to be able to code in hexadecimal (screw the assembler) without even resorting to the yellow card. But it's been a while which means employers won't touch you. They'd rather moan about the lack of cheap surplus talent rather than try to utilize the talent that already exists.
As the older people start to retire I am sure younger people in the company will see where the promotion opportunities are and will learn on the job as needed.
You know you are only in school for a few years, but on the job training goes on your whole career, like 40 years or more.
Very little of what I learned in school is applicable to what I am doing now.
Personally I don't think schools should even try to teach such technical skills, leave that for on the job learning or for post college certification training. What colleges need to do is teach people the ability to learn on their own, to have the confidence and the habits needed to go after new fields of knowledge.
That's why I can't stand it when I see universities teaching Java and C#. By the time those kids get out of school that train will have left the station. Maybe teach that to final year students so that when they do their internships they have the basic skills. Otherwise I would expect someone who is really interested in computers to be playing with all that stuff from when they are much younger.
Peace, or Not?
1) Mainframe workers retire. 2) Shortage in worker supply in mainframe industry causes demand to increase. 3) Mainframe salaries increase to meet high demand. 4) Increase in Mainframe technicians occurrs as a result of higher wages in that industry. 5) Increased supply of Mainframe technicians balance wages. 6) As a result, amount of incoming Mainfraim technicians decreases. 7) See step 1.
The world isn't going to implode, the world's IBM servers will be just fine. The notion that all Comp Sci programs are horrible and don't prepare students for field work is just absurd. I went to the University of Texas system and we had several required courses covering deep aspects of OS systems. This is another article reflecting the typical attitude on slashdot, that IT people are something more than contributors. Most of everything in this industry is written documented SOMEWHERE. And as long as they continue to produce literate graduates, I believe we'll be fine.
if sign.nil? Sig.new
If these systems are so old, couldn't they be replaced with new system pretty cheaply? Hell, replace it with two for reduncancy.
I understand the cost of data conversion, whatever. but a lot of these old systems have just a few hundred gigs of data. Give the data set to a few good guys with an oracle/etc setup and 6 months. I've done stuff like that for some major corporations so its impossible.
I am not even talking about speed improvements or changing the structure of the data. Just move the platform to something you can administer. The million or so it would cost would be saved in a few years by being able to admin it more cheaply.
Synergies are basically awesome, and they're even better when you leverage them. -PA
Well, sort of. Here's the group: Share.
IBM'ers show up at every conference and present. They are easily accesible. I went for the UserBlue AIX specific portions (and got access to network device driver engineers!), but if you go to the non-AIX,non-eServer HACMP stuff its a whole world of applied mainframes.
There is a community out there and IBMers are looking after it.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
When the 65 was chosen as the mandatory retirement age, people didn't live a lot longer than that. Now, people can be productive into their seventies. Forcing many people to retire at 65 is a terrible waste of talent.
Also, what's wrong with on-the-job-training. Keep the old guys on part time to train the new guys.
The practical skillset required to admin Unix systems, could provide some people with the skills needed to maintain mainframe systems:
1. Strong memory to be able to know which command to use in which context
2. Thorough understanding of logic (this stuff started on mainframes where logic was impreative)
3. Organization. You can't properly admin a *nix box if you don't keep yourself organized. The same applies to mainframes. Windows doesn't really prepare people for this kind of thinking.
Having worked on a VAX and a few Alphas running OpenVMS, I can say that the underlying concepts between mainframe OSes and *nix aren't as far apart as Windows is from mainframe OSes.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I just spent two days hauling off a decommissioned Data General MV-30000.. Now it's sitting in my living room. It was replaced by blades running windows. :)
You wouldn't belive how much I paid for it..
All the big iron is going the way of the dinosaur.
Too big, too expensive, too complicated.
In other news Ford says there are not enough straight 6 small block mechanics to keep their 1950's Ford Thunderbird servicing department open
"we just cant get the staff, its all Fuel injection and turbochargers these days, i can get qualified Engine diagnostics and managment technicians, but none know how to rebuild a 1953 Thunderbird alternator or rebore a small block" an unnamed official was quoted
A college education is not vocational training.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
It's just the payback for the closed source mindset: Mainframes are the biggest players of the secret info game: Pay me $10K and I'll tell you the answer, otherwise your payroll system won't work. Since the keepers of the secrets and the insider priests are dying off, so is the religion they use to control their customers. Meanwhile open systems are growing by leaps and bounds - not with the lush riches of a captive paying customer base but at least it will be around for a LONG time and pay enough to earn a living.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
So what if nobody understands zOS any more on the big iron rigs? Just install Windows!
. . .
Why is everyone looking at me like that?
This is why my school is introducing a mainframe concentration into its CS program within the next two years, and people graduating with that degree are going to be looking at lots of money. Although, as some other posters have asked, why is this the university's job?
My profs came out and told us that people like State Farm and Caterpillar had sat down with our CS people and asked them to provide some sort of mainframe sequence. But any graduate of the CS program should be able to pick up mainframe programming through training. It's just another language, after all. These companies should have seen the writing on the wall and hired graduates 5 years ago and had their current mainframe programmers start training them. Then they'd have workers with 5 years of real-world experience in mainframes. That's infinitely more valuable than a " mainframe concentration" in a CS degree.
These corporations dropped the ball, and now they're looking to universities to pick it up for them. They don't want to have to spend money training anybody. That's all this boils down to.
This post is c#*p and shouldn't be on the front page of /.
This kind of question seems like it is posted by a non-mainframer or someone who just hasn't had any experience in the field. Unless you're the only one in your IT dept, there are many-a-times that we interact with young/aged, inexperience/experienced and they perform as good as the next geek.
Anyone can learn at any age and I myself have been put in the position to maintain government mainframe data. And I originally came from the MS-camp.
Please keep this kind of junk off the front of our great site.
Two words: H1-B Visa.
I work for a fortune 100 company and the mainframe is not going anywhere. It is THE platform that handles almost everything. It has remarkable uptime, and computing power. Though it can be cumbersome and not so "user friendly" but who cares cause it does the job so well.
So much relies on it and companies are taking the "if its not broken, dont fix it" route. Moreover I highly doubt any other existing platform could replace it. All to most of the people that deal with the mainframe here are middleaged as well. Food for thought. I recently graduated college with a CompEng degree, and they want me to now learn JCL and are shocked that I didnt have a single mainframe course in my cirriculum.
If the expertise is rare or the potential workforce unwilling to do it, raise the pay.
If it pays well, people will learn to do it. If it pays bad and other jobs pay better in the same industry, why does the industry complain?
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
All your savings and all your bank debts only exist on mainframes. They control your reality.
Since most of the people I know, unfortunately myself included, have much more of the debt and less of the savings. It is only in our best interest to let these people and thus our DEBT DIE!!!
Our little savings will be a small sacrafice.
And if this troll is not enough as is... If only they had been running our debts and savings on FreeBSD, then they would have long been dead!
Cheer Up, It's Friday.. in the US the rest of you don't matter. *grin*
The obvious maneuver for a mainframe expert:
1. Retire at age 60.
2. Put together a 40-hour training curriculum.
3. Take a course on education and public speaking at your local college.
4. Offer your training services at $300/hr, plus airfare, hotel, and per diem.
5. Work 1 week per month, and make $12,000.
6. (Optional) Set up a hot 19 year old college freshman with an apartment and a car, and bang her once a week until your heart gives out.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
looks like ibm is integrating a lot of mainframe capabilities into their pseries power5 architecture. linux, aix, and as/400 (i/os) already run on it and it wouldn't surprise me if z/os makes it on board as well in the near furture. seems to make good business sense for ibm to only have to support one hardware platform.
Will this spark an miniature era of mainframe trainings? and will this create so many technicians trained to operate mainframes and then to find that all mainframe jobs are taken?
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
There seem to be two disjointed threads here: 1. We work on mainframes and we are elite, so there... 2. Any halfway intelligent college student should be able to work on mainframes, so there... I suggest a few rounds on Soul Caliber to settle the argument.
i just wanted to point out the mortal kombat blood code in his signature for the sega genesis version :)
A B A C A B B
The principles are the same! I had this argument 15 years ago, while a DPMA chapter president. One of the board members kept trying the argument, "are we a micro or mainframe group?" I said it does not matter, the same rules apply. The only difference is that people are forgiving of micro failure, but when a mainframe crashes people are fired.
Fight Spammers!
This is like worrying about not enough people knowing how to use a Butter Churn or repair a Steam Locomotive.
MadOgre.com
Personally, I find the concept of mainframe development rather attractive, as I do any architecture substantially different from what I'm used to. I'd really like to get to know how to use and program these machines.
Problem is, I've no idea how to go about this. It wasn't offered as a module at university, and I don't exactly have one lying around I can play with.
I recall reading about how IBM donated a mainframe to an english university (reading? Can't remember) for tuition purposes, but I don't exactly want to take a second degree to go about this.
One thing that strikes me is that backward compatibility on mainframes is legendary (with many programs written for a system 360 still running without modification. This would suggest the use of old machines for training. Would there be any objection to companies donating their retired mainframes to academic institutions for this purpose?
They are now pumping up Web Services on the mainframe... but this is COBOL or C++. I think the JVM only runs on a Linux partition on the mainframe.
One thing a *nix person never gets... they can run multiple OS's on a mainframe.
Why can't they update the mainframes to Windows or Unix(Linux)
How many of you have tried using the old 3270 based interface. In most cases I can't imagine a worse way to manage an OS. Their unix service now offer a better alternative interface, but not everything can be managed from it. If they want to keep these systems running, create a new, more usable interface, GUI or not ... it doesn't matter. Pretty much anything would be an improvement.
As it stands it hard to train people, as many things can't be figured out, they must be memorized. Dataset names, etc, tend to be obscure an non-descriptive. As one poster mentioned, prehaps it's people trying to keep their jobs.
You mean something like this?
IBM Learning Services have a large selection of courses available for z/OS.
I do think that making these courses better available and better publicized to college students would be a great idea though...
[disclaimer: I work for IBM tough not in the z/OS area. Above is purely my personal opinion]
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
that these retiring admins will never train anyone to replace them, and the only place you can ever learn anything about computers is in your college comp-sci classes.
You can tell the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Mainframe computers are designed around a specific purpose: large volumes of repetetive transactions. This is why they are very prevalent in the banking, credit card, and other financial arenas. They handle the bill processing, customer database, etc.
Sure, you could attempt to blame companies like Microsoft for this, and you would only be partially right. If you do that, you have to add Intel, AMD, Sun, HP, and a whole host of other companies to the mix too, since they all contribute to the "smaller, faster computers are where it's at" attitude. A big reason why this attitude prevails, however, has to do with the "single point-of-failure" issue. When your mainframe crashes, you can do absolutely nothing until the necessary repair work is done. This is where the distributed computing environment works very well.
Having worked on mainframes in the early part of my career, I know that they were useful then, and still are. They excel at what they were designed to do... large volumes of repetetive transactions.
It wouldn't hurt for computer science students to learn about mainframes, or even limited resource embedded systems. It would make them better, more well-rounded IT folk.
OCO is Loco
This reminds me of a comment in an A-Level Computing examiners report in the late 80s about a question asking for an explanation with examples.
The examiner complained that while surprisingly many students knew the right answer it was disappointing that the examples all referenced the concept in the context of microcomputers while the examiner had expected references to mainframe systems.
I remember at the time thinking "asshole!" The question didn't specify - how surprising should it have been that the students drew examples from their personal experience?
I concur with the many other posters who explain how this is a training issue which simply demands proper investment.
Computer Science should not be teaching these things. Although OS use and maintenance may be useful skills for a CS major to have, I don't believe they have any relation to the science of computing. CS majors should be trained in the underlying concepts of OS design, not how to configure/maintain (or even really how to use) any specific OS. That's why we invented MIS majors -- not just so people flunking CS would have another major to fallback on.
And do something similar with the Cobol 80 columners :-)
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/newf aces/
Can I download the zOS i686 bootable CD images off BitTorrent?
No...? Then YOUR MAINFRAME IS SCREWED!
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
First, when I've look for mainframe jobs in the past, there were far fewer of them compared to almost any other newer technology. It takes longer to learn the ropes of the mainframe, but yet they pay less. I think that while it may be hard for recruiters/employers to find mainframe people, it's even harder for mainframers to find recruiters/employers. Higher supply than demand I believe.
If you haven't worked on a mainframe, here's what you probably can expect. First, extreme discipline. Development tends to favor spending months making sure all problems can survive a lightning bolt striking the machine, vs having only slightly less reliability and more features.
Second, everything is harder to work with. Datasets must be allocated before used, for instance. The Unix System Services has made much of this either easier or obsolete, because it has provided a rudimentary korn shell and UNIX type file system, but there's still the legacy environment left.
Get used to names for everything having a three letter prefix and being limited to no more than 8 characters, usually not connected with the product or concept name itself. I find this to be the most irritating aspect of this, and based on the way the OS was designed decades ago, I don't think this will ever change. It's nice to call an apple an apple, but that won't happen on a mainframe. Also, the user password is 8 characters, which is surprising for a platform proponents would lead you to believe is perfectly secure.
I'd also comment that true development from scratch is much less common. It seems much more likely that people make tiny changes for fear of breaking something (mainframers can be extremely conservative in this way).
Btw, you can learn mainframe skills on the job, but it will take a few months at least. It is radically different from *NIX and Windows in many ways. Still, you'd be better off with a good CS education than specific training in any one vendor's product, including mainframes.
School didn't give me my Oracle training or other product-specific training. I got sent to a class by my employer.
College, in my view, is intended to provide a base experience, with specific job tasks trained by the employer. Sounds like corporations' free mainframe training is drying up, and they will have to start paying to train their own people.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
I retired from IBM after 30 years in mainframes and operating systems.
After retirement I worked two contracts for the Y2K problem. My resumes was in a lot of headhunter databases but have likely been flushed by now.
So why if there is such a thinning of the ranks haven't I got a job? Why have they not been placing ads? Why have no headhunters called my phone?
My years as a systems programmer (previously a hardware CE) on both MVS and VM/SP seem to matter little in this corporate mentality and business world.
Let the suckers belly up then if they are too lazy to realize that many of us are still here and have the skills and knowledge way way way beyond the
PeeCeeWeenies.
Ha!
Suck it up you corporate DP exec flakes. Suck it up.
The one that I like best involved backing up to tape. Apparently tape backup started not as tape, but as thin steel ribbon. This was some heavy stuff, so they employed 3-5 horsepower motors to spin it. Of course, if the motors weren't calibrated right, the steel tape would often snap. One guy even lost his arm to this tape.
How's that for nuts? Computer maintainers don't get these kind of injuries anymore I'd assume. What with steel tape being phased out.
Compared to the number of windows machines out there, zOS is a rarity. So rare in fact as to merit that it not be taught at university. The market creates a demand, and if it doesn't we end up with a .com boom.
I had a job at a bank several years ago that stored everything on an IBM ES/9000. This was purported to be one of the largest machines of this type shipped from IBM to a customer. The thing was water cooled, had a staff of 10 people to maintain it, and required a hand scan just to get in the room. It ran everything you'd think and scoff at...mostly cobol jobs and a lot of JCL. I was a newbie client-server guy whose world was sybase VB3. As TFA states, there were a number of older folks, some who had been working there since before I was born, counting down the days till retirement.
I was writing the front end to the banking system, first as a VB3 app and then as a web app (in 1996!). As such, you'd run "jobs", basically like how you'd call a stored procedure, and get back the value. So I'd run the job, and before I had taken my finger off the enter key, the result was sitting on the screen.
I asked a "little-old-lady" who was days from retirement how it cached the person's value, and how it took into consideration interest, atms, etc. She told me it didn't. It started from the top of the vsam file, and added and substracted for that person till it got to the end. Then it gave you the answer.
It did this every single time.
I have never ever ever seen anything that could match that machine for raw IO processing. Add to it the fact that it was used by several thousand people all over the world, *and* it ran VM so there were two identical MVS operating systems, then CICS, then the apps....
To be honest, I never got the hang of how to even move around in CICS, but I will give mainframes a lot of credit...when you need to shovel a *lot* of data around, there's probably nothing better.
The fact is people...mainframes are computers answer to gravity...you never see them, barely acknowledge their presence, but you'll miss them when they're gone, because they're the only machines that can handle the staggering loads that would make a cluster of *anything* weep.
> It reminds me of the Cobol joke
Who's there?
My 390 starts acting up I just give it a whack upside the cpu rack with my cane.
/Young whippersnappers don't know diddly
For more serious problems you have to spit in the back and kick it.
If it's a solid market, then there's a business opportunity to hire mainframe gurus out of retirement to provide commercial training for organizations that need it.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
After years of being told about the mainframe dying off, it looks like it's actually about to happen.
Only it won't be though the hardware itself being decommissioned, but though a lack of people to maintain it.
I don't see this as a problem. Today's servers can easily stand up to the data demands of what used to require a mainframe. This is just a motivation for companies to invest in modern hardware and operating systems.
So the mainframe is dying? So what. Let it.
That's what happens with evolution. The obsolete die off.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
The issue is with RPG software. Nobody is learning to write RPG anymore.
Talking about the problem in terms of "Mainframe Programmers" is like a VB.NET programmer saying he's a "Desktop Programmer".
Unlike desktop PCs, these machines are designed to deliver near-perfect reliability. They can be repaired or upgraded while still running, and their software is vastly more stable and reliable than that found on desktop machines. In addition, mainframes use massive data channels that let them process immense amounts of information.
This misses the issue too. All of these features can be found in non-mainframe configurations such clustering/blade solutions as well.
In fact I used to work at a couple companies who had a group of AS400 programmers. Almost every other day they were taking the system down for 15 minutes to install PTFs (program temporary fixes). Sure the hard drives were plug and play, but the software patches weren't. Our non-mainframe Windows and Linux boxes were hardly ever offline.
Actually Northern Illinois University (about 1.5 hours from Chicago) had a total mainframe focused CS degree as of the late 90's. I graduated in '96, and learned my COBOL, Fortran and assembler. Data structures in mainframe assembler are quite fun!
Yes, it is a niche program, but served the needs of the large financial and insurance companies in downtown Chicago. They were very successful program and at the time I graduated, they had an insanely high job placement rate right out of school.
If you have a system that runs for years between crashes, you need people who've been around for a few years to deal with it. That's the problem.
Computing platform and associated support all make up part of the total cost of ownership for systems.
If corporations consider legacy mainframes to be a strategic part of their solutions, they will pay for the wages and training.
Therefore... If one reviews where the money is going, mainframes are not viewed by the corporate world as strategic.
'ta
Here's another article from the Big Iron newsletter, "Mainframe, Z Next Generation".
Here's a quoute from the article:
Apparently IBM IBM has committed to maintain the level of mainframe experts in the field, which means adding 20,000 or so people who are trained in mainframe technologies between now and 2010
/cj
Well, I think this says a lot about the quality of "education" in the USA, or at least the level of seriousness that kids take it. For example, what ratings do you think students are interested in? The "top" scholastic school? Nope, they want to know what the top PARTY school is. No wonder the USA is falling behind.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
When I went to UCSD in 1978-82, 'mainframe' meant a Burroughs B6700 or (later) B7800, 'mini' meant VAX-11/780 or PDP-11, and 'micro' meant LSI-11 or Z80.
Supposedly there was a low-end System/360 around somewhere, or maybe it was just remote access to someone else's. My point is, if by 'mainframe' you mean System/360 and its descendants, there was essentially nothing at this fast-rising research university.
Was my experience off for the times, or was it more commomplace? I wish I could say.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Threaten the entire industry with outsourcing, and then wonder why noone wants to study IT anymore.
I have to wonder if a free zOS and emulator that runs on Intel wouldn't help a lot. Even better an free zOS for native intel :)
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Since when is computer science platform specific. Too few people seem to make the distinction between computer science and programming. CS is 90+% not programming. It's algorithms, complexity analysis, logic, math, formal languages, etc... Programming, on the other hand, rarely requires those skills - at least on modern languages. Look at the STL and tell me how many programmers use that rather than learning the intricacies of various sort algorithms or linked lists and binary trees?
Anyway... CS is really platform agnostic - programming might not be. If you want to learn about the mainframe, go find your nearest mainframe systems programmer and ask questions. All of them that I've ever met are more than happy to talk about the details of zOS.
I am a mainframe programmer and have been unable to find work since I was laid off in 2001. BullShit there is only a shortage of cheap mainframe programmers!!!!! U would have to be an idiot to learn mainframes. Take my advice don't waste your time. They'll do to u what they did to me!!! Just wait until they reaise the H1b quota later this year. Plenty of work for everyone in India!!! A shortage in India but not here!!!
"If IBM wants to sell mainframes, they need to give away training."
Good emulators.
Well, IBM (or anyone else for that matter) isn't giving the younger generation ANY REASON to pursue that field. Once american corporations learned of profit by outsourcing, they doomed themselves. QUIT OUTSOURCING THE JOBS, and maybe the younger generation would have more of a change/more interest in seeking mainframe knowledge. As it stands now, what benefit does this field have for a younger person that doesn't have years of experience under his/her belt? "wow, i get to go to school for years, work with a mainframe machine that will be obsolete by the time i leave school, then have my job outsourced by the time i start looking for a job? cool!" WHAT A GOOD DEAL, IBM. SHAME ON YOU.
Maybe I should spend a year or two in India and pick up a PhD... Hell, turn the tables; they won't understand a word I'm saying!
Not enough people understand that.
Maybe not
Massive? Have you looked at one lately? What is this Massive crap?
We are talking a wonderful job security here for the soon to retire crowd.
That's why I always make sure to forward my boss links like this.
--MarkusQ
There's a lot of talk here about on the job training and CS programs responsibilities, etc.. But it occurs to me that this sort of problem will always exist as long as we have to rely on mortal human beings to maintain systems. Isn't it about time to turn this sort of thing over to artificial intelligences? Yeah I know the technology for this is not quite there yet, but imagine the elegance of AIs running on the latest generation of hardware taking care of their parents and grandparents so to speak.
There are good reasons to maintain old mainframe systems (usually involving time and money), but given the reluctance of humans to pursue such careers, automation may be the best bet.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
What did they think was going to happen everytime they ran an ad in the paper wanting 5-10 years of main frame experience? College grads would come into the job market and only get jobs doing entry level web developerment and software enginnering. The smart thing for a company would be to hire interns or these college grads to do entry level work on main frames so that in 5 to 10 years they have the experience to be senior main frame people. Corporate America just shot itself in the foot!
-Dipster
zOS is, like all OS's, slowly becoming just another variant of Unix. In addition, many of the mainframes IBM sells only run Linux, and Linux on big iron looks the same as Linux on Intel.
One thing I didnt see was all the application support on mainframes. I did some helpdesk/admin support for Olivetti(Now Wang Global) on its mainframes, and the layout just doesnt make sense. Each application is written differently with no standards. I basically had a book on where I toggle each field for setting up accounts for each application (shipping/payroll/inventory/etc).
Screenshots where I put an X on what line, because there visual way to tell what goes where.
If the book was lost, and the admin quit, be a world of hurt.
And that's that. Some are just too plain busy looking for the next "Buggy Whip", just so they can pimp their "Next big thing", to notice that it has simply diminished from most people's radar.*
*There are still buggy whip makers.
There were several reasons for this. One was that during IBM's "dark days" in the early 1990's all the young people took the severance packages and fled the mainframe groups. They knew they could learn other technologies and the packages were too good to resist. The older people stuck with what the knew. Then as IBM slowly recovered the recovery didn't focus on mainframe technologies, so new people didn't get hired into those groups. When they finally realized that they did need to hire new people it had been nearly a decade since those old people had trained anybody and they really didn't know how to do it.
I came in with a CS degree from Stanford and was told by one manager that if I worked in his group I would spend two years debugging other people's code. That wasn't attractive to me at all. Bright people want to go somewhere where they can have an impact, but the older guys saw us as a threat and were very reticent to teach us anything. All four of the people I was hired with left for different either different groups in IBM or other companies. The mainframe world couldn't compete with the glamour of the internet boom.
Honestly, I spent four months trying my best to learn this stuff but nobody wanted to teach me. I could see that it was going nowhere. There is going to have to be a real culture change if a hand-off of this stuff is going to happen.
Lasers Controlled Games!
What the article fails to mention is that most of these "grey hairs" got their training in the form of OJT. In 1977 there were damn few corporate training programs and even fewer CS degrees offered.
There is no reason why a young person could not walk in that the older workers did decades ago and learn in the exact same fashion that they did.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
In the sense that irrespective of OS, *any* organization will have antique applications, local conventions, and voodoo that made the place go historically.
With respect to Mainframe OS environments, the legacy applications (and sometimes legacy OS like Transaction Processing Facility, VM....)mean that until one untwingles the application code, supporting utilities and packages & & that Unix/Linux is not a salvation. There are applications running Wall Street et.al. that still "think" gnomes are moving tapes around in grocery carts.
So the learning is the how to learn and also how to learn a local environment. In the sharp pointy sticks and blue flame days of WinNT, several developers longed for the clarity and reliability of "Big Iron". The large environment does (with costs) rationalize system administration and availability... its why they call it a cluster.
Verizon: Latin for "poor rural service".
I got out of college in '69. I got my first IBM-mainframe job that year. There was no mainframe-training in college. There shouldnt be. IBM has a huge education program to train people to use their hardware. I must have taken 100 classes in the past few decades relating to IBM-clone-mainframes. I dont worry about all those gray-haired IBM experts retiring. The market will train new souls to do this work. As for me, I hope I make it to retirement - the last 36 years of work has taken a toll on me physically. I had better retire soon - the workplace does not need us dinosaurs anymore.
computer science program should not be about specific platform/language. Having a com sci degree means that one can pick up the 7 feet manual and get their hands dirty.
i think somone should tell IBM that chips/transisters are getting smaller and alot faster and that we also have lcd screens instead of flashing lights, then they can replace their massive mainframe with alot less, smaller but more powerfull machines. hmm i dont know if somone should tell them that 3 1/2" disks arn't being used today..
As much as short-term money is nice. Are these companies going to keep their mainframes going? If I get laid off will I find a new job?
Look at y2k. After it was over did these companies keep the pool of talent they had?
Once you have been doing mainframe for a year or 2 is anyone going hire you to work on xNIX, PC as a develper?
Just my 2 centrs
All we need is to have some hot-shot *nix admin deciding that the financial system running on the mainframe should be rewritten using Perl and MySQL.
They are only looking for a few thousand new recruits. A large chunk of the economy relies on oly a few thousand programmers, operators and sysprogs. You would need tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of MS*E or Unix admins to support the systems if we were to replace themwith windows or unix systems.
THere just isn't the need for that many warm bodies. THat is part of the problem in a sense, if people percieve no opportunity they will not enter a field.
Maybe this is an area where you want older workers? People who are more stable and less flaky. Not some punk who decides to do a production move without telling anyone and with out a back up. But people with previous experience who know how bad a down system can be and so are willing and able to follow procedure, without resentment. People who understand that taking your time is often the most efficient way to go.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
University of Wisconsin, Madison, even after a decade of administrative efforts to the contrary.
NIU still does have a mainframe program. It's very good, and has lots of very good people working in it. The leader, Dr. Robert Rannie, is a legend in the mainframe world, and a hell of a nice guy to boot. He's been there and done that in the real world, too.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Let the free market sort it out.
If there aren't enough programmers or sysadmins at what they are paying, then they can raise it until there are.
Supply and demand works both ways.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
FTA:
The acronym SHARE does not stand for anything; according to organizers, it refers to sharing information.
hmm... appearantly acronym doesn't either.
If things get desperate the applications can always be migrated to a new platform.
Stop intellectual property from infringing on me
Wow -
When I got my B.S. in Computer Science from Northern Illinois University in 1989, that was ALL I knew.
OS/390, Cobol, BAL, CICS, IMS, JCL, Panvalet
That career lasted about 4 years until I decided that a career change would be needed (Network Engineering) to stay alive!
Now I'm thinking - Maybe I should go BACK to that career! As the really old guys start retiring, maybe I can name my price!
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Multiple masters degrees? Some of us have to earn a living, not go on as perpetual students.
As a listener of Coast to Coast AM, mainframe technology being so far removed from the PC world that I live in, it's no shock to hear that mainframe people are actually greys. A few months ago I met one of these people, who works with mainframes in car manufacturing. He has a matte grey skin and huge slanting black eyes. Not only did he confirm cars are made with alien knowledge, but he explained that he routinely worked with a number of 70 Gb files presumably with jobs that process large chunks of these files. On my PC I get impatient with data sizes greater than 0.7 Mb.
All the same the next notebook computer I buy (within 2 years) will probably have enough performance to compete with the lowest end of today's mainframes, at least on a cost/benefit decision point. Business growth is just not at the pace of Moore's law. It's likely mainframes on the inside are nothing but obsolete PCs brought back from the future on a hardware recycling program. You know how these greys operate.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Being a zOS systems programmer in my mid-30s, having done this for about 7 years, I think the blame for any shortage lies with management, with some blame going to universities for dropping the ball. There is plenty of education available out there, either from IBM or other sources, but your boss (or school) has to get you there.
The article stated that there were few young people at Share in Boston. Well, my boss is there, as well as his boss. Not doing much for the technical skills of the team, is it? Management.
Another culprit is the "unsexiness" of the mainframe. I think it kicks ass. It's the best hardware you can buy. It can do everything the new toys can do, and all the old stuff. It's really an amazing box. I'm not sure what to do to entice in-house talent to take up the reigns on the mainframe. For all the new stuff they want to learn ("Hey, there's a new protocol? Why aren't we using it?"), they sure don't want to learn this. There's a touch of hubris involved. I also think they are intimidated.
Management should wake up. zSeries is incredible.
Aaron
Teaching zOS in Universities is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard of in my entire life. First, it's a logistical nightmare. To do it right, you need to give the class their own ridiculously expensive mainframe. Now, before all the mainframe admins scream "No, that's the whole point of LPARs and z/VM, you can do this on the school's mainframe." I would like to point out that with the many-layered architecture on those mainframes, to really know what you're doing you have to understand all the layers. That means messing with them, and breaking them.
Second, specific technologies I have been taught in school:
AES
Assembly Language (m68k, mips, ultrasparc, x86)
Bash
Brainfuck
C
C++
C#
Java
OpenGL
RSA
TCP/IP
None of these are niche for the purpose they're used for, except for the one that's deliberately oversimplified as an exercise in extremism, which is quite useful for education. Mainframes, in contrast, are completely niche. It's perhaps marginally useful as an example of virtualization, but there are all kinds of better ways to acheive that which do not involve EBCDIC, 3270 terminals, OS install from tape, or a computer which, along with its disk unit, requires 4 power taps as big around as my arm, costs 4 years tuition per processor. Most small software companies probably don't have a single employee who's ever even logged into one, except of course with an application that has a mainframe backend.
If you want employees who know mainframe, unless you have the money to shell out for a veteran, you're probably much better off hiring someone with strong technical skills and then sending them to training. That way, you know what their familiarity is with it, instead of merely hoping that the picked up enough wisdom from the guru at their last job that they won't break your system.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
A lot of the mainframes, being as expensive as they are, are leased from the manufacturer, so when they get "retired" IBM or whoever shows up and hauls them off for spare parts. So, there's usually nothing to give away.
(no pun intended). If you go to an accredited 4 year computer science program, you learn computer science. That is, math, theory, algorithms, logic, etc. that applies to computers. However, the actual accreditation criteria:
i teria%20and%20PP/05-06-CAC%20Criteria.pdf) [PDF],
(http://www.abet.org/Linked%20Documents-UPDATE/Cr
states that the student must be exposed to a variety of systems and languages (and that they must become proficient in at least one programming language). Computer science isn't very interesting or beneficial if the "computer" (i.e., specific computer system running a real OS and applications) is not there. If you attend a 4 year, accredited computer science program in the US, you get MUCH more than what a vocational school would give you.
Well, the size of a refridgerator and 1200 lbs (545kg) for just the zSeries 800 server might not be massive, but it is pretty big!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Where I work we have a relatively young staff because only about 1/2 will retire in the next 10 years. At 33 years old, I'm the youngest by about 10 years. One of my co-workers told me that I'll be chained to my desk when I'm as old as she is but those chains will probably be made of gold. Whenever any vendor or customer comes on site the first thing they say is "I never see anyone your age doing mainframe work."
It is a pitty because given a fair chance I bet people would like being an admin once they got past the initial learning curve. The monitoring and automation tools are nothing short of incredible. I can tell what each program is waiting on, what data it is reading, who has higher priority, how long it has been running, how much IO it has done, and lots of other things. I can even alter the memory of the program as it is running (although I'm too chicken to do it). I can also go back in time and get this information from days ago so when I get the "it was slow yesterday" problem I can easily investigate.
I didn't learn a thing from college regarding the mainframe. College was for general logic, problem solving, and overall data structure. Everything I learned was on the job training. When I started one of the older guys said it takes at least 5 years to make a good systems programmer. Anything less and you have a dangerous person who only thinks they understand what is happening. I would have to agree.
The mainframe is really nice in some areas. It is an ego rush to fix a problem that is keeping a multi-billion doller company from shipping any new products (I did that yesterday) and the people I work with are great because they are always willing to share experience and historical knowledge. When they retire I'll miss them.
The price you pay is that many systems have 30+ years of customization in them. They are incredibly complex and very tailored so no two are exactly alike and as a systems programmer I'm expected to be the "final expert" on any problem the users can't solve. This includes finding out why a program that was written when I was three years old no longer reads a PDS properly or why a job that hasn't changed in 5 years suddenly stopped working. It can be lots of fun but it can be frustrating too especially because the bosses really don't want to hear "I don't know" for an answer and "just reboot" isn't even in their vocabulary.
Except you still need someone who knows exactly what the original application does in order to migrate correctly. Unless you hire someone really good at code analysis, who has many system migrations under his belt.
:-)
I'm available...
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
I'm so sick of having to code all of these workarounds in my Java applications because our back-end datacenter was programmed in the early '80's on a mainframe and no one really knows the system that well enough to make any meaningful changes. It's about time that we finally junked the mainframes and put them in a museum next to vaccuum tubes. Redesign and rewrite the back-end applications from scratch. Use the latest design patterns and technologies. That will make our code a hellova lot easier to write and maintain and expand.
I think part of the problem is grads setting their sites too high. They come out with a degree, and seem to think they should get senior level work and a high paying job. No, not really. If you have no experience (and a degree isn't experience) you shouldn't expect a high level job. You get a job, you get experience, you move up, maybe at that company, maybe at another.
One thing to help is to get experience while you are in school. Get a job doing something tech related. Maybe it's a basic tech support job that pays $6 an hour to help English majors find the start menu, but it's work experience and it helps. Maybe contribute to some OSS projects as well. You'll find that you can advance even on those campus jobs. Freshman year you are help desk, sneior year you are doing DB develoment for the department's website.
So I think we have some unrealistic expactations from both sides. Many employers think that they should be able to get employees with lots of skills that need no training, and not have to pay for it, but many prospective employees seem to think that a degree should be enough to land them a great job.
Using the Undergraduate Catalog and viewing the CSCI course listing, you will see which mainframe classes students are required to take.
If any recruiters or IT professionals are looking for good mainframe developers, this would be a good place to start your search.
Be sure to remember the Programmers Prayer
I'm sorry you feel misled, but I've never heard of an IBM rep not helping someone unless that person was a total asshole, so I'll have to assume that you were such. Fact is, you were duped and were too stupid to seek out the truth. The business was probably trying to get rid of you without firing you. Sounds like it worked!-))
Everybody knows damn well why IBM doesn't have so many young people pursuing z/OS training.
At one point, IBM mainframes and their work-alikes were almost synonymous with enterprise computing. Today, that is far indeed from being the case. They're still interesting and useful, but part of a specialized niche market.
There are plenty of good reasons to learn mainframe technology, but given that the architecture, operating system, heck... everything! are completely proprietary and the knowledge you accumulate is generally not practical any place else (unlike the Unix world, for instance) there is a strong disincentive to "put your eggs all in one basket" and learn mainframe technology. What if IBM discontinues it in five or ten years. Worse, what if it's gone in 15 or 20 when you're too old and tired to learn new tricks?
I have a deep respect for IBM and its business practices (no really!) But not for the decisions they made surrounding their mainframes. Granted, I can't take potshots because most of this was done thirty or more years ago with no clue as to what the world would like today. Still, building to open standards has always been a sound truth. The more you rely on proprietary tech to lock your customers in -- however you justify it -- the more you ensure that sooner or later you will pay the heavy cost for doing so.
IBM built its own cage here (or, dug its own grave if you feel like being dramatic.)
These kind of articles aren't the result of in-depth reporting, they're spoon-fed to media by people with agendas. You've hit the mark on the motivation for this fluff to get published. I got suckered into getting certified in Novell Networking back in '95 because of nonsense about a lack of qualified people in a growing field. Yes, mainframe technicians tend to be older- but does this fact indicate anything about future job markets- Emphatically, No!
You DON'T have two Masters??? What do you do with your free time??? You must not be very motivated. Yes, by the way, I would like fries with that, thanks for asking. Where's your tip jar?
Not all boomers have pensions. A lot of us got screwed out of them with the various corporate resizings and all. So retirement isn't an option. The ironic thing is even though we still have the skills, we're not employable. It's more important for the employers to create the impression that there is a shortage of critical job skills than to actually do something about it, i.e. hire people who do have the skills.
This can get outsourced to India as well. Last person out of the computer room, turn out the lights. :-(
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Open source the OS and / or create an emulator / VM environment and the nerds will play.
People writing computer related articles are so stupid!
Most computer science students concentrate on small-computer technology, such as Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating systems, or the popular alternatives Unix and Linux. Few have been trained on zOS, the operating system that runs IBM Corp.'s massive mainframes.
My how times have changed. Back when I was in University, we learned computer science, not specific operating systems. Of course we used specifica operating systems. In our case it was 4BSD and VMS. But we didn't have classes in them. We had classes in programming languages, data structures, compiler design, algorithms, etc. That was just the basics. That's what I took because I wasn't a CS major. The majors took additional specialty classes in information theory, networks, artificial intelligence, etc.
Wordstar, 123 and DOS were on the market back then, but if you wanted to take classes in them you had to go to night school at the junior college. How much of that "education" would be useful today? Why do you think classes in Windows or Linux today will be different and remain be useful twenty years from now? If you really need those classes for your job, then take a night class at a junior college. But don't waste your formal education on them.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
"It is scarry. Truely scarry."
Ugh... you are truly scary. I can't believe you work in CS. You must get syntax errors galore...
Higher education in the programming world will only get you so far. I've done my share of both hiring and programming on both mainframes and minicomputers, and I prefer to hire non-graduates. It makes for less stuff that they have to unlearn so that they can do the job properly.
Grant you most of my experience was writing and managing an RSTS/E and RSX development lab, but CS graduates simply cannot write good batch code, most cannot even imagine a world where the limits are 16k source files, 48k compiled images, overlays and such.
Higher education does well teaching the science of modern programming, however Mainframe programming is an art, and well education does very little for the arts.
The Geek in Black
I know my BCD's (when I'm Sober)
If the market demands people trained to handle this stuff, they will start paying more, making the job more attractive and getting undergrads as well as those already in the job market to train to handle such things.
Seriously, dont worry so much. People may be graduating with less science and engineering degrees but thats partically because demand has gone down to out sourcing.
Why should I get a degree where in 3 - 5 years into my job I suddenly become undesirable because its cheaper for my company to pay someone outside of the country to do it?
the ability for companies to teach got decimated by the endless rounds of cost cutting.
/V 286, /V Win, /V PM, /V Mac & VisualWorks and VisualAge) all without ever getting an appraisal from one of these HR 'survivors' because they wouldn't know an object if they tripped over one.
:-)
HR people are supposed to be part of the solution, increasing the talets of the pool with 'on the job' training, but they are part of the problem because they are driving the need to increasingly specific 'skill sets' for entry positions.
Entry no longer means, 'getting in, figuring out which way is up, and fitting in making yourself helpful.'
Entry is now a list of requirements being administered by somebody who doesn't know, or want to know, what a job 'might' entail.
They went through the same cost cutting (some might say 'throat-slitting',) as the rest of the organizatin and the HR positions are now staffed by the survivors, the once eigteen-year-olds who managed to hang on because they didn't cost enough to get rid of.
'Knowing' is now everything and 'being able to figure it out' is now worth nothing because it can't be 'measured scientifically' by people who administer the tests.
I am now an old techie and I am just now getting a bachelor's degree in a non-techie field because I couldn't ever get another job doing what I'm doing right now.
I was into object-orientation and Smalltalk since 1985 (Methods) and I am closing my career in 2005 with VSE (after having worked with
I am also aware of the limitations of objects (without relationships, they aren't enough) but I don't care enough anymore to 'fight' the good fight.
The machines that I've worked on (Wang 2200, IBM 360s, DEC PDP/11s, IBM 370s, Z80, x86s, PowerPCs), the languages I've used (BASICs, Cs, Pascals, ProLOg, Lisps, APL, PL/I, Smalltalk's, PHP), the operating systems I've used (Wang BOSS, RSTS/E, OS/360, CPM, Microsoft pre&post Windows, Mac Linux,), the database systems (VSAM, ISAM, IDMS DB, MDBS III, MySQL, PostGreSQL,) didn't really matter worth a damn.
They were just means to an end. I just kept the 'end in sight' and the solution was as simple as following a line.
After 20 years, I figure I deserve a break.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Actually, AS/400's operating system is not z/OS. The latter is for zSeries mainframes. AS/400 are called iSeries.
^_^ "University of Dayton: Because the first miracle Jesus ever did was to keep the party going."
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
well ok not quite but check out http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules/ Then you will see why the mainframe is ignored.. Its complicated, and not very sexy....
Standard argument applies -- but you find a distributed system that's more efficient at handling the massive amounts of I/O that a mainframe handles and I bet a lot of companies would switch. But right now, the cost to really replace a mainframe for the big jobs would be massive, if it could even be done, and it would be just as complex of a system to manage and program for.
Yeah, Dr. Rannie is a good guy...unless you get on his bad side. Then he'll make your life a living hell. I didn't do that, but knew a couple people who did...
Hey, they could use that in recruiting the younger generation:
"Mainframz X-TREME!!! It JUST MIGHT FUCKING KILL YOU"
I should mention here that my budget for such adventures is roughly $0 (my Wifely Tolerance Account is close to overdrawn), and I doubt that I'd ever have the time to do much with it, but I'd like to have such a system up and running if I could do it on the cheap.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"When your mainframe crashes, you can do absolutely nothing until the necessary repair work is done. This is where the distributed computing environment works very well."
1. Have you never heard of a sysplex ?
2. Keep using windows 'cause while you are busy telling customers that your system is down my company will be more than happy to soak up your disgruntled customers.
3. Crash.LOL wait till I show your post to my collegues, they will piss themselves laughing.
You could have upto 32 mainframes on MVS (might be more now) running in a sysplex all providing fault tolerance. There is a whole heap of stuff on the mainframe that provides fault tolerance and pro-active monitoring.
Stuff that everyone considers innovative now has almost certainly been done on the mainframe already.
My company now expects the mainframe to be available 99.9% of the time. Thats our benchmark and our business get real annoyed if they dont achieve it. That is why they are prepared to pay for a mainframe, every second the system is down is either a risk to their reputation and/or a serious dent in their profits.
Its just that college is bullshit.
That's the numbers they are tracking. All the smart geeks realize that certifications and other pieces of paper saying a person knows something in particular most of the time are complete crap. I've met many a MCSE or A+ "certified technicians" who don't know SHIT.
There are plenty of non certified, non college graduate geeks out there who know more in a lot of cases than their "educated" counterparts.
I currently develop multimillion dollar web apps for multinational corporations and state governments. I didn't graduate from high school. I didn't go to college. Yet I have a Doctorate of Divinity (thanks ULC!). Degrees are total bullshit. Book learning can be very helpful, but real world experience is the only thing that matters.
read my sig... it's so much eaisier to type longer words and double tap R. same thing with m... comming is so much smoother than coming.
-=fshalor
I have been working on those clunker mainframes for the last 6 years. As much as you dislike those mainframes they are the back bone of all banking, most payroll, and insurance systems in North America if not the planet. Thats just the industries I have worked in and know of.
If we pulled the plug on them you could kiss your banking services good bye and there is a good chance you would no longer get paid.
When I first started working on the mainframes I thought they were oudated and slow. But after a while I realized the data processing capabilities of these machines is far FAR faster than any non-mainframe platform. I have seen hundreds of terabytes of financial data get crunched in seconds on these mainframes. Thats because they are specialized at processing data. They aren't meant to be pretty.
I can see big Unix systems possibly replacing them over time. But you can't just rip out a sytem that complex and put a new one it. It takes time, somtimes a decade to fully convert these systems over.
Your complaint about your Java applications may be untrue. Many older guys on the mainframe don't want to do the work and no one knows better to question them so they lie and make you do the work around. I have seen this kind of behavour myself. Who's to call them on it if know one knows how the system works.
the CASE tools I was given to work with back in the eighties because I was going to 'cheat' the system and get some good tools instead of putting up with whatever I was given.
As long as the results come in on time and budget, you'd be amazed at what you can get away with.
When I learned recursive descent compilation, it opened up a world to me. I loved it.
The other students were all griping and asking what was the use of learning production rules and grammars. I was blown away by how blinkered and intellectually lazy they were.
Smalltalk didn't have a 'case' statement. I had to look at really crappy code filled with all these 'if:' blocks. That was an opportunity for me to write one.
I ended up writing two; a 'case:' and a 'cases:' which solved my 'ugly code' problem. Ran great too. I'd learned about code optimization was back in my days programming in BASIC.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
My younger brother, who graduated two years after me, works on TPF over mainframes. He earns thrice as much as me, because there aren't many mainframe TPF developers, but there still are huge systems to be maintained (airline reservation, credit card industry, etc), and so the demand is still there.
Last time I programmed an IBM mainframe it was running OS/360.
The article claims that the problem is no-one remembers how to program this old stuff but the truth seems to be that the given mainframe OS is not old enough for there to be a bunch of people out there who have programmed it.
Squirrel!
Sorry dude but you're wrong.
No one at the school I attend thinks analog is on the way out. Given the advances in wireless/RF technology, most of the kids in the EE program are going the analog or wireless/communications channel route, because that's where the future is. And guess what, we're all learning about how to make nice, stable, op-amps, given desired frequency response, transient behavior, power constraint, and temperature/process variation specifications. Device physics for BJT, BiCMOS, and just plain CMOS are still covered in excruciating detail. Noise characteristics of analog systems, PLL's, D/A Converters, and all that other great stuff is still thoroughly dissected. We're not just learning how to use Verilog and program a damn FPGA. I don't think you give EE kids enough credit.
The hardcore theory for signals & systems isn't being left out either; everyone here learns about Laplace transforms/feedback, and how to analyze frequency response behavior using those tools. All that nice math that relates to wireless transmission (source and channel coding/markov chains/linear algebra/dynamic programming) is taught down to as much detail as I found in most undergraduate math classes.
So yeah, some places may not teach this analog stuff, but most places still do. To sum it up, NO ONE, it a competent EE program thinks analog is on the way out. Even at the undergrad level, all the *pure* digital design kids know that we're running into analog behavior in high-speed circuits.
They're frikking looking forward to it!
Actually, my exposure to it was via an emulator. Father Schoen, my CPS250 professor, started teaching right around when the university switched from drum memory to punch cards. He teaches two classes, 250 and 131. 250 is for CS and ECE students and involved running IBM 370 assembly code on this emulated mainframe, EBCDIC and all. 131 was his "high level programming" course for other engineering students and involved C on the same emulator. While his class was frequently quote frustrating, due to the limitations of the systems we worked on, it was also very educational because a) he took us down to the very basics of how things run and b) as an "old school" programmer, he presented a different view from our other CS professors who preached design-before-code and all kinds of optimization. Father Schoen's point of view was that for most tasks, you just needed something that worked. Optimization and detailed planning were to be reserved for larger projects, where you would actually reap the awards of time spent.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Ignoring a few things, there is a fundamental problem with what you've just said.
The average CS prof I've had is tenured and older than 40.
Given that it takes a while to get tenure, they probably aren't the most "in touch" with real world computing either.
What I want to see added to the CS curriculum is a CS history/propeganda course. This way they can be informed of not only the real world, but their place in it.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
I disagree. I am glad I switched to the mainframe side of things with my last employer. We ran two systems, high end mainframes and low end PC apps. They felt I was pretty smart so they moved me to the mainframe side of things.
It was the best job insurance I ever had. The words MVS, JCL, COBOL, ISPF, and FileAide have beefed up my resume very well. There are a lot of mainframe jobs out there. You just need the right attitute going in to the interview.
"I blame ITT Tech."
Insightful my eye. More like someone who wants to feel superior to others. The germans have a two-path track to education. You can either take an academic path, or you can take their equivalent of a trade-school path. One side doesn't look down on the other. The same can't be said of some other countries.
Oh, and by the by, the list usually bandied about in emails is supposedly that year's survey from Playboy as to the top 10 party schools in the US. They did release such a list. Once. In the 70's. Oh, and UD wasn't on it. Go figure.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
going to work before the sun rose/to home after sunset - working daily in windowless, temperature controlled environment: not to mention triple lock security to keep people out! Oh that mainframe culture is greying? Good ridance!
On the issue of 'who should be training skillset X' (be this mainframe maintainance, a particular OS or language or in fact any specific technology)
Universities and colleges in the UK have three whole years to teach in, right? That should be plenty of time to explore all kinds of technologies, learn a couple of different languages...everything you need. Except that each year is nine months long - 33 weeks generally. Each week has a 35 hr max lecture hours, and each lecture can only contain about 45 mins of new material. Add it up and you get.... just under 4000 hours. This has to begin with 'This is a computer. You need to log on like this... This is a WP...'
I teach fundamental computing. The curriculum is jam-packed and overstuffed already - all we can do is try to skim over what's needed, and hope you pick up enough learning skills to understand what you find on-the-job. If people are needed to maintain IBM mainframes, the company that chose to subscribe to that specific technology needs to train people to use it.
Hi, my name is Tony. Thanks to ITT i am now a locomotive driver. I just returned from a vacation in Cancun. Last month i bought my first house and car. My mother could never be more proud of me. All this could never have happened without the Linux, Windows and Mac training i got at ITT. Register today!!!!1
The documentation and source code are (or were) revenue generating portions of the business.
I can understand charging for access to source code, but the idea that a customer should have pay to learn how to use a product he has been sold is, to me, obscene.
I've often thought that one of the reasons Java took off like wildfire was because Sun gave away not only the runtime environment & the compiler, but also the API:
By glancing at a few "Hello World!" tutorials and then perusing the API, you could [and, to this day, still can] teach yourself Java in about a day.Nowadays everyone does it (compare MSDN), but circa 1995, it was a pretty revolutionary idea - back then, everybody else required you to purchase a 750 page 10 lb $100 hardcover treatise just to be able to teach yourself the syntax that would produce "Hello World!".
And the idea that you would sell a product to a customer and then refuse to demonstrate to that customer how to use the product you just sold him strikes me as not only a monstrously awful business model, but, quite frankly, more than a little sadistic.
As others have said, programmers, at least decent ones, can adapt. Hell, I started off working on IBM mainframes PL/I, Rexx, 370 Assembly, and even some SAS. I've done Pascal on early PCs, then C, later C++, lately C#, and soon will be doing Java.
I mean hell, they're just programming languages. I even jumped in for 3 days and provided some help doing bug fixes on a VB project without any previous VB experience and the only real problem I had was figuring out how to use the IDE.
Any decent programmer can take these small detours in their career. The ideas are all more or less the same. The difference is largely syntax. Sure, there are some paradigm differences as well. You don't write OO apps the same way you write functonal apps, but you don't write OO apps without functional aspects and it's not uncommon to use some OO ideas in functional programming.
At the end of the day, it's all more or less the same. Sure, a windows environment and a 3270 terminal emulator provide a completely different environment, but still, easy enough to manage for all but the most severely stupid.
The articles seems like a lot of worry about nothing. The real question isn't, "Can programmers use these environments," but "Can they attract programmers to those backward-ass environments?" Just gotta make the carrot tasty enough.
For what it's worth first post at /. (=
At the company I work for we have most of the "Old Folks" running the mainframe work. There are younger folks learning/doing the mainframe programming/operations as well though. Os400's are the same way, we put so much value in these systems however, that I can hardly see the day when we can no longer fill that work. Our company actively tries to make that knowledge a company wide commodity by documentation of just about every single if/when/then do type event. Code that is documented correctly according to enterprise standards also let's the next person in know what's going on much faster.
The story is right, there are not many 21-year-old folks who are thinking about writing the next killer app in a mainframe environment.
I think it's simpler than that. We have to teach students an introductory language. I've heard from an academica advisor that they chose not to teach LISP, Scheme or any other recursion based langages because it results in students thinking TOO recursively (a programmer should use recursion, but the right tool for the job).
> gives a decent statement about why it should be popular, but an even simpler one is that if students are stuck, an extra guide can be located easier.<br>
With those out of the way, why should they teach a commonly used language? <a href="http://paulgraham.com/popular.html">This</a
Between C, C++ and Java I've always thought Java was the better language for newbs. It's got a very well documented and structured library. No memory issues to distract one from a given task. etc. The only problem is that you get students who suck at doing any lower level functions. Furthermore, I know WAY too many students who would only ever want to use Java, hence, it's all they know. But a good year in the real world will smack that out of them.<br>
I think that all languages have their tradeoffs. What benefits the students best is a langague where they can express the concepts they are taught, hopefully with some ease. I have yet to hear of a perfect teaching language, and I doubt I ever will.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
Hey, no problem. I'll just run out and buy one of those mainframe thingydoggies, and I'll have it figured out in no time.
:) )
Heck, since those things are so much bigger than our puny little PCs, the sheer volume of open source software available for them is enough to crush most pickup trucks.
You know, I heard a funny story the other day - somebody wrote that in an alternate reality, american education had declined to the point where eventually, enough people were sufficiently stupid that they chose to elect George W. Bush as President. Ha! Things could never get that bad.
(If my sense of humor doesn't match yours, it wouldn't be the first time
I have 3 mainframe terminal sessions open right now. I am 23 years old.
Most of the people around me are alot older, yes. But I certainly didn't need to be taught how to use a mainframe in school. My CS education taught me how to handle any kind of computing technology... my employer taught me which technologies were in the mainframe.
It took a little bit to understand that the file system wasn't hierarchical (unless you were in Unix inside of the mainframe). Once I realized the file system was like a giant database it clicked.
It also took a bit to understand that you didn't really have processes, but "jobs". But I got over that quickly too.
As long as schools teach students the theories and the methods inherent in all computer science, they should be able to adapt quite quickly to a mainframe or any other bizarre/niche technology.
And yes, I agree that the companies who own these things should do the training -- At least the bulk of it. And if money can be made training young people, then people will do that too, just like they have MCSE "schools" and the such.
What's this zOS thing? Can it run under vmware? I'd love to try it out! :)
Grew up using dumb terminals and external modems. Still understand termdefs and batch processing. Willing to learn. Need specifics on position, teacher, and 6 figure salary.
My point being if its important to them they will pay. They didn't pay to upgrade or retrofit a new system so they will pay to have someone run it. Behold the glory of capitalism... or is that market economies?
"Don't fear death... fear not living..." -me
Based on my recent 32-month unemployment stint after 15 years of designing/supporting a variety of airline applications, it seems that one's experience isn't seen as valuable unless it's also experience with the same set of specific tools and business areas that a given company is working with.
General industry experience isn't valuable enough to obtain even an introductory interview, and one mainframe platform doesn't translate to another in an employers eyes even if the languages and core concepts are fairly similar.
There were a few exceptions, but not very many.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
What's "truely scarry" is your spelling.
I view that as just another manifestation of Sturleon's Law. I've met utterly brilliant people with degrees in all sorts of things. I know some bright, adaptable people with no college education at all. And I know of examples of credentials that aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
I agree that new grads can certainly pick up on mainframe concepts but most of them, myself included, don't really want to.
:-)
I think it's a shame that so many folks seem to have this attitude, since most of the "mainframe" environments in use today are actually quite modern, and their hardware and software environments employ concepts that I suspect most UNIX and PC people would find very interesting (if only because those concepts tend to make a lot of sense but seem to be largely lacking in smaller systems).
A mainframe is a large, redundant, recoverable server capable of running critical applications and handling a very large volume of data, not a coal-fired box made of cast iron and running some batch COBOL run designed in the 60's.
If you think all those airlines and banks still use mainframes just because they're old, I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
The CS courses I took covered data structures, search and sort algorithms, operating system concepts, concurrent software/multiprocessor issues, semaphores, and languages and that sort of thing. Seemed pretty ceneric stuff not particularly specific to any OS.
I didn't study programming for Windows at all. We had Unix and VMS systems, but didn't do anything particularly specific to any OS, it was generic Modula-2 or generic C or whatever that could run in any shell/CLI, there were no graphics or API calls in anything except for one single project, but they provided a gneric API for that so we didn't need to do Xwindows calls.
How exactly is it so different to program these mainframes that what I saw as a platform-agnostic syllabus is unsuitable for the task?
What I took last semester:
EE 105: Microelectronic devices and circuits
What I'm taking this semester:
EE 140: Analog Integrated Circuits
This story is a bunch of alarmist hogwash. They said the same thing about the lack of skilled people when the Y2k Bug was supposed to bring the world down. Yes, some of the people stuck doing Cobol were the ones who built the systems, but others were new recruits who found their way there because of... wow what a revalation -- economic opportunity! Guess what? We live in a capitalist economy (well, sort of), which is extremely adept at moving resources to where they are needed, and creating the right incentives. A few years ago, one would be forgiven for thinking that there wouldn't be enough qualified .NET or Java developers to satiate the demand, and that businesses would come apart for the lack of them. Once again, paychecks proved the magnets they are when they reach a certain point, and suddenly the industry was awash with all the qualified architects it wanted.
I'm a techie bred on Assembler, C++, Java and C#. Give me the right incentives, and I'll even add Cobol to that list!
Everyone else.. have a nice weekend. There are many more pressing things to worry about than mainframes running out of handlers!
The purpose of higher education has gotten perverted over the years
It's not just higher ed that been perverted at least in the US. Today education is geared to being the slave laborer and consumer. Thinking skills have been left by the wayside, now it seems it's mostly rote memorization. And with "No Child Left Behind" it's gotten to the point of teaching to take tests. This means the arts are being negected amoung other areas.
Computer Science isn't about a specific technology [or at least it shouldn't be], it's about the mathematical and scientific background to be able to adapt to new technologies.
Here, Here!
FalconShould there be a Law?
Same with VMS. Tons of excellent documentation, for a hefty price.
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that DEC included free shelves for every set of documentation purchased.
Read Big Gray Wall in the jargon file to get a better feeling of what such a documentation looks like.
Some types of business problems lend themselves very well to decentralization, while others don't do quite so well and are best kept in some type of centralized environment.
:-)
It's a context-sensitive problem, as most computing problems are.
Sometimes processing and/or data has to be kept strictly in synch, and there are situations where whole sets of related files and databases must be locked down quickly and concurrently to meet federal requirements for data integrity (that's what an airline has to do when a flight incident occurs, for example, to ensure that the original environment is available to investigators).
Sometimes it's simply better to be able to admin a single highly-reliable system rather than manage an entire server farm. That's why IBM is selling Z boxes as virtual Linux server farms, for example.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I'm pretty sure he was joking.
There's an insane amount of bitching about how terrible the job market is, how inane and shortsighted HR departments are, blah blah blah.
If that's all true, then those business are ripe for being raped of their marketshare. Start your own business!
It takes virtually NOTHING to startup a company these days... a 1U server of commercial quality runs less than $1,000, hosting can be had for about $100/month and the Operating System is free...
Give yourself a few months worth of beans and/or working part-time, sleep on a couch with a cheapie computer borrowing the DSL service from a neighbor's wifi connection, and you can do a startup for next to NOTHING.
Why aren't you doing it? If YOU are in charge, you can't be fired. If YOU are in charge, you'll be able to use sensible HR policies to get the really good ones, too.
So why are you here whining on Slashdot about how horrible it all is???? If it's half as bad as you claim, you have the opportunity to become RICH!!!!
PS: I'm quite familiar with the startup routine - I haven't had a "job" in some 15 years, and have started quite a few businesses, successfully fed, clothed, raised, and home-schooled my family of 5 kids in one of the more economically depressed counties in California.
Startups can be thrilling! Pull up your sleeves, and don't just "think outside the box", throw the box out altogether. You'd be amazed at what you can accomplish if you:
1) Find something people will pay for,
2) Deliver that something as efficiently as possible, cost-effectively, and with a smile,
3) Wash, rinse, repeat. Before you know it, your clients are almost friends, and do most of your sales work for you by giving referrals...
Contact me if you're curious... I'd be happy to offer my experience to anybody who is serious.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
--18th June 1975 prof.dr.Edsger W.Dijkstra
How do you get on his bad side?! He's one of the most easygoing people I've met.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
systems that replace the mainframes too. Many of the *NIX variant that replace mainframse have the same problems to solve (security, reliability, cost management, flexibility, etc.) So even though the mainfamre OS they are an expert on is swapped for say HP-UX, those people would still be a very valuable resource if the HR department has the brains to realize it.
When mainframes were the only available computing solution, they were often used for tasks that can be done by lesser systems today.
Because of this, you have a point -- in some cases. Many legacy mainframe applications exist which could be ported to other smaller platforms and which would still continue to function as intended in that context.
However, it simply isn't true that all of the computing solutions currently running in a mainframe environment could be better handled by smaller boxes or clusters of smaller boxes.
In some cases, perhaps most, they would work, but they would perform the task at hand with far less efficiency than a mainframe would.
In other cases, they would simply be overwhelmed by the requirements of the application.
Put bluntly: I think you are seriously underestimating the data handling requirements of something like an Amadeus or a WorldSpan, and if you consider mainframe OSes to be some form of primitive software, you might want to compare the security models of IBM's z/OS or Unisys' OS2200 to your typical UNIX installation sometime.
Cars are more popular than trains these days for the types of applications that most people are likely to encounter, and there are larger vehicles out there for specialized applications which seem to be much more robust and more sophisticated in their approach to data transport than an automobile.
However, there are still a number of instances where good old freight trains are by far the most efficient and reliable means for transporting physical goods. That's why we still use trains; for some types of tasks, a train does the job a lot more efficiently than a fleet of cars or even trucks.
So it is with mainframes and data.
Please educate yourself. UNIX folks and PeeCee weenies might not like it, but the distributed computing model and the "monster servers" being produced by UNIX vendors like Sun are still not up to the task of handling certain types of computing tasks very efficiently.
I respect the UNIX approach -- I wouldn't be so interested in playing with BSD/Linux/Solaris myself otherwise -- but it simply does not come close to representing the pinnacle of computing.
Mainframes don't either, in my mind, but I think they come a lot closer in a number of areas.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
And a Linux rack is a small, redundant, recoverable server capable of running critical applications and handling a very large volume of data, at a tiny fraction of the cost of your mainframe.
Those airlines and banks use mainframes because they have applications in the can that only run on those mainframes, and when those applications run on a rack of commodity servers, they'll drop those money pits on the secondary market with glee.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
The difficulty of doing this in the current climate has been discussed on Slashdot ad Nauseum.
For some, it might be a good solution. For others, it isn't. However, presenting it here as a be-all end-all solution for unemployment is just as ingenuous as saying it wouldn't work at all.
GMAFB, okay...?
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Until the software that runs on those boxes matures to the point where it can actually handle what is required by some of those system, the commodity cost of that hardware means nothing.
:-)
Don't get me wrong -- there are lots of existing cases out there where companies are running legacy software on mainframes largely out of inertia, but that isn't the case in the areas I'm talking about.
Hey, I know... The airlines are looking for ways to save money. Maybe this is your chance to show them the way.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Sounds like more of an attitude problem than a lack of technical skills.
Know what, there are plenty of people who have just as strong tech skills (maybe stronger, some of them maybe younger) but I'll bet you they come off a whole lot less jadded during an interview.
You probably won't have much getting a job in your new field either.
Contract positions are very popular (at least around here) right now, and while the pay is pretty good, employers will sometimes keep these contractors on for a year or more, and never provide any training. They'll send the "real" employees on training for weeks at a time, and in the meantime you're supposed to just know it without any. Don't they want well trained people working on their systems?
Businesses or organizations can't be blamed for this. As a contract or freeleance worker it's the workers responsibility to make sure they get the training needed. Now, the organization needs to make sure the employees have updated skills and should pay for this but not for outside workers.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm an operating system nut (UNIX administrator for a living), and would love to learn z/OS. The problem with learning z/OS is that there is such a high barrier to entry to get into the proper situation to do so.
While you can use open source utilities like Hercules to run z/OS on an x86 machine, the means of acquiring z/OS legally or illegally is certainly not easy. In fact, it's very unlikely.
Unlike other operating systems, you can't just easily buy a machine to run z/OS on eBay. Heck, I'm not quite sure what the oldest and most affordable machine that can run z/OS is. The cheapest S/390 I've seen on ebay is in the thousands of dollars. Whereas the barrier to entry for learning AIX is just a $150 43p away.
I'd still love to be able to run z/OS at home somewhere for learning it. It's just not terribly easy to do so.
Indeed.
In fact, there's a certified Unix embedded within IBM's OS/390 and z/OS operating systems. This full blown Unix is just another "feature" within the IBM mainframe operating systems.
Here, this garden hose has a standard interface -- let's replace the Mississippi River with one so everyone can hook up to it and use the resources! It should be easy!!! :-) :-)
Geez... Which part of the phrase "mainframes are already using specialized clusters of modern data channel hardware that kick ass on anything else on the market" don't you understand?
It ain't out of date -- it's just built to a more sophisticated set of specifications than you're used to seeing.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Who said anything about doing it in UNIX????????
Windows 2003 Server and SQL Server 2005 all the way. That's what you need to dump the mainframes.
As for the idea that you just NEED a mainframe for some tasks, that's FUD spread by those who sell mainframes. The best way to ensure your own survival in the business world, is to make the competition seem like the "kiddie" choice. That's how Microsoft beat Apple to a bloody pulp in the early days.
You might want to come out of your ivory mainframe tower and notice that all those "Mainframe only" tasks are being nicely handled in many places with cheaper server farms.
Hell, mainframes make a nice, fat, fragile, single point of failure. That's a step backward in infrastructure design if you ask me.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
...that POSIX-compliant C code will run on my OS/2 box and the Unisys Clearpath IX mainframe I play with for a living at work.
;-)
Those systems would be pretty unfamiliar to you otherwise. Especially the latter, at least if all you knew was UNIX.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
This could be a problem, since mainframes still hold the business world afloat ( regardless of what you young kids believe ).
Though it means secure work in what is left of the ivory towers for some of us that arent yet ready to retire..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The BSCS program I went through required three core language classes (including a mandatory mainframe assembler class) during the first two years, hit on various miscellaneous topics from hardware logic to data structures, then allowed us to branch out into more specialized areas (systems, databases, business, etc.).
I think that approach has given me a far greater appreciation for what's going on behind the scenes than I might otherwise have had, and it also gave me some practical experience with writing specs, making hard deadlines, working in teams, etc.
I thought it was an excellent program.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Sounds like more of an attitude problem than a lack of technical skills.
I disagree. HR departments are a real problem for tech jobs (especially for non-tech companies). However, it is the structure that is sick.
The fact is that they are supposed to hire talented people, but their real role is usually to screen out huge numbers of applications so that the hiring manager doesn't get overwhelmed. The HR department is often reduced to a quasi-judiciary and resume-screening role. So it is no wonder that people who don't understand the technology and don't have time to learn it don't hire the best and brightest.
So how do you show someone who doesn't understand your field at all what you are capable of doing?
My advice to the GP is this. When I found myself unemployed due to family requirements (long story), I started a consulting business. I was then able to provide a resume (unfortunately a bit long-- 4 pages) which details the bredth of my ability and can prove to people who are not in this field that I can do almost anything. Now when things get tight, I am easily able to find short-term work and I have no shortage of long-term job offers should I decide that this doesn't work.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
this is totally assanine, i dunno, the companies using the mainframes should train their own who cares what schools are training kids on, microsoft ugh. as a homegrown computer science geek with no college i could find noone willing to hire me in seattle or even get interviews, including ibm corp whot his article mentions, so i went back to school, found the community college was a bunch of windows posers, so i'm studying mathematics instead. pfft. probably the "grey haired mainframe elite" are too lazy to train their own (or train some trainers) and/or the management is too stupid to give the new trainees/trainers salaries that will keep them aboard.
I disagree. HR departments are a real problem for tech jobs (especially for non-tech companies). However, it is the structure that is sick.
The fact is that they are supposed to hire talented people, but their real role is usually to screen out huge numbers of applications so that the hiring manager doesn't get overwhelmed. The HR department is often reduced to a quasi-judiciary and resume-screening role. So it is no wonder that people who don't understand the technology and don't have time to learn it don't hire the best and brightest.
They're supposed to hire the 'best' person for the cheapest price. They are buying, they have a price range in mind - you are selling. period.
It's really easy throw up your arms and cry "the system is screwed up!". Life's not fair kiddo - get used to it.
But there is a bright side. Sure it's a crappy process, however pretty much everyone goes through it. You're competing with other people who go through the same crappy process.
But your post shows that you are ahead of the gp poster, this guy can just list off a bunch of technology (some of it totally irrelevent now). Whereas you managed to put together freelance stuff to build up the resume.
As an aside, if the GP REALLY IS SO HOT, then why can't they sell themselves? Maybe he has crap social skills. Honestly, the 'cold-aloof-primadonna-tech-guru's of the world are never half as useful as they perceive themselves. A) because once you think you ARE that GOOD, you usualy close yourself off to new things - that's human nature. We're slothenly beasts. B) They tend not to be the teachers, to give people around them a hand-up... Showing othes how to do your job is ususally the best skill out there. It's couter-intuitive to some people, but if you can raise the competance of co-workers and mentor them you are infinetely more valuable. If you keep the information to yourself (not saying this is what the GP poster is, but he does sound like a dick anyways) you will be the BEST ADMIN... and you'll be there forever. Great. I would take a "pretty good" hire with a good attitude who can teach others, than wait for the "super ultmate tech guy' who brings no soft skills to the table.
Yeah, that'll go over well. So much for the Transaction Response Time section of our SLAs.
Also, it's not like the underlying platform means anything in terms of the UI when talking about a large-scale transaction-based app. Put a web face on the thing and pretend it's a Mac for all I care; it ain't gonna make the back-end any faster or more reliable.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I'm a contractor, many, many year experience. I've done a few zOS contracts.
.Net or one doing zOS, .Net will win, they just pay more, a lot more.
But if there is a choice between a gig doing
There are obviously many older types who aren't quite as mercenary as myself, but hey they're not going to be around for ever.
"America doesn't produce enough technically trained young people", give me a break. Flash some cash man, show me the money.
threadeds blog
Your good mentoring experiences were probably before quaterly layoffs became all the rage. Many layoffs I've seen were done by each department losing a certain percentage of its folks. If someone mentors someone who becomes better than they are, the mentor now finds themselves unemployed in a crappy job market. In the good old days they'd find a place for the mentor and there was a reasonable amount of security. There are consequences to mentoring that weren't there years ago.
This discussion about mainframes is odd. Much of the discussion seems to assume that mainframes use a different architecture than, say, a desk side PC. The assumption seems to be that, as it was twenty years ago, mainframe architecture is different from PC architecture.
The fastest processors available are microprocessors. I'm not very familiar with IBM's "mainframe" line but I do know a bit about their PowerPC series. I would guess that the "mainframes" that IBM sells are all powerPC processor based. They probably have several PowerPCs and they use water cooling to keep them from melting down.
The other part of a "mainframe" processor is a high performance memory system to allow the PowerPC(s) to run fast. The rest of the "mainframe" is dedicated to disk IO. As someone noted, IBM has a long history of doing fast, intelligent, disk IO channels.
But that's it. That's all a "mainframe" is. The rest is just IBM centric software. There is no longer really any such thing as a mainframe. The only way to can make logic circuts go fast is to make them small. And that means a microprocessor.
i'd love to work with mainframes purely for the geek factor, however, what future is there in it? your time at university is very limited, and all they can really do is teach you computing fundamentals. another problem, is access to mainframes. it's quite difficult to learn about something you have no access to, theory is all well and good but it's meaningless in the real world. if employers don't want to teach you then too bad. they can't have it all.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Like you said, "I'm not very familiar with IBM's "mainframe" line"...
From someone who is (AC because IBM wouldn't want to know I'm reading slashdot on company time) let me just say that mainframes are completely and utterly different.
They do indeed use POWER processors, but these are far and away much more amazing than PowerPC chips. And my goodness would you be amazed at how these are used in completely different ways from "normal microprocessors". Each chip has 4 cores and is placed on a board with other procs... they share resources, share tasks, do things that all other computers wont be doing for about a decade yet. These boards are then in turn combined to share and access resources... each with its own memory... its like a beowulf cluster in a box!
Most (if not all) of the micro tech that you have running inside your PC or even your big servers is tech from mainframes about 5-10 years ago.
And don't get me started about just how different the Operating system and applications that run the mainframe are from anything you've ever used before in your life. (Just start with the fact that you don't have a '/' or a '\' when storing files... you have a dot '.')
He had taken two one-night classes on programming.
There goes my Plan B.
-Valiss
puhleeze raise the limit on 3rd world h1b programmers, or else the world gonna end, dontcha know....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Nice to see some articles of real computers (IMHO). And I don't buy the comment of not enough people, let me explain. In our time ( showing my age ) we had basically zero computer education in schools/universities but for ex. IBM had excellent education and training - as today. And Univac (Unisys), Burroughs, Honeywell, etc. weren't (much) worse. The problem ( as I see it ) is that corporations don't use systems programmers any more so there is no reason for people to get all that knowledge and skills. In 70's / 80's systems programmers had to know how to negotiate next $5 million disk deal with IBM, how to figure out next years resources, HW, SW, personel, telco lines, installation elecricity and cooling, and in their spare time fight the application projects over utilizing the system when not busy doing sysgens, running fixes to the (alive) system, writing user (mostly assembler) exits to the system, debuging weird compiler problems, showing operators how to recover bad tapes with DITTO or how to change the printer chain and having other fun hobbies in their spare time ( and lots of beer!). And these were (are) big on-line systems 7x24 with thousands of users. So - it's not that fun any more ( is it? ), why should anybody even think it ? Much easier to specialize to Java, C# or whatever and to get the same ( or even better ) paycheck until moving to next company ? Where did I hear ?? You get what you pay and you get what you want ( be carefull what you want! ) - this to the companies / corporations, stop whining!
The one I went to -- mediocre old NIU. At least 50% of all the coding assignments done at NIU's CS dept. are done on the mainframe in either COBOL or ASM, with JCL thrown-in to make it all compile, execute, etc..
The other school is Penn. State U., with which NIU has partnered on some of the apps they both use, like the "MVSBatch" 16-bit DOS app we use to submit code to the mainframe (which is all done via FTP. I wrote a Perl script to handle it *vastly* more elegantly and portably, but other people have written Python scripts to do the same thing). But I don't know anything about Penn. State, and thus can't comment about them.
I will say that if you want to do non-mainframe development, or if you want to learn "Software Engineering" or "Computer Science" -- instead of "Mainframe Technologies with a few basic data structures and algorithms that MIT students learn at the 100-level, plus about 10% Unix use, 1 class relating at all to Java, and 1 course that deals at all with X86 stuff" -- that you avoid NIU. It took my graduating with a BSCS from NIU to come to that conclusion...
is to get a job with a company that will train you.
Really, it's prety much the only reliable way to get traing..unless you can afford to pay IBM for training.
If tyou can find people who program mainframe, maybe you can leverage them to put in a good word for you.
Someone need sto replace these gray hairs. IN most cases there knowledge transfer will take a least a year. Each system being highly customized, and all.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
> "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence."
Somehow appropriate for a language designed to enable non-technical managers to easily understand source code..
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about! My curriculum as a current CS student at Georgia Tech works the same way. What I was objecting to was a so-called "Cobol class" where the focus was on the syntax of the language rather than some deeper topic (like "mainframe design" or something).
For example, I'm taking the "Squeak class" this semester, but the point of the class is object-oriented design, not Smalltalk syntax.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Mainframe technology is obsolete. This is why it is not taught anymore. Notice it is only promoted by IBM. Big companies run mainframes becuase new technologies are radically different. COBOL has very little in common with any language developed in the last 10 years. There is a reason for this. COBOL sucks. CS as with every other science, has actually progressed in the last decade. Big companies reason upgrading is to dangerous to the status quo, after all, the changes may not work right at first. The wiser people at Universities realized not upgrading is too dangerous. Staying with the same old thing simlpy because it works causes stagnation. Smaller, more flexible companies will replace the large companies that don't eliminate the mainframes. Large companies that replace the mainframes stand a chance at changing their 10+ year old processes and competing in the next decade. Those that don't won't even be able to pay the pension for the mainframe retirees.
and yes from 10 people working in my team only 2 know how it actualy works., And the damn things also does the most critical job, making money...(or counting im not sure) ( where a U*x kinda firm that has some weird stuff such as 'damn things' ) d
I think that's a horrible idea.
Do you really want the essental core of the company to be changeable to the whim of any PHB?
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
They're going to be in a real pickle if folk in India and China et al are also thinking that a career in mainframes is a short one, and therefore avoid it also.
Companies see the importance of stock price, but ignore the importance of reputation. Few are willing to take a potentially limiting crossroad in their career for a company that will discard you for a nickel, even if the pay is great or worthless promises of stability are made.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
The companies have to train people to use their million dollar mainframes. It's not rocket science.
BTW, I live in Denver, Colorado. If anyone wants to pick me up to work in their mainframe shop, I'm game. I've only touched one in college though, MVS class. So you'll have to train me.
If there are no reponses to this post, then there is no problem with a shortage of mainframe workers.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Amid concerns that America doesn't produce enough technically trained young people...
What kind of shit is this??? There is no evidence of a "tech shortage". Yes, there are spot shortages because tech changes and it is impossible to find a person who has all the skills in the eclectic mix of technologies companies use. (Solution: on-the-job training) But the unemployment rate and wage growth for techies shows that there is no "shortage". During the depth of the tech recession in 2002-2004 lobbyists were *still* saying there was a shortage, but life for many techies was hell. Many techies were going into accounting because that appeared to be where the real shortage was.
What kind of evidence are they using to claim "shortage"?
Table-ized A.I.
There is a company that took ONE application they had running on their mainframe enviromenty (they had 8+ mainframes). The application was a query only application. It was setup to run across two of the mainframe, but used less that 25% of the capacity on each of the mainframes (other applications took up the other 75%). They re-wrote the whole thing to run on distributed boxes. 100 2-way Intel running Linux/Apache as the front end. 45 8-way Intels Running Linux/MySQL as the database engine. 17 16-way NSK running custom C++ code as the application servers. 20 2-way Intels to corrdinate the updates of all the data bases boxes. They pull the data from the mainframe as the data still originates on the mainframe. Over all it was over $200 million dollars (hardware, software, and people) to have the same performance and close to the same uptime using the "cheap" little platform. After it was implemented, they est. that the RIO would take 10-15 years. They had hoped to get rid of at least one mainframe, but they are actually growing their mainframe MIPS. The "cheap" distributed platform was also suppose to have enough capacity to last for 2-3 years, but they are having servers added on a montly basis to keep up.
And a Linux rack is a small, redundant, recoverable server capable of running critical applications and handling a very large volume of data, at a tiny fraction of the cost of your mainframe.
You sir obviously either know nothing about mainframes, or have different definitions of "critical" and "very large" than the rest of us.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
"Oh, I see you have 10 years of experience writing applications in C++. We're really looking for someone experienced in C. Sorry."
"Don't apologise, I understand it can be hard to intervew experts who talk in jargon. You see the C++ programming langage has C inside of it, kinda like the letter 'C' is inside of the alphabet. C++ is really shorthand jargon for "C plus a lot more", you C?"
Not wanting to appear stupid the arts-major will usually nod wiseley and tick the box. If they are still suspisious, start drawing diagrams.
Many moons ago a pimp...err I mean an agent...suggested that for each job in a CV, insert a sepreate section that just lists all technologies. Not the ones used, but ALL the technoglogies connected with the job's project(s). Have 3-4 lines of acronyms for each job and make sure all acronyms listed in the ad appear at least once, the more times you list "must have's" the better. This works well to get past the arts-majors in HR who think Java comes in a coffee cup. Thier job is simply to take a pile of CV's and look for the 10 CV's that most closely match their list of criteria. Then they check out any credentials and invite you for a chat and a cup of Java.
This is "the first date", the one where they look you up and down and ask the same stupid questions in a different way. It is essential that HR prove their worth so about half of the "first date's" will be culled, in fairness to the applicants, the culling will be random and polite.
If you get past the first date and into a real interview, you will nearly always be interviewed by the project manager. Now if the project manager starts using the same criteria as the HR department then (unless you are applying for his job) you have wasted your time. It is much more likely the PM will know what he is doing and will invite his senior developers to the interview to catch any Dilbert style bullshit.
I have also been on the other side of the interview desk many times, HR performs the valuable function of reducing 200 CV's down to something manageable, legible and authenticated. I am sure HR throw out a lot of good CV's, but more impotantly, they weed out ALL the obvious liars. I think of HR as a first level help desk, they know what to do as long as you fit into their procedure. The real trick with HR is trying to guess what is on their checklist. Fighting it won't get you anywhere and if you don't have the wits to get past HR after a few of tries, well...
As for TFA, I have been hearing about the death of mainframe skills since the 80's. If the skills really do become rare and valuable then IBM (or whoever) will simply open up it's own certification program before the cost of labour goes too high. If that were to happen then retrenched old-timers would find themselves battling HR because they didn't have XYZ-a/b in their CV.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I saw some of my experiences posted but not as a single, cohesive post.
I started out in a dotcom, and it was fun, there were few of us in the office and things were fast and the learning was great. We had TONS of opportunities to pick up new things, but just never enough time to really sink into them (which I like doing).
I lucked up and got a spot in a large company to consult on a clustered unix system. Now the real fun started, I could sink into what I was working on, and I could get good at it. I think this is a pretty normal response for most of those in IT that love the technologies they work on (also a good indicator of who is there to do work and who is there to climb the ladder).
Shortly, I had the opportunity to do some work with our VM guys, linux was being released out of the IBM german labs as a re-hacked RH7.2 distro for the VM mainframe systems. We cross-compiled on an old HP running RH7.3 at the time and booted. I'd never seen the guys I worked with light up like that. They were excited that this looked like the saving grace of VM, since it had been touted as being "dead" since the mid-90s (even by IBM, they ran their own campaign against VM, one of the first open source communities).
While all of this was happening, I had the opportunity to work on the z/OS (previously MVS or OS/390) side of our shop. I took it, and it's been awesome, but I've also learned some things about learning the mainframe that I'll pass along.
In as far as people who know and understand their systems and workloads, you can't beat mainframers, they are efficient and very creative with their solutions. The downside is that you run into a lot of "we already tried that..." and "why should we try to do something, management is going to kill us off anyway." Another pain is that, as posted previously, some just donot share well. There are those willing to teach you to fish, and those that will go and fish for you, cook the fish and serve it to you and leave without telling you that it's actually a steak.
Now, as for IBM and it's "training"... I've had the privilege of taking a seminar with Peter Enrico, one of the best class experiences I've ever had, and a class from IBM on the same subject (WLM). The IBM class was telling me about migrating to goal mode on WLM, the Friday before Compatibility mode was out of support the following Monday (if you get that, you're an IBM perf person)!!! They have a desperate need to update their mainframe class materials and some of the instructors. Not only was the WLM class a waste of time since it was irrelevant, but I also had an IBM USS class that had an instructor that could have honestly used some very serious updating. Aside from insulting every female in the class numerous times and basically promoting the idea that the mainframe was going away, his approach was that of someone who didn't want to be there.
I still love my work, regardless of some of the influences on it. I find the platform incredibly interesting, it's a whole different idea of how to use resources and what a user experience and workload are. The ideas contained within the OS are extremely refined and well implemented. I would encourage anyone with time and patience to fire up Hercules (a zSeries emulator for the PC), or if you have resources, there are some pay-for emulators that are even nicer. Run linux under VM, there is also an old version of MVS out there to run, and other pieces of history. There is more doc out there than you can shake a TRS80 at, and IBM has redbooks from way back on their doc site. Lionel B. Dyck also has a site that is extrememly useful as well.
The mainframe is far from dead, and I also read recently that IBM is dumping a large amount of resources into educational institutions to revive mainframe purchase
How do you get on his bad side?! He's one of the most easygoing people I've met.
Where is this Rannie you speak of at? Definately not NIU. If you call an instructer who runs a class like a drill sargeant easy going ok then. I learned a lot from the man and I stayed on his good side but out of about 30 students who started in the assembler class I took with him only about 10 made it to the final. If you showed up one minute late to class then he would not accept assignments that were due. Show up a minute late when he was giving a quiz and he would give you a zero. I can understand if a student was more than a few minutes late, but to make it that strict is insane considering there was only about 15 minutes between classes. I had a class at the engineering building and had to make it to the CS building in that 15 minutes. Could I wait for a bus? Hell no, I had to basically run to make it for fear of being a few minutes late. I am sorry but there are definately times when he should have given people breaks. Like when it was horrible, icy weather and a guy in my class fell on his bicycle. He was cut up, if he did that on purpose he would have showed up more than 45 seconds late. Dead serious, he was 45 seconds late and got a zero on the quiz. How about an assignment where I didn't make printing the output a separate function b/c it was like 5 lines of code and I only used it once (and the assignment wasn't practicing using functions, I had some other functions so I knew how to write them). Oh, got a zero on that one even though it worked fine, the printing just was not its own function. Take some points off but to receive a zero is bullshit. I know people who changed majors because of that man and that is just wrong. One girl in the class went to drop off an assignment and Rannie was not in the office so she slid it under the door because she had to make it to another class. She got a zero and he said he didn't see it or something. I was waiting for him to return when she slid it under the door. Easygoing he is NOT. I made sure to not take any more classes he instructed after that one experience.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
If dumbasses stopped reading howtos and understood the documentation it wouldn't be much of a problem.
From TFA:
The acronym SHARE does not stand for anything; according to organizers, it refers to sharing information.
I blame ITT Tech.
Just today, KQED radio in San Francisco played a story on their California Report segment saying that San Diego State University has a degree program in Indian casino management, funded by a tribal grant.
Are you a professional? If so, why do you expect your employer to train you? If you hire a lawyer, do you train him? I train myself. And no, I don't work cheaply.
This has created a catch-22; those who don't have the experience can't get into the business and you can't get experience because they don't want to spend the money to train.
This also means that all employers are chasing the same (small) pool of labor, which drives up the cost of labor.
This, then, gives them an excellent excuse to claim they can't get people and thus have to hire people from overseas at much cheaper rates. (The claim they are paying these people the same as they would regular Americans is bunk.)
All the companies over the past 25 years that I've been in this business have been consistently "eating the seed corn" and as usual they are finding they never have any harvest, and thus have to spend more on imports instead of growing their own.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
One more point. Mainframes today extensively incorporate co-processors, e.g. I/O processors, to increase through-put. That through-put simply can not be matched even if you were using gigabit ethernet between your servers and blades. In a highly transactional environment, you lose. Big iron has its place just as every other device has a niche in our industry. I've worked on all of them, mainframe to microcomputer. You don't use a sledgehammer when a ball peen hammer is called for, nor do you use a ball peen when a sledge is called for. Use the right tool for the job.
Gawd I hate (language/OS/hardware) chauvinists.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
Well, the COBOL class I took was mainly focused on language syntax and on typical business computing tasks, as well as the process of creating and submitting batch compilation jobs to the mainframe, but keep in mind that when I was going through the BSCS program (early 1980's) a sizable percentage of the students had little experience with programming computers outside of a little microcomputer BASIC.
:-)
That class also taught me about flowcharting templates, coding forms, and punch cards, three things which I'm glad were dropped from most courses (and the computing environment) after that year's classes. Even a line editor on a VAXed which replaced the 1004's is a lot nicer than having to use an IBM keypunch, but I was glad to have one quarter where card decks were required -- it taught me to *really appreciate* interactive terminals.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Some corrections to your misplaced diatribe:
(1) Typical employment lasts for 26 weeks in the United States. That's six (6) months. It's equal to roughly half your previous net paycheck with a ceiling around $300-500/week before taxes (which you own on any benefits you are paid).
(2) During times of high unemployment, a federal extension of 13 weeks also exists. I was lucky(?) enough to be laid off during such a period.
(3) As a former airline employee, I also qualified for an additional six-month extension because my career with an airline was terminated due to 9/11.
(4) I spent eight of those 32 months doing contract work (60-mile commute each way). That's all I could find in the Minneapolis metropolitan area between 2002 and 2005. Ask any programmer who was unemployed in that area during that stint -- with Northwest Airlines dumping a few hundred experienced people into the job market and a number of other companies following suit, the job hunting situation there was very harsh. It still is -- I know several people who are still out of work, and one was laid off before I was!
(5) I opened up my job search to a nation-wide search at the beginning of 2004, and it still took me an additional nine (9) months to locate work (an airline-related programming job here in Atlanta).
(6) My resume is online and in full view for all to see. I thought I was quite employable, but the folks doing hiring didn't. I'm not alone in this experience -- check out any of the discussions on Slashdot about job searches in the past five years.
(7) No, I couldn't find a job within a 100-mile radius that would pay me enough to meet basic expenses for my family (food, housing, utilities). Unemployment didn't meet basic expenses either, but it gave me a change to search for work, hone my skills, learn new skills, and figure out how to get out of the situation I found myself in.
(8) I fervently hope you never find yourself in a similar position. If you do, however, I will wish you the best of luck. I've been through two layoffs in the past 17 years, and I know what it's like. You obviously do not.
Have a day.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
The first computers have always had more emphasis on IO than on processing power. I think that the fact that mainframes have comparatively more IO power is an inherited architectural feature. Minicomputers from the past had also more emphasis on IO than on processing power (although the lines began to blur then), but it is really the PC world which has emphasised processing speed over IO. I do not think there is even remotely in the PC world something that resembles 'channels' (independent IO processing units) which are used in mainframes (and which have been used in minicomputers).
Actually there was, it was called the Amiga. I also recall several of the older S-100 based machines that implemented DMA based channel I/O, but that were extremely expensive, even for that time. All gone, sad to say. The engineering was something else. Not the crud we deal with now which requires major changes (reprogramming Northbridge/Southbridge, etc.) to get decent I/O and other optimizations working, which I've done.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
I thought they laid all you cobol losers off?