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The Greying of the Mainframe Elite

Posted by Zonk on from the big-iron-isn't-cool-anymore dept.

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."

5 of 701 comments (clear)

  1. No need to register... by It+doesn't+come+easy · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
    1. Re:No need to register... by BrookHarty · · Score: 5, Informative

      Unfortunately, most employers don't want to do any on-the-job training at all. They want people who will both work cheaply and already have the skillsets that they are looking for.

      My work is outsourcing most new hires just for this reason, its cheaper to have a vendor do it, and then blame the vendor when things dont get done.

      Our HR department cant hire sys-admins at the companies new lower pay scale, so they have been trying to get helpdesk people to move over. Problem they have, new hires make 30-40K lower than everyone else, and expected to do the same job. Soon as they learn enough, they move for higher pay. Turnover and continous training of new people makes it hard on the older more experienced sys-admins who finally end up leaving for a startup or another company without its heads up its ass.

      We lost most experienced people, except the real old timers (like me) who been here 7+ years who are just waiting for the lay off notices when the company goes tits up due to piss poor management. I could use 6 months vacation on unemployment. (-;

  2. You're not getting it. by wandazulu · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. As one of those retiring...... by cbdavis · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. It isn't necessarily great for veterans. by Richard+Steiner · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.