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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."
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Well you paycheck will be late this month due to one of our critical support programmers being put in a home by his anonymous coward daughter.
I thought the purpose of college was as much to teach you how to learn effectively as to teach you specific skills. I see no reason why CS students coming out of college can't learn the zOS on the job from the people that are currently maintaining it. There's nothing wrong with a little on-the-job training. I don't know about most people, but most of the programming languages I've learned have been because of a specific job requirement and not from learning it at school.
www.joshferguson.org
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.
I blame ITT Tech.
Business has a problem with Cobol programmers.
Academia has a problem with Cobol in general.
Mix the two and the obvious solution, although potientially quite costly, is to move away from Cobol.
Furthermore, business shouldn't have any say over what is taught in a CS degree. Because a traditional degree isn't about getting a job. It's about gaining knowledge for the sake of knowledge. I recommend these business start talking to trade schools.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
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.
They're really cutting their own throats because of it, but that's what happens when "buisness" people (who don't really know anything about buisness either) run the show.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
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?
Shrug. Where I went to school we only had practical applications in lab assignments. The only class I had that dealt specifically with programming languages was "Principles of Programming Languages" and likewise the only class I had that dealt specifically with operating systems was "OS Design".
Even so we were expected to be Unix savvy, and even though it was never taught in any class, if you graduated with a CS degree, you probably WERE Unix savvy, and even better, you'd learned how to pick up a technical skillset in response to related work pressures, something I have used over and over in my life.
Schools like ITT are really meant to turn out MCSEs and the like. But a degree from a decent 4 year program should still prepare you to move out into the tech world.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Higher education is doing just fine, it's the hiring managers and HR drones that don't want intelligent people capable of learning. They just want people with training in the exact position they're filling now. When these people are asked to do more, that's when you find out whether you've hired the type of person who can adapt and learn, or the kind that needs pictures printed on the buttons of their cash register.
Here come da fudge!
Exactly right. You don't need someone who knows zOS, you need someone who can learn zOS. And someone with good marks from a reputable program is presumably someone who can learn.
(Is there anywhere else in the world that comment would be a troll?)
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
Then you don't know jack about the hiring process these days. I've got 15 years experience as a mainframe systems programmer/administrator, I've specialized in performance management, and availability measurement and management of Windows, Linux and Unix systems and applications, I've got a RHCE certification, but because I don't know some specific version of HP/UX or Solaris, no one will look at my resume twice. All a recruiter wants is specific skillz in specific areas. Demonstrated ability to learn on the job is not worth anything anymore. Sure, I can take an entry-level sysadmin job. In fact, that's what I'm going to have to do if I want full-time work.
No one seems to value the guy who can figure it all out. All they're interested in seems to be specific.
A clever person solves a problem, A wise person avoids it. -Einstein
the staggering loads that would make a cluster of *anything* weep.
Tell that to Google.
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!
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!
You don't need someone who knows zOS, you need someone who can learn zOS.
You also need someone who WANTS to learn zOS, and possibly end up working with it and it alone for the rest of their career.
Choosing to specialize in mainframe technology means your employment options are going to be limited to those companies which have mainframes. Specialize in something more widespread, like Unix administration or web development, and you can work for practically anyone.
All the mainframe experts I know right now are barely past 40, and worried that their jobs will disappear before they hit retirement. I can't say I'd blame a recent university graduate for not following in their footsteps.
> Everybody else was over 40.
Careful there buddy. Some of us are over 50, and with young kids (I got a late start, how typically geek) are going to be doing this until we're 70.
As you will learn soon enough yourself, over 40 is not the end of the line, as long as you keep learning and keep current. Bah, I had my hands inside the Unix kernel long before Torvalds even graduated from high school....
It is not always the case that older people stick with what they know, it is often the case that corporations shovel money toward people that know what they are doing to keep them around. Commonly referred to as retention programs. As long as you have half a brain, there is no risk in it. By the time the door really does close, you have been earning wages above 'the curve' for ten or fifteen years, and you still have marketable skills. (You did keep learning, right?)
The old guys felt threatend? Weird. All my mentors when I started out of college were 'old' guys, and they were very helpful and very accomodating. But then, part of their performance review was based on their mentoring skills. If I failed, it would have reflected negatively in their pay, so they had a vested interest in my success. All these years later I still respect the time and knowledge they handed over, I learned far more on the job than I did in school. Of course, it was spread over more time, and I did have that nice 'bootstrap' from college.
Since then, I have been in a few mentoring positions myself. Generally they went well, but a couple of times not. One was either a lack of capability or desire, I could not figure out which. The guy had flashes of brilliance but never completed a single project. The other was purely a personality conflict. Young guy, wet behind the ears, got good grades in school, suffered from a 'god complex'. Too bad, because he was smart, but nobody (and I mean nobody) could work with him. It was always 'his way or the highway'. Apparently we were all idiots and the whole company was damn lucky to have picked him up.
Hang in there. Careers over the long haul of thirty or forty years have a way of taking paths that you will never expect. Remember to have fun while you are doing this, but make sure you maximize your pay as well. No use in spending so much of your life on the cheap.
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!
You've mixed apples and oranges here. Let me reorganize that a bit for you.
A lawyer comes out of law school knowing law, but is not an expert in copyright law.
A medical doctor comes out of medical school with medical knowledge, but is not a podiatrist nor a neurosurgeon.
A computer science graduate comes out of school with a knowledge of computer architecture, but is (probably) not a z/OS expert.
Why shouldn't a computer technician come out knowing z/OS? What you're suggesting is a course of study that covers every environment that's at least as popular as z/OS... which would take several decades. That would be utterly absurd, since people don't live to be 200 years old. You might as well suggest that every lawyer learn maritime law, patent law, criminal law and a dozen other specialties before leaving school.
I always mod up spelling trolls.