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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."
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,
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
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
No, but a lot of universities had classes in various mainframe-type things, "data processing" and the like. z/OS is just an extension of the systems they've been running for decades, renamed to look "cool." So you probably wouldn't have found, say, a System/390 class specifically at a college, but you would have found a lot of data processing and COBOL classes that would have prepared you to work in that environment.
the college I went to (mid-90's) was phasing those out and bringing in VB and Netware classes. Personally, I think the mainframe-oriented classes were a lot better preparation to work in the IT/IS field than learning how to add and delete users and write "Hello World" with a mouse and a GUI editor.
Actually there are some at the university i study at, as optional subjects, called " zSeries(S/390) operating systems", "zSeries(S/390) architecture and assembler programming" etc...
-- someone from Europe...
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
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); }
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
LOL, its not that I can't get a job programming. Cobol isn't the only language I know, I can do 5 or 6 (no web languages though) Its that I have people do that for me now... :) More money in Management and Admin. Why hack code for 3ok or 40k, when you can make double talling other people what to do?
Anybody that takes Cobol in school is probably a CS student, and most CS students learn multiple computer languages through out their schooling. I didn't think I needed to explain that bit.
Of course is you get new Cobol programmers the companies will jettison the old ones quicker than you can say Abend. We are talking a wonderful job security here for the soon to retire crowd.
A lot of new stuff is getting written in Java and J2EE so there is a transition going on in some areas. That transition will give a shot in the arm to new software development, a mini boom, over the next 10 years. Hopefully that work will be done at home rather than abroad.
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.
Companies need experience, but they also need the fresh new talent and work philosophy of new graduates so that someone will be around to "keep the mainframes" running.
This guy has a point. At the megacorp where I work, they won't even hire anyone for the help desk (call center) without a BS. Third level analysts require masters degrees for new hires at minimum -- most new hires have multiple masters in various fields. It's no wonder most of our new hires are coming from foriegn universities.
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
I think that in a lot of cases this is just because companies know that they can find someone who already has the skills they need. In cases where a company doesn't have the resources to hire someone with all the skills. This could be because people that have the skills earn premium wages or the company is too small to attract people with the experience they need. In that case, companies are probably much more willing to train someone on the job.
I guess the company I work for works differently. We have our own proprietary operating system and you are expected to know how it works. Luckily we've got a library full of manuals and a test system you can log into.
As for the engineers, we've got a tiered mentoring and peer review process. Yeah, we have a couple of senior engineers leave a year, but by the time they've left, they've also mentored and cultivated the younger enginners.
The training perdiciment is the same all around. Nobody wants to pay for training, so the alternative is reading manuals instead of playing Wow...
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
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!
The parent is right on, but to be fair, sometimes it's not driven by the HR manager, but by the team members who are like "I don't want to have to train somoene, we need someone who knows X right off the bat."
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Multiple masters degrees? Some of us have to earn a living, not go on as perpetual students.
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.
You'd think, but when they tried to replace that mainframe at my mother-in-law's insurance company (where she'd been working as a programmer since the 1950's -- when they advertised for "girls who are good at math"), they totally screwed it up and ended up just having to use their new systems to interface with the mainframe, because they couldn't get their actuarial tables to work right. To hear her tell it, the math in the cached lookup tables in moderns systems is full of errors. I don't know if that's true, but I never doubt a grandmother whose shelf of "grannyware" like PrintShop and Reader Rabbit is broken up by things like the IBM 360 System Operators Manual and textbooks on COBOL. (This remarkable woman can rattle off the Z80 instruction set by heart, but finds GUI-based things like AOL "complicated," and sends all emails in ALL CAPS.)
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Not ITT Tech, employers. Have you looked at any job postings lately? They all ask for specific skills, I've known people who have gone to interviews and did well up until the point where they were told the stuff they might do was not on their resume.
did you forget to take your meds?
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)
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.
I agree with you. Unfortunately in the tech world, especially with the fast turnaround employment rate, HR does not want to spend money on training anybody for obscure things, even if one is fully capable of learning the ropes in a matter of weeks and already has a general understanding of it. What companies generally want is people that can do things Right Now The First Time. It really sucks for recent grads. And it's really great for veteran in the field.
Basically what you are left with is 10% of all tech people that are Googleworthy(companies go after them), 30% of all tech people that are trying to get in the field (this includes people that are genuinely interested and people that are in it for the money, although the latter group is shinking very quickly) and 60% that are absolutely mediocre that just happened to be very very lucky and advanced high enough in the corporate world before the bubble burst where they are considered invaluable resources and have no trouble looking for a job. The problem for the 30% trying to get in, is that the 60% mediocre group has set the standard for the industry's performance/level of expected intelligence, and unfortunately, has been set so low that your biggest asset in the hiring phase is proof you've "been there, done that," not your "potential to do it all."
As a 20-something who works with mainframes (and who works for IBM, in the interest of full-disclosure), I must say that learing Solaris or Linux in college does not mean that you naturally have the ability to be skilled in z/OS immediately.
I was a Windows and Linux guy in college, and was hired by IBM to be a mainframe guy right out of college. It took me at least a year, and more like 2, to feel comfortable with the mainframe OS and the concepts associated with the mainframe (like a shared-everything architecture vs a shared-nothing architecture on *nix and Windows) vs. the distributed world.
Most employers don't think far enough in advance (and don't want to shell out the $$) to hire someone to be a "shadow" to the expert for a year (or two) so they can become more than just a blind novice on the platform... they want someone who can contribute now. And don't believe the hype... learning z/OS is not nearly as simple as knowing Unix and applying a few extra concepts to the mainframe side.
As for the guy who said all his friends were concerned about their mainframe jobs and that being a mainframe person was "limiting their options". . . are you serious? There's not a major company in the entire world that's not using an IBM mainframe (with the possible exception of Microsoft, HP, and Sun). Of course, you'll usually be constrained to working in whatever location a company's datacenter is located, but isn't that a contraint you face as a Unix admin, too?
- Proofs of Sturgeon's Law Delivered Daily -
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.
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.
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
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.
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 '.')