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California Can't Perform Pay Cut Because of COBOL
beezzie writes "Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered a pay cut, to minimum wage of $6.55/hr, for 200,000 state workers — because a state budget hadn't been approved yet. The state controller, who has opposed the pay cut on principle and legal grounds, now says the pay cut isn't even feasible because the state's payroll systems are so antiquated. He says it would take six months to go to minimum wage, and nine months more to restore salaries once a budget is passed. The system is based on COBOL, according to the Sacramento Bee, and the state hasn't yet found the funds or resources, in ten years of trying, to upgrade it." The article quotes a consultant on how hard it is to find COBOL programmers; he says you usually have to draw them out of retirement. Problem is, if there were any such folks on the employment rolls in California, Gov. Schwarzenegger fired them all last week, too.
And what happens when your amateur COBOL hackers bork a live, production system upon which tens of thousands of people rely on for their paychecks?
Here is a little process us whipper-snappers have come up with since you retired: 1. Make a copy 2. Work on that 3. Test it thoroughly 4. Put it into production.
Just callin' it like I see it.
The article quotes a consultant on how hard it is to find COBOL programmers; he says you usually have to draw them out of retirement. Problem is, if there were any such folks on the employment rolls in California, Gov. Schwarzenegger fired them all last week, too.
thats what happens when you vote a musclehead into power. all these years of steroid usage has to have a cumulative effect.
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Quite true, but this is Snob City here, so you won't convince anyone, least of all the morons who think C and C++ are suitable for writing business applications. OTOH, I once wrote a mainframe web server in COBOL 74. Anyone who can't get their mind around COBOL is a moron. Anyone who simply doesn't want to is a fool.
Look at the bright side: there's always seppuku.