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Retired Mainframe Pros Lured Back Into Workforce

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the come-back-so-we-can-fire-you-again dept.

itwbennett writes "Businesses that cut experienced mainframe administrators in an effort to cut costs inadvertently created a skills shortage that is coming back to bite them. Chris O'Malley, CA's mainframe business executive VP, says that mainframe workers were let go because 'it had no immediate effect and the organizations didn't expect to keep mainframes around.' But businesses have kept mainframes around and now they are struggling to find engineers. Prycroft Six managing director Greg Price, a mainframe veteran of some 45 years, put it this way: 'Mainframes are expensive, ergo businesses want to go to cheaper platforms, but [those platforms] have a lot of packaged overheads. If you do a total cost of ownership, the mainframe comes out cheaper, but since the costs of a mainframe are immediately obvious, it is hard to get it past the bean-counters of an organization.'"

4 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not a new phenomenon by kbrasee · · Score: 3, Informative

    Web "programmer"... Hahaha, good one!

    Web programming != web interface design. Welcome to the 21st century.

  2. Re:Cobol vs. Data Entry by Qzukk · · Score: 4, Informative

    no worse than C

    Except for C having "+" "-" and "=" instead of "MULTIPLY units AND cost GIVING total"

    If Perl is the archetypal "write only" language, COBOL is the one true "read only" language.

    people are crazy not to get into this field

    The whole point of TFA was that entry level jobs where people could "get in" went away, then all the senior staff retired or expired, leaving the companies with nothing.

    --
    If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  3. Re:Not a new phenomenon by Greyfox · · Score: 3, Informative
    I was subjected to 3 semesters of that crap in college, which caused me to set my price for doing COBOL programming to $300/Hour (USD). It's an awful language which you write using awful tools in an awful operating system.

    I rather like mainframes in general though. Hell I can at least tolerate Fortran if it comes down to it. COBOL... not so much.

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  4. Re:Here is to.... by tonyr60 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have been tracking worldwide server revenues for a few years.  Over the past 2-3 years the market share between Mainframe, UNIX, Linux and Windows has been very flat: Windows 40%, Unix 35% Linux 14%, mainframe (ZOS) 11% (IDC Worldwide Server Revenue marketshare).

    Quarter    Windows    Linux    UNIX    ZOS
    02/06    34.20%    12.60%    35.00%
    03/06    34.40%    12.40%    34.20%    11.30%
    04/06    34.90%    11.40%    33.50%    11.40%
    01/07    38.80%    17.00%    35.00%
    02/07    38.20%    13.60%    31.70%    9.50%
    03/07    40.40%    13.40%    31.10%
    04/07    36.60%    12.70%    33.20%
    01/08    39.20%    13.70%    30.60%    8.40%
    02/08    36.50%    13.40%    32.70%    11.80%
    03/08    40.80%    14.00%    29.70%    9.40%
    04/08    35.30%    13.60%    36.20%
    01/09    37.30%    13.80%    33.10%    9.00%

    ZOS is not always reported in press releases and I don't purchase the IDC report.

    Looks like neither Mainframe or UNIX is dying, or that Linux is dominating.