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College Students: Want To Earn More? Take a COBOL Class
jfruh writes: With a lot of debate over the value of a college education, here's a data point students can use: at one Texas college, students who took an elective COBOL class earned on average $10,000 more a year upon graduation than classmates who hadn't. COBOL, dropped from many curricula years ago as an outdated language, is tenaciously holding on in the industry, as many universities are belatedly starting to realize.
I looked in to Cobol rolls as a potential career shift as I keep reading on Slashdot how amazing a Cobol job can be...
After a quick scan of most UK job sites for Cobol in London (where all the banks are ..) e.g.
http://www.indeed.co.uk/Cobol-...
Pretty much all roles are £40l-£60k a year and require some kind of real world, commercial experience with Cobol/mainframes etc etc
That's not that exciting, The salaries are lower than equivalent positions in other areas of development. You have to work for someone like Lloyds. Chances are you'll need to wear a suit to work. Have to work in London. By definition, you're going to be supporting ancient, systems which have undergone years of maintenance by probably dozens of different developers and it's going to be super enterprisey, loaded to the gills with change control and red tape, etc etc.
I don't get it.. sounds awful..
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
There is certanly a lot of hate directed at COBOL. However, since if it is still being used, then it still has some capability that is not available in other solutions. Also looking at the wikipedia, the language keeps being updated (COBOL 2014 standard is out for example) and supports object-oriented methodology.
COBOL is one language that I haven't encountered. Perhaps it would be insightful if someone can explain why there is so much animosity towards this technology.
One in high school in the late 80s, and one college course while in the military.
Of course, I may need to freshen that up a bit.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
...many years ago. An extra $10,000 a year isn't enough to get me to program in that language again.
I wouldn't advise anyone to study COBOL unless they really needed the job. If you go that route you are going to be doing uninteresting (to me anyway) programming in a ghetto while other programmers of your generation are doing more interesting things. COBOL is a dead-end.
This is it. ForTran. Micro-Soft. New kids today. Don't know shit.
Working for others may get you a decent living, but if you really, and I mean, REALLY want to earn a lot of money, working for others won't make you rich
I started by working for high tech companies, some decades ago. Yes, I did earn really decent wages, much better than most of my peers at that time. But I didn't stop there
When I was working, I noticed niche markets that were not being fulfilled. I got out and started my own companies (plural) to do just that
Some of the companies I sold to others, some I kept. A lot of people are working with me right now, but I gotta tell you, no matter how much I pay them (and yes, I do pay my co-workers very handsomely) they still do not earn as much as I
The moral is very simple --- if you really want to be wealthy, stop being a worker, and start being an entrepreneur
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
How learning COBOL will increase your penis size and make everyone want to wrap their mouths around it.
At TSTC in Waco, TX, they have a COBOL course. I can't remember if it was two or just the single 4 hour class, but they used it as a means of weeding out people not really prepared for business programming. I got the flu the semester I had the class, and failed horribly. I was a member of AITP, and at one of the monthly meetings we had, the table we were sitting at was attended by a true professional in the telecommunications industry. I point blank asked the guy why they didn't update to a more modern language, and he told me that they had tried numerous times to do just that. Every time, he said, they ran into walls. Some code just wouldn't port over and it threw everything off. For some reason they just couldn't get the same results from modern compilers as they did COBOl. I was really shocked at his response, and this was back in 2001. Today I'm not at all surprised to see an escalating need for COBOL programmers.
We were expected to learn those on our own when they were needed in our computer science classes
COBOL is a simple language with semantics close to assembly, but with better support for numeric types.
The simple language allows low quality programmers to develop large systems, although those systems are complete spaghetti code, with a lot of duplicated code.
COBOL is a good language for bad programmers because spaghetti code is reasonable maintainable in this language.
Could it possibly be because the folk who take COBOL might be more interested in the field they're studying in general, rather than just saying "take these courses and get rich fast" ?
I took COBOL -- late 90's.
The one job interview I went on where I could put that skill to use showed me why I *wouldn't* want such a job.
The issue wasn't the language per se, it was the fact that most companies still using COBOL are also trapped in chronically underfunded and undervalued IT departments, holding old machines and apps together with bailing wire and duct tape.
You get $10k more a year. The downside is you have to use COBOL.
I have been making a living by coding in Fortran for the past 5 years. An interesting conversation between the detachment company I worked for and one of its potential clients:
client: Do you have anybody who writes Fortran?
employer: Sorry, that is too old, we do not do anything with that.
client: But one of your employees (me) has on his linked in profile that he is a Fortran programmer
employer: he must have forgotten to update it, but we will have a look
client: please do.
And a month later I was working at the client. had a really cool time for ten months. All you have to do is present clearly that you are skilled at it, because otherwise everybody will think you have made a mistake.
students who took an elective COBOL class earned on average $10,000 more a year upon graduation than classmates who hadn't
Makes me think if this is median or mode average. Maybe there's a single expert who got some crazy $10,000,000/a mission critical deal. ;)
While it's quite reasonable that the extra pay is because these people get good jobs developing COBOL, is it perhaps possible that it's more about the mentality of the person who takes such a course?
For example, if I'm interested in making lots of money I'll go into financial software. A lot banks still use COBOL, so doing a course on that increases my options in this area. Even if I don't use it ever again, and don;t even go into banking, I'm still a lot more likely to work for a company that pays a lot because money motivates me.
If you don't care about what kind of job you get, just how much money you make, then:
a) You will make more money than someone who considers other factors in their choice of career.
b) You will take any courses which you're told will enhance your marketability, no matter how disgusting. Like COBOL.
Hence it's unsurprising that people who take COBOL make more money... but is it *because* they took COBOL? That's less clear. Correlation is not causation.
This is the second 'Learn COBOL' imperative from Dice Inc. in a month. Methinks those many IT departments proclaiming the domestic talent isn't good enough suddenly have problems the latest HTML & Java graduate can't fix. They need a local yokel who's been around the neighourhood a few times.
Know cobol, can't get programming job because didn't go to college, and didn't make games in the 80s.
One of the things I think when I look at something like that is, the $10k difference is illustrating how much more people make that care enough about computer science/programming to take the time to explore many languages - not so much that they are all getting COBOL jobs, they are just more competent.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Shocker. Economics 101. As the the pool of COBOL programmers is reduced the shops still needing them are going to have to pay more.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
I don't think those kids go out into the wide, wide, world to program COBOL. I suspect that the subset of CS majors that care enough about real-world jobs are the sort to take a COBOL class, just in case it comes in handy. You'd probably also see that these students are more likely to pursue computer-related summer and in-school part-time jobs, more likely to participate in open-source projects etc.
I know that when I was looking for jobs, I had a whole stack of job offers, despite a middling GPA. Some of the other students in my dept. struggled to find a job, despite better grades. The difference? Two computer-related summer jobs, four different tech-related work-study jobs, and a LOT of extra-curricular study in IT. If my school had a COBOL course, I probably would have taken it. (I did take a SQL course, which wasn't even offered by the CS dept.; it was in the business school, along with the other IT (vs. CS) classes.)
Screw COBOL, I get paid 160/hr doing C++ work - been employed full-time for almost 2 years (5 day weeks, less than 3 weeks 'down time' between contracts - which is a little less than you'd take for holidays anyway).
Last tax statement was ~295k for the year. Cobol, meh - 100-150k tops?
Speaking for myself, I like working for the man! I get to spend my entire workday (consisting of reasonable work hours) doing something I enjoy (Enterprise IT architecture.) Yes, "The Man" makes more off me than they pay me (they are a profit-making company, after all!)
But in return for the 6% Net Profit they report annually, The Man does all the things I don't want to, like Sales, Marketing, Legal, Accounting, Administration, Management, Benefits, etc. I don't want to do those things myself, nor am I particularly interested in figuring out how to manage somebody else doing those things for me.
I do well enough... I'm on track to retire comfortably at 50 after years of doing work I enjoy and working with people I like (and don't have to manage!), and I have a lot less stress than a serial Entrepreneur.
If doing all that scut-work, or managing others to do it for you, is what floats your boat, more power to you! But it's certainly not for everyone.
You sound a bit unhinged.
Did it ever occur to you that some people don't mind being employees? I'm not sure how you equate "working for somebody else" with inevitable serfdom. I show up for work for reasonable hours under reasonable working conditions, I do my job, they pay me for it, I go home. Nobody took rights away from me; if I don't like the arrangement, I tell my boss it's over and I go elsewhere. No violence necessary or wished-for.
If you're an experienced CICS programmer, who uses COBOL, and can do maintenance work on old CICS code bases, you can get a job, but no one wants people who know just COBOL like you'd learn in school. There is currently more supply than demand with experienced CICS programmers, so it's not the best field to get into. You'd be competing with folks who have 20+ years experience.
And you'll need it after you get carpal tunnel syndrome from all that typing.
This. I'm more free and secure as an employee (not in the US, we have many protections and rights around here). If I'm sick I still get paid, If I'm lazy on some day I still get paid. No, I won't earn wild amounts of money. I got flexible work hours, so I can decide when I work. Unless the company goes belly up I get 6 months notice and pay if they want to let me go. If I want to go I can quit on the spot. Or, if I want to do it like I'm expected to I give notice one month before hand. I take no risks with my money, and on the other hand reap no big rewards. I'm not stressed much by work. Work takes 7 hours and 30 minutes of my day, the rest is mine. If I was working for my self I could just tell the lclients to fuck off if they tried to contact me at night, but I assume I wouldn't have those clients for long.
Likewise, mine expected you to know C++ to understand OOP.
Never had a C or C++ course before or after.
C, ASM, COBOL, PHP-8 / 11, Fortran, Perl, Bash, SH, PHP / Rails and Java. If you know those then you'll be set for pretty much anything you'll find in the real world.
I took an elective course in beginners COBOL back in the day (1992). It was an elective, but it was picked blind, before the course had started. I quickly realised that I didn't want to work in this language, and that C was much more interesting.
These days, I write perl. Which is closer to C than it is to Cobol. Cobol, if anything, is closer to banging your head against a brick wall - it feels *so good* when you stop.
... and today's pet project has
Took we had to take it in CS back in the early 90s. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Now, would I want to program in it for the rest of my life? Probably not. :D
Every COBOL programmer I've met was bald or going bald. It seems to come with the job; all that hair pulling.
I've been kept pretty well employed thanks to Ada experience. Military projects are not a large niche but the companies I've worked for tend to have issue finding people with Ada experience and don't like training. Plus those projects pay a little better than average.
...because I walked the walk with this one: wound up taking a COBOL gig at Sallie Mae after they realized I took a semester of COBOL programming here in the Midwest. I was there for a year but later found my ass out the door because I sucked at it. Funny thing is, I'm happy I found the door. The job was the worst job I had ever had: the language is the most boring language I have ever programmed in.
Additionally, Sallie Mae sucks in general... Nobody working at the data center in Fishers is happy and the management there should all go shoot themselves for the simple fact that they know nothing about management in general, let alone, IT management. Their hiring practices are borderline insane because who on Earth would hire someone into a JCL / COBOL-2 shop when 99% of their academic and field experience consists of open source web languages!? (My experience.)
Long story short, stay the fuck away from COBOL and the stupid shit it revolves around. Money isn't everything.
(Just my experience, I know.)
1) Learn javascript
2) Learn cobol
3) Use Cobolscript
4) Profit !
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Did you actually read his whole post? I don't care if he would prefer not to employ people, although implying that anyone that would employ someone else for profit is pretty much Evil Capitalist Scum is a bit weird.
What I keyed off of was: " The only reason why I do not act violently against people like you is that I abhor violence even more than I abhor your ideals." The only thing stopping him from violently attacking perfectly normal employing business owners is disliking violence some small amount more?
Yes, sounds great. Make 10K more out of the gate. And if you're finding it tough to land a job right now, what a DEAL this is! You're employed! You're really needed since the number of COBOL programmers to support legacy systems are dying off (figuratively and literally).
There's the catch. They've got you. You don't know it, but they know it.
Next year, your fellow grads who got jobs are learning TONS of new things, other skills. Team building, real life design. Team leadership. They're getting mentored perhaps. They'll make their way up to intermediate, then senior developers. Maybe into architecture.
But you're still slogging through COBOL code. Supporting legacy systems.
And they can't afford to lose you, so your company (A Bank most likely - not the fastest moving group in the world (and I know since I've worked for three)). So you're still COBOL programming. But, y'know, thanks for the effort. Here's a 2K bonus.
Uour friends are now 2 years along in their careers, they're moving to new jobs, making 10-20K more since they can show job experience, skills experience, and real-life development qualities.
You're even or a bit behind, pay-wise. But they're going places. You're about to stand still, career-wise.
In a year they shoot past you, and that's that. You're standing still. Cost-of-living increases if you're lucky. But hey! We at the bank really appreciate it. So here's a nice mouse pad, and the latest patch release for COBOL on the Z-Frame.
So, no movement here. What to do? I know!! Other companies need COBOL programmers. I'll play the field and see who will throw me more money.
Great. You make a bit more money. Doing EXACTLY the same thing, somewhere else, with little if any career growth. It's possible you will always have a job, since COBOL is entrenched, and not going anywhere. But that's all you'll ever do. That and cut 1650 reels with your teeth.
Don't Do it. It's a trap.
A more likely correlation is that better students make better money. If you are taking COBOL as an elective you are trying hard as a student selecting courses that are hard but meaningful to your degree, rather than simply picking some easy A course to bump your average. If goes to figure that these more serious and better students with drive and motivation will also apply those same principles when trying to find work.
I took COBOL myself in the late 90's, however not as an elective but as a mandatory CS course (I think it was mandatory anyway). I have not used it one whit other than I had it on my resume for a bit before I acquired enough other experience to fill it out, and possibly to mention it offhandedly in an interview or in discussions on Slashdot.
I took 1 cobol class and have been consistently under-earning my peers by $20k/year. Alas, I'm a Network/Server/project manager and not a coder.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
It's my fundamental human right not to wear a suit to work.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Just let it go, people.
In the past four decades.
Generally if you are proficient in a couple languagse, you really dont need to take a course to learn a new language.
I took COBOL back in college. I also studied parallel processing, compiler design, operating system design, graphics, and everything else I could get my hands on. I had so many C.S. courses on my transcript, they exceeded not only my requirements but also my allotted electives. How do you think my salary compares to the guy who took only the bare minimum, and barely scraped by at that?
Well buddy you and any job you have can go fuck itself. If you're planning to hire me solely because I can shave and buy a suit then I have no desire to work for you.
Oh, and if you want someone who does what I do and is good at it...
I'll have no trouble at all finding a replacement who has all your skills and none of your attitude,
If you know COBOL and are going to retire in ten years, COBOL programming can be a good deal.
But if you are 22 it is not a good deal at all. The demand might be high relative to supply, but it is going to slowly shrink. Your better bet is to get experience in something that has a high demand, not because of a small supply of programmers. I'm pretty sure being an experienced Hadoop engineer, for example, will get you more money and the tail of that career is longer. When Hadoop goes out of fashion, the next thing will probably be an incremental change over Hadoop so it won't be too hard to learn. When you are sixty you can take care of legacy Hadoop systems and make good money.
But if you are 22, learning COBOL doesn't have a long pay off. You will make a good, but not great living. Like I said the demand will be low. Your COBOL experience will not put you into a good position to learn hot new things that are based on object oriented and functional programming. Furthermore, you won't have written anything cool and great, so it won't be a great path into management.
If you honestly can't get any job, maybe learning COBOL would be worth it. But I think there's a bigger payoff learning object-oriented JavaScript.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
A COBOL programmer, in 1998, is utterly beyond fed up with dealing with code for the upcoming y2k, and has himself put into cold sleep until after the year 2000. Something gets screwed up in the records, and he's left to sleep away millenia. Finally, they wake him up. He's appalled to learn it's the year 9998, and everything and everyone he knows is gone. On the other hand, he's *really* in The Future, and is looking forward to all the amazing things we've done.
"Just one question", he asks the team that woke him up, "why now?"
The leader answers, "Well, we're about to roll over the year 10,000, and your records say you're a COBOL programmer...."
mark
I'm all set for the interview!
000010 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
000020 PROGRAM-ID. INTERVIEW-PROG.
000030 AUTHOR. ME
000040* DUMBEST TEST IMPLEMENTED IN COBOL
000050
000060 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
000070
000080 DATA DIVISION.
000090 WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
000100 01 FIZZ PIC X(4) VALUE 'Fizz'.
000101 01 BUZZ PIC X(4) VALUE 'Buzz'.
000102 01 N PIC 9(3) VALUE ZERO.
000103 01 X PIC 9(2) VALUE ZERO.
000104 01 Y PIC 9(1) VALUE ZERO.
000105 01 Z PIC 9(1) VALUE ZERO.
000110
000120 PROCEDURE DIVISION.
000130 MAIN-PARAGRAPH.
000140 MOVE ZERO TO N
000150 PERFORM UNTIL N = 100
000160 COMPUTE N = N + 1
000170 DIVIDE N BY 3 GIVING X REMAINDER Y
000180 IF Y = 0 THEN
000190 DISPLAY FIZZ WITH NO ADVANCING
000200 END-IF
000210 DIVIDE N BY 5 GIVING X REMAINDER Z
000220 IF Z = 0 THEN
000230 DISPLAY BUZZ WITH NO ADVANCING
000240 END-IF
000250 IF (Z > 0) AND (Y > 0) THEN
000260 DISPLAY N WITH NO ADVANCING
000270 END-IF
000280 DISPLAY ' '
000290 END-PERFORM
000300 STOP RUN.
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
funny my Texas alma mater a branch school of Texas A & M cant afford the salaries of PhDs in CS so they have CIS degrees with core coding done in COBOL afaik this is still the case. Big employers for the grads were radio Shack and Lowe's
Moving somewhere outside fly-over country where software is core to businesses not a cost center does more for salaries than studying COBOL.
New grads at the big Silicon Valley tech companies are getting $170-$190K packages - like $115K salary, $100K signing bonus, and $200K restricted stock package vested over 4 years.
$2500 apartment rents and a 9.3% state marginal tax rate take a big cut out of that although it's still a net win.
I had to read some COBOL about 30 years ago as part of migrating a database. I had done my first programming in FORTRAN which is almost as old. I suspect that the call for COBOL is that there is need for people to read old code that still needs to be maintained, but my impression of the language is that it was really just about 80% boiler plate and 20% executable. So, couldn't a metalanguage be invented that reads COBOL source and produces some source code that reflects something widely used today, even something much newer?
Actually most are in Newcastle and the North East.