The Greying of the Mainframe Elite 701
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."
It all works out (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
RE: Other effects... (Score:5, Interesting)
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...)
Getting old (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I'm not one of them. At 36 I was a kid when most of them came to work here.
Here to Stay (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Were there ever zOS university courses? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Were there ever zOS university courses? (Score:4, Interesting)
-- someone from Europe...
Cows come home to roost: Legacy of closed systems (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the prevailing attitude (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Reminds me of school (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Frightening shortage? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Here to Stay (Score:2, Interesting)
Now there is an arcane OS, Guardian, for the Tandem systems. 8 character file and process names with no extensions, ONE subdirectory layer allowed from the root of the drive spaces (No directory/subdirectories allowed....). The upside is absolute rock solid operation. Critical PROCESSES are mirrored either automatically or manually, so no running program is lost if you lose 1 or more CPU's at a go. Redundant processors, memory, bus/backplane, heck, everything is redundant. No unplanned downtime at all (with one exception in the 4+ years I worked there). They are currently running 150 to 300 credit card transactions per second, which is fairly impressive.
I met one of these mainframe guys... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:It all works out (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm in 4th year now. Final semester. And this is the first semester where I can truly say it's all digital; this being the case for the stream I chose (computer systems). The alternative stream is communications (more RF/wireless stuff). This semester is all advanced DSP and CPU design, with digital control theory thrown in too.
It's not like we spend four years learning how to count in binary. But the truth is, there is a lot of demand for digital electronics, and so a lot of the curriculum has replaced the more archaic, "voodo" analog tricks with it.
That said, we still learn all about simple BJT amplifiers, with temperature stabalising modifications and all that jazz, all about their structure at an electron level (having semiconductor experts as lecturers help here), not to mention the oodles of op-amp, transmission line, passive filter theory and labs...
I even had the pleasure of designing, building and testing a microwave signal amplifier that operated at 1GHz, which I would like to think is something worth mentioning considering my stream is supposed to be "computer" specialised.
I'm a little surprised you think there are EEs out there who belive it's all just "1s and 0s"... I don't think there's a serious professional digital electronics designer out there who is that naive..
Anyway, I'm off to do more FPGA work...
Re:No need to register... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:No need to register... (Score:3, Interesting)
WORD! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:No need to register... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No need to register... (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
I left the mainframe world... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:No need to register... (Score:2, Interesting)
Multiple masters degrees (Score:1, Interesting)
Mainframes are not going anywhere. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:IBM should be training (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No need to register... (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree a bit... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 ability to learn has been discounted as (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:No need to register... (Score:5, Interesting)
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."
Re:It all works out (Score:3, Interesting)
Welcome to the real world. In a building with over a hundred engineers, there are only two who could tell you Kirchoff's Laws off the top, and maybe five others who remembered hearing of them at one time. The rest deal entirely in Verilog.
What's worse, at a nearby major university with over 60,000 students (that the Legislature somehow believes is "world class" in electrical engineering) there is nothing available, at all, regarding MOS circuitry. Zilch in signal propogation. The only active circuit devices discussed in the entire University are BJTs but that's because there are several professors who are doing research on the subject of advanced BJT processes.
I hate to break the news to you, but that background you have in "computer systems" puts you ahead of about 999 out of a thousand working electrical engineers as an analog wonk.
Re:No need to register... (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Companies Actually Find Replacements Via Training (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I left the mainframe world... (Score:3, Interesting)
But you were the smart one - my career at that company led nowhere, and I took a 50% pay increase to switch to the PC world (even though very little of my skills carried over, the pay difference in the fields was just that much).
Shattering the "mainframes are old" myth... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
I agree with the GP (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
still not adjusted. (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Completely and utterly wrong (Score:1, Interesting)
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 '.')