Retired Mainframe Pros Lured Back Into Workforce 223
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by
ScuttleMonkey
from the come-back-so-we-can-fire-you-again dept.
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.'"
Re:Not a new phenomenon (Score:3, Informative)
Web "programmer"... Hahaha, good one!
Web programming != web interface design. Welcome to the 21st century.
Teaching UNIX security experts to use mainframes (Score:2, Informative)
If you'll excuse the shameless self promotion, this book teaches UNIX security people how to use Mainframes: http://www.amazon.com/Mainframe-Basics-Security-Professionals-Getting/dp/0131738569/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202746607&sr=8-1 [amazon.com]
Re:Here is to.... (Score:3, Informative)
I've only run theoretical experiments with some of the systems in other companies I've worked at that COULDN'T go down, except for very special periods of time (easter and christmas and new years), oddly enough, enough of the world isn't working those weekends that you can shut down.
I can't imagine taking down the backends of the likes of Bank of America or Citibank. I lived through the quagmire that was the BankBoston/Fleet merger, and they fucked that up royally. And that's just merging systems, not wholesale replacement.
Good F*ing Luck to you.
Re:VAX (Score:3, Informative)
A VAX is not a mainframe.
Re:Cobol vs. Data Entry (Score:5, 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.
Re:Not a new phenomenon (Score:2, Informative)
"Web monkeys"?
Yeah. The monkey-kind are a dime a dozen. Which is proven by how many crappy web pages/applications there are out there. The non-monkey kind exist too. Just like the difference between script kiddies that "play" with their *nix boxes and real system administrators that know how to solve real world problems.
Those mainframe "dudes" as you put it, make similar to what good (read: proficient, non-monkey) web designers make. Moreover, I know several mainframe admins that make significantly less. It just depends on if you're actually good at what you do.
Re:Not a new phenomenon (Score:4, Informative)
I rather like mainframes in general though. Hell I can at least tolerate Fortran if it comes down to it. COBOL... not so much.
Re:Not a new phenomenon (Score:2, Informative)
I think it's less an issue of the language as the kind of applications that were developed in that language. For example, the last shop I worked at that had COBOL, had a *LOT* of COBOL, and it had been developed *along with* the policies and procedures and business rules of, among other things, the global supply chain for an oil and gas exploration company. You couldn't work with this stuff if you didn't know both the development platform *and* the business. I suspect it's just as hard to find someone who really knows the business (some of those people had been in the business since before it was ever computerized at all), as to find someone who knows how to program computers.
Re:Don't forget the Sunday restart (Score:2, Informative)
There realt isn't a reason to "restart" an IBM mainframe. LPARS are IPL'd every few months if there is a major PTF or such going in. But that only happens a few times a year (depending on your use of the system). I've got 30+ years in on them and their reliabilty is incredivle In the past 7 years we've had 2 unscheduled IPLs that I can remember. Here is our next upgrade, scheduled to be put in in 2 weeks: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/news/announcement/20080226_annc.html [ibm.com]
That would be the first time our mainframe has been completely shut down in years. The disk drives need to be recabled for the upgrade. And for those who want a car analogy, I don't have one. But I view the mainframe as a 747, *NIX as fighter jets, and Windows servers as prop planes. They all fly, but all have different purposes.
Re:Here is to.... (Score:4, Informative)
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.