--- On Thu, 11/12/09, Scott <[email protected]> wrote: From: Scott <[email protected]> Subject: Re: IBM driving mainframe systems programmers into the ground To: [email protected] Date: Thursday, November 12, 2009, 4:28 PM
No, that's entirely wrong. IBM is not trying to reduce the cost of mainframe ownership. Less cost = less profit. IBM is simply tackling the Mainframe market's low hanging fruit--the grunts who keep things moving--because no other areas for dramatic profit expansion really exist. IBM sells this to clients as reducing the cost, but that reduction is either non-existent or negligible. Rather, the purpose is to get even better margins. Assume the average pay rate is $60-80/hr for one of these sysprogs. The contract agency takes $40, which gives half to the grunt. Huzzah, IBM has snatched half of your pay check, with a quarter headed to the agency and you get 25%. If you're not happy then they'll fire you and you can't go after IBM because you never actually worked for them. I'm not sure if this is Capitalism or Canibalism, but I wouldn't doubt IBM's pursuit of the later if it helped with the former. Scott ----------------SNIP-------------------------- Scott: I agree with you and other posters but I think I have some evidence that indicates IBM is essentially attempting to get rid of a lot of sysprogs. IIRC the year was 1995 (6? it was early in the SERVPAC years). I was attending an IBM class for SERVPAC's in the IBM Chicago education center. One of the 2-3 instructors was talking and giving the outline of how SERVPAC's work. After his talk he made a statement that SERVPAC was the attempt of IBM to either eliminate or minimize the systems programmer. I was surprised but it dawned on me that a *LOT* (perhaps 20 percent of the class) consisted of application type programmers(!!).As the class dragged on it was clear that the people that were asking the questions did not have a clue as what SYS1.LINKLIB (and other types of system data sets were). The class was getting hopeless bogged down as 20 percent of the class kept asking less that typical questions to the point of almost not knowing what MVS was and how it function. Heck some of them had a hard time understanding ISPF and other common type "system" utilities. After class I asked one of the less than lets say informed people what had brought them to the class and one said because IBM told their boss that he did not a systems person to install and maintain MVS as the SERVPAC negated their use. Another person said essentially the same thing. I am not sure about now but then IBM was handling companies with call 1-800 xxxxxxx to order entire systems and everything else. What IBM did was hand these calls to another vendor to do the ordering and other tasks involved in installation (hardware wise & planning). We got one that at best amateurish companies and I pointed out to my boss how things should be done not how these people were doing it. One big point that surprised the hell out of me was their recommendation for the size of memory the number they came up with was just too small. I ran some quick RMF reports that showed we needed a lot more memory. I showed them to my boss(another story which I do not want to get into here) and he looked at them and agreed they needed more memory on the new machine. I was told to sit it out and let them do their job. I shook my head and said its your head not mine as I told you about it. That hit home and he meekly suggested that they increase the memory on the system. They asked on what basis he thought that there was more memory needed and he brought out some RMF reports that I had given him. They said these numbers were new to them. I nudged my boss and he gave me the go ahead and I asked how they got their numbers. They said it was a standard machine configuration (what ever that was) so they were just doing what IBM suggested. The point of the above I think is to show that IBM either wants to reduce or eliminate systems programmers. I am sure others have their own versions. Ed ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
