>When the last Cobol programmers walk out the door, so may 50 years of business processes within the software they created. Will you be ready?
>http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227263/The_Cobol_Brain_Drain? taxonomyId=154 Ed, Interesting article and fairly accurate IMO. This is what I can foresee happening: (1) Many companies will try to offshore their COBOL application support. But this won't work so well because it is hard enough to understand these systems without facing the complications of language and arcane terminology. And the young ones back in Bangalore will want to do Java, not COBOL. (2) Other companies will want to recruit overseas, either for CS grads that they can train, or for those few that are willing to invest in COBOL learning if that is what it takes to punch that H1B ticket. But even so, once here they are all going to be looking to do something else, not COBOL. So that company that recruits and trains a COBOL resource is going to be looking for a replacement within a couple years. (3) Efforts to train new young COBOL resources are going to flop, as the article mentions. Again, everyone expects COBOL to be a career dead-end once beyond a 5 to 10 year transition period. (4) In the end, US companies are going to be forced to pay a premium just to hang on to their old-timers long enough to buy time to implement that new ERP package or new custom application. The ones that will be successful doing this are going to be the ones that accommodate their senior developer's desires: lots of time off, telecommuting, job sharing, benefits, etc. John ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
