IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> wrote on
05/23/2012
05:39:26 PM:
From: "Roberts, John J" <[email protected]>
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?
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.
Actually the language is not a problem. We have people here from
multiple
nations, some whose English is lacking. But they can doing the
programming work - well.
The problem is the lack of application knowledge. We just had a
senior
person retire to a ranch in FL. He was senior person in his critical
application. He ran a series of weekly one hour technical
seminars. The
problem was that he could answer any question off the top of his
head. But
an organized overview and drill down into each part of the system
and the
relationship of that system to multiple other systems was not there.
He was used to being a S(ubject)M(atter)E(xpert)/guru. Ask him a
question
and he could answer it or tell you where to find the answer.
Without that kind of person, trying to port the application to
anything
else is risky as is training newbies.
(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.
We have had over the years training programs to build new Cobol
programmers. They work fine. But again, the application
knowledge is not
in books. It was transmitted by SMEs.
(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.
Since Cobol is now talking to distributed applications in various
ways,
Cobol people are getting exposure to distributed applications. I
recently
had a project transferred from me which was going to have me build
part of
an environment that is both mainframe and distributed. As long as
the
documentation is there, there is not a huge chasm to cross.
(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.
Right now at the moment there are enough Cobol programmers leaving
other
companies that is still a supply of new people, some of which have
fine
skill sets. But as time goes on, there will be a cliff.
I just returned from Germany. There was talk there that there is an
"engineering" shortage in the market there. Never bothered with the
details. Maybe the recession there will give them time to kick
the can
down the road more. After all, it has been working so well for
dealing
with their financial problems.
John
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