When the rate of retirement, death, career change, etc. exceeds the influx of new talent, what happens when the pool of qualified employees shrinks below the minimum number needed to get the job done?
Seems like a company needs to insure that either 1. More people are being trained to replenish the pool, or 2. Switch to new technology that already has a sufficient supply. As previous posted, good old supply and demand means that as a pool of experts gets smaller, their value increases. Each company will decide if and when the risk of switching to the new technology is cheaper than sticking with the old experts. Don > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] > On Behalf Of Dana Mitchell > Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2013 11:44 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Article for the boss: COBOL will outlive us all > > I've been reading the same theory as it applied to us Systems > Programmers the last few years. Mass retirement making the remaining > sysprogs highly sought after and compensated. Well, I've personally > seen lots of retirements, but due to the combination of outsourcing, > business acquisitions, do-more-with-less etc, I haven't seen demand > locally rising sharply yet. > > Dana > > On Wed, 13 Feb 2013 08:01:31 -0600, John McKown > <[email protected]> wrote: > > >http://www.itworld.com/career/341879/cobol-will-outlive-us-all > ><quote> > >... > > > >The reason that I�m telling you about COBOL is that I predict that > over the > >next few years, new COBOL programmers are going to be in high demand > and > >very possibly paid a premium for their efforts. Generally speaking, > the > >COBOL programming skill set resides in baby boomers that have been > >programming in COBOL their entire career. The issue is that these baby > >boomers have begun retiring in enormous numbers. Additionally, new > college > >recruits have neither the skill set nor the interest in replacing > them. The > >problem for companies employing these COBOL programmers is that if the > >software stops, so does the company. > > > ></quote> > > > >-- > >This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an > >actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you? > > > >Maranatha! <>< > >John McKown > > > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > >send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
