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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the portents-of-future-ecma-script dept.

The Enterprises Project writes about how the demand for several very specific, established skills, including COBOL, is increasing as boomers retire, taking their knowledge with them. Part of the skill gap between the old and the new is familiarity with the work flow and business processes.

Baby Boomers are retiring and taking with them the skills to run legacy technologies upon which organizations still (amazingly) rely – from AS/400 wrangling to COBOL development. That leaves many CIOs in a tight spot, trying to fill roles that not only require specialized knowledge no longer being taught but that most IT professionals agree also have limited long-term prospects. "Specific skill sets associated with mainframes, DB2 and Oracle, for example, are complex and require years of training, and can be challenging to find in young talent," says Graig Paglieri, president of Randstad Technologies.

Apparently, COBOL is still in use in 9 percent of businesses, mainly in finance and government. And so the demand for COBOL is gradually growing. If one has interest to pick up that plus one or more of the other legacy technologies, on top of something newer and trendier, there should be a possibility to clean up before the last of these jobs moves to India.

Earlier on SN:
Jean Sammet, Co-Designer of a Pioneering Computer Language, Dies at 89 (2017)
Banks Should Let Ancient Programming Language COBOL Die (2017)
Honesty in Employment Ads (2016)
3 Open Source Projects for Modern COBOL Development (2015)


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Unixnut on Tuesday December 04 2018, @04:42PM (5 children)

    by Unixnut (5779) on Tuesday December 04 2018, @04:42PM (#769641)

    > As the roles got more sparse he was in high demand and got paid more and more until ... POP! No more jobs!

    And if your colleague had any sense, he would have kept his costs as stable as possible, taken the larger and larger income, then invested it, paid off debt, or put it to one side. Then when the jobs died out, either retired early, or could take a long sabbatical, retrain on some new skills/tech, enjoy life a bit, and then find something new and interesting to do.

    I don't see the problem with that. The days of "a job for life" have died out long before I joined the workforce (quite frankly, a job that isn't a few months long "gig" is rare as hens teeth in my experience), so if you are not going to have any work for you down the line at some point anyway, why not milk your skill set for as much money as you can till the very end, and then deal with what to do after?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @05:03PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @05:03PM (#769652)

    I hear this advice trotted out, but it's not realistic.
    You need to train yourself (minimally) on new tech on your own time: say 90 min each week (or whatever you can manage) to get comfortable with it (not necessarily MASTERING it).
    Almost everyone needs a steady job with no gaps. That's reality. You need to "cash out" while you are on top, not when someone else decides for you. Milk the old tech if you wish, but not forever before jumping to current tech.

    • (Score: 2) by Unixnut on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:52PM (3 children)

      by Unixnut (5779) on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:52PM (#769722)

      > Almost everyone needs a steady job with no gaps. That's reality. You need to "cash out" while you are on top, not when someone else decides for you. Milk the old tech if you wish, but not forever before jumping to current tech.

      I would absolutely love a steady job with no gaps. I've heard stories of people starting jobs at 16 years old at a company and then coming out the other end at 55/60 with a full salary pension and benefits. With no gaps, a stable income, a company that cares about you and invests in your abilities and skills, and all kinds of opportunities for progression, bonuses, expense accounts, the whole hog.

      However, all these stores are from older generations, who have since retired. I have never, in my life, come across an opportunity like that. The (western) world has changed, and such a job is more like some fantasy world to me than some real life, and I will only get my pension at 70 years old (if I live that long), and a "final salary" type deal I can only dream of.

      My experience is jobs are irregular in hours and in length. most of my work has been between 3-9 months, the longest I have had is a 5 year stint in a for corporate firm, until they had to make redundancies. It isn't by my choice, just how things are in my world.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:20AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:20AM (#769869)

        However, all these stores are from older generations, who have since retired./quote

        One part of that is simple, you won't here about people who worked there whole lives in one company until the end of their life. Particularly in today's culture it sounds ludicrous to say "I got this job straight out of school and intend to stay here another few decades." So you can't look for retires from your generation, you might now a few people who've worked at the same place for a long time, but how many of them do you think are doing the right thing? How many of them are confident they're not leaving a lot of future money on the line for comfort now?

        The thing is, a job that you can do for an entire career is probably not the highest paying flashiest job, those tend to burn you out or just be less stable.

        I wonder how those old timers felt during the first few years of those careers, did they know then that they would stay there until they retired?

      • (Score: 2) by Webweasel on Wednesday December 05 2018, @01:53PM

        by Webweasel (567) on Wednesday December 05 2018, @01:53PM (#770064) Homepage Journal

        I have worked for the same firm for 17 years now.

        --
        Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
      • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday December 05 2018, @04:58PM

        by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Wednesday December 05 2018, @04:58PM (#770147) Journal

        In "the same job"? No. No single job tends to last that long anymore that isn't a CxO position and even they shift around.
        At "the same firm"? Define your time range. I've seen a couple of places so far that had one or two people that have stayed in the firm and retired after 20-30 years because they are flexible, well known, and work well. They are valued as assets to the company because of their attitude as much as their abilities to master a skill set, and their ambitions match what the company has been looking for consistently. All three of those requirements need to be high, though, for that to work. And it's still not impossible for someone to get bumped off by a RIF or similar.
        Perhaps it is more frequent than being a rock star or a star athelete. But you're also right that this is not something to be counted on - even for those who do it this has to be an objective that is worked for.

        --
        This sig for rent.