SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The governor of New Jersey has asked COBOL-capable coders to volunteer their skills as the State’s mainframe computers have struggled to cope with a surge of requests for benefits to help citizens through the coronavirus crisis.
COBOL - common business-oriented language - was first introduced in the early 1960s and achieved the then-important trick of offering programmers a language that could work across multiple manufacturers' proprietary computers.
[...] In his daily press briefing on April 4th, governor Phil Murphy said: “In our list of volunteers not only do we need health care workers but given the legacy systems we should add a page for cobalt [sic] computer skills, because that's what we're dealing with in these legacies.”
[...] It appears that New Jersey needs COBOL coders because its benefits system has choked on a surge of requests for unemployment payments.
[...] [C]ommissioner of the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Robert Asaro-Angelo explained that his agency has experienced a 1600 percent increase in its usual volume of requests for assistance.
[...] At Governor Murphy’s April 2nd briefing he said: “This morning the Department of Labor reported that over the past week more than 206,000 new claims for unemployment were filed, meaning that in just the past two weeks alone more than 362,000 residents have filed for unemployment. “
Does anybody know where he could find someone looking for work?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2020, @12:38AM (3 children)
As others have suggested, this is probably not a COBOL problem.
This is a MANAGEMENT problem.
Someone decided to terminate everyone responsible for the system, and save money. Find that person and terminate them. We would all appreciate it - particularly if they were promoted as a result.
So, that's just great! Now I'm going to be besieged by incoherent Indian recruiters who will spam the entire North American continent trying to persuade me and people like me to relocate, temporarily, for a few weeks or months, to New Jersey. When I ask them about per diem, and a car rental, they will quit talking to me and look for someone dumber.
Anyone recruited by such people will probably quit a few weeks into the project, after their motel room gets burgled while they are at work - again - leaving New Jersey's unemployment infrastructure, tits up[1]. Again. Six months from now we'll be reading about how New Jersey's unemployment infrastructure is STILL tits up[1]; and how, now, they are looking for Linux professionals to port the legacy system that they should have ported in 1990. Date of completion: Spring 2021.
Why not just hire someone and give them job security? Or is that too 20th Century?
When *I* manage infrastructures, I know everything there is to know about my machines, and it's documented where others can see it, too. When I manage people, every single element of our infrastructure has AT LEAST two people listed as contacts and I expect them to know everything there is to know about their machines.
~childo
[1] Tip o' the hat to my old boss, Bill Putney, for a colorful phrase that, he said, he learned, growing up on a pig farm.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2020, @12:45AM
> This is a MANAGEMENT problem.
And the solution is.... more management! Layers of it to ensure compliance and give the sucker(s) at the bottom more motivation.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday April 07 2020, @12:52AM
Would you believe them if they offer a "job security"? It's a seniority at government jobs.
So, I can do it, but I want $500K sign up tax free bonus.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 4, Informative) by fadrian on Tuesday April 07 2020, @02:39AM
Someone decided to terminate everyone responsible for the system, and save money. Find that person and terminate them. We would all appreciate it...
You're being too optimistic, if you want a head. No one got terminated, just shuffled - it's government, after all. Every manager knows how to get rid of staff via attrition and unpleasantness so that THERE ARE NO FINGERPRINTS! Start with a strategic plan to minimize the number of headcount on the obsolete system - it will be signed off on all the way up. Make sure that everyone knows that working on the obsolete system is career death for anyone who might be there and somehow might find a job outside government later. Move them to the shitty offices. Make sure they get no training. Let normal attrition take care of the rest. Of course make sure to budget for a replacement system (the funding for which will be cut year after year). AGAIN, AVOID THE FINGERPRINTS! Most of the time, it will be seen as a positive and you'll be moved up before anyone figures out what's happening with the old, but essential system. It's really pretty simple, if you think about it a bit.
That is all.