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IBM scrambles to find or train more COBOL programmers to help states:
The economic stresses of the coronavirus pandemic have created a surge in demand for COBOL programmers. Last week, for example, the governor of New Jersey put out a call for COBOL programmers to help fix problems with the software that runs the state's unemployment insurance system.
A new initiative from IBM seeks to connect states with experienced COBOL programmers—and to train a new generation of them.
"In the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic, our clients are facing unprecedented circumstances," an IBM press release says. Some states "are in need of additional programming skills to make changes to COBOL—a language that has been widely reported to have an estimated 220 billion lines of code being actively used today."
A new online forum, co-sponsored by the Open Mainframe Project, aims to connect COBOL programmers to people wanting to hire them.
At least this time they're offering to pay.
Previously:
COBOL-Coding Volunteers Sought as Creaking Mainframes Slow New Jersey's Coronavirus Response
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @09:49PM
I have it on good authority that many states are in this because they are too cheap and the only reason IBM is helping is to not lose market and money. IBM is apparently extending sweetheart deals on scaling their mainframes that they could otherwise charge for and are probably worried about states starting transition plans in earnest. The states, on the other hand, are running into situations where the mainframes, even when scaled out, are maxing out. They are running COBOL batches with JCL on flat-file databases. Jobs aren't finishing before the next starts. There is heavy lock contention and races running amok. Code that isn't doing what they think it should do to all sorts of environment factors and overly-laconic code with spaghetti logic and no tests is changing all sorts of behavior unintentionally when patched. And they are unwilling to pay the money that the people who are used to wrangling with such code normally get, let alone with the time crunch. So now they are trying to reduce the cost, since free didn't work out, by pumping the field full of new, bright-eyed coders that have no idea what they are getting themselves in to and mentors with no 10,000 foot view of the system.