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Comment by axiolite | Hacker News Reader

> I will not take a pay cut to work on COBOL for a bank.

You're probably just not the right type of personality. It seems that COBOL programmers have nice, slow paced, easy and safe jobs. That could be why there's so little hiring for COBOL programmers. Once you get someone, they stay put for decades until they retire. I'm sure there are plenty of programmers out there ready to drop the stressful sleepless start-up jobs and settle into something easy and 9-5, but perhaps don't know how to get from A to B.

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I have a brother-in-law who is a COBOL programmer. Very much as you describe. I'd like to know more about it, honestly, but he's very much the kind of guy for whom work is just work and not interesting to talk about after hours. In his early fifties he is one of the youngest at his job - and despite having been at one company his whole career, he's one of the least longest-serving. We don't talk money, his lifestyle doesn't seem lavish but maintaining a single-income family in a high cost of living area is a lifestyle not to be sniffed at.

I'd say this totally depends on your area.

When I graduated most of my classmates were hired by the local branch of an international consultancy firm (hint: it's currently involved in a legal feud with the GOP in the US). Pay is below market average, and their job involves dealing with legacy Java and COBOL codebases. The Java part is OK, but they find COBOL very painful to work with. They are also required to do unpaid overtime due to hard deadlines.

On the other hand, a few of us went on to work for startups all over the country, and if you compare our careers ever since, they are like night and day. We can switch jobs easily due to having marketable skills (COBOL is a dead end outside a few companies) and we are making twice as much without working overtime.

I do not get why you say that COBOL programmers get paid less. Once you know everything about the systems and the language you should be able to get above market pay because you are really hard to replace. Pay me more or I leave would be a pretty easy management decision.

You would think, but no: programmers can never make more than managers. Management makes sure of it.

Poignant but ultimately true.

“Should” is the key word. I’ve looked at COBOL job listings every few years and I’ve never seen one for more than $90k US. So maybe once people are on the job maybe they have more leverage but those job listings don’t indicate any desperation for talent.

Look at daily rates, not permanent positions.

What daily rates do you see?

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