[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/06/new-jersey-seeks-cobol-progr...
That’s when I got out. When it came to switching jobs I had zero experience in current tech and had to take an entry level position and a pay cut. A few years later that same company had massive layoffs and all development outsourced by 2008 or so.
So yeah whenever you hear about opportunities in mainframe cobol don’t believe it. I’ve got 2,000 former cobol developers from that company alone who will attest that its farce. What puzzles me is who’s behind this idea and what’s their goal in promoting it?
I'm surprised to read these recent anecdotes (going back to that New Jersey unemployment COVID programmer shortage) from various people that COBOL jobs are in high demand yet shockingly underpaid. That would seem to imply markets don't actually work the way we've been told.
The difference in this case is that the press is showing sympathy to those who won't pay the price and then complain about the missing supply. That doesn't happen in most markets.
Why is the press listening? Because the people complaining are people that the press normally listens to - banks and big, big businesses. It seems that many such businesses would rather complain, publicly, than pay a market-clearing rate. Well, I don't have a lot of sympathy, to be honest...
The other way of reading the situation is: There's nobody interested in working in COBOL at the suggested rates.
a bit off topic, but this is a huge thing that I at least didn't pick up on across jobs for many years - for accounting reasons, many firms will always see what your team is doing as an 'expense' to be 'minimized', no matter what you do, and in many cases, there is nothing you, or your manager, or even your managers manager can do to change this, since it is often decided at the highest levels of the firm based on broad-stroke accounting policies that have a direct impact to how the firms entire books (and therefore revenue/profit/etc) are calculated.
IT/tech related? goes in a cost center.
What's a cost center? an optional expense which can and should be minimized, with manager compensation often tied to how effectively costs are controlled.
If anyone working in tech is not aware of the various accounting models used in business, it is well worth your time to get familiar with the basics - assignment of 'cost center' to technology groups in firms that use cost/revenue center models has a huge impact on how teams are likely run, decisions are made, and potential for career advancement for employees in those groups.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_centre_(business)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_center
this is not the only costing model (job costing, activity based costing, etc) , but one in my view that is often hugely detrimental to technology teams in non-tech companies unfortunate enough to find themselves pre-categorised as a 'cost center'.
Think this is highly dependent on the school/student; In my experience (data point size=1), MBA teaching hasn't really caught up to the fact that basically everything is technology these days, so it shouldn't be treated as something 'separate' to the 'real' business, which it often still is - i'd wager that the resulting compartmentalization in thinking around how to manage tech is the main driver behind allowing poor systems to capture IT value from the financial perspective...