Ask HN: Is it worth to learn COBOL? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is it worth to learn COBOL?

9 pointsmarcodiego7 comments

I hear stories about COBOL programmers gaining a long, stable and well paid career being employed by banks that depend on it. Some people say it is a boring a job, other people may say it is stagnant. Also, even though there are very few COBOL programmers, it is hard to estimate how good or common are job offers.

So, the question is: Is it worth to learn COBOL?

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The problem with COBOL is you need to learn much more. Mainframe coding environments, mainframe databases, etc. COBOL is just one part of the puzzle. People who say "I we need COBOL developers!" really mean "We need programmers who know how to write ETL software for the banking industry using crufty databases and our in-house COBOL ORM". You can learn COBOL from Wikipedia, the rest, not so much.

Let's talk about the COBOL job market since I think what you're really asking is whether you can have a stable career writing COBOL. Contrary to the annual articles we see decrying the lack of COBOL programmers and suggesting that becoming a COBOL programmer is a way to get a high salary easily, the actual job market for COBOL programmers is quite different from those of the rest of the software engineering industry. In aggregate, across the United States there are a number of large companies that still use COBOL such as Eversource or Labcorp. Unfortunately, the teams using COBOL typically aren't growing. They may hire 1-2 COBOL programmers a year. This means that outside of a few banking hubs like NYC, you may need to move for your job if they require you on-site. A number of these companies have also outsourced their COBOL jobs and gotten used to paying low salaries for hires. This means that there's a large dichotomy in salary, some pay very little (I think an ex-colleague with 15+ years experience was offered 35/hr) and some are in the 100K+ range. A good example of this is searching indeed for COBOL jobs (https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=cobol&l=&from=searchOnHP&vjk=f...). There are less than 2000 jobs on indeed across the US, and while the median range looks to be around 100K, many pay very a lot less. As far as I can tell nobody is making anywhere close to FAANG money with COBOL. Take a look at the locations of these jobs as well. If you want to find a job within 50 miles of you, there may only be a few options. Anecdotally, my ex-coworker hasn't worked in COBOL in the last 8 years, maybe even longer.

Now let's talk about a few of the positives. Many of these jobs are relatively stable, especially the government ones. They may also be relatively low-stress and be close to the traditional 9-5. Being paid 100K+ in Albany, NY is good money for the area, potentially on par with being paid 200k+ in SF. Unlike javascript, you won't need to keep investing in learning new frameworks every 1-2 years.

200K in the bay area is not good money, taking into account the cost of living.

I think this question is difficult to answer. What are your goals? What are you trying to achieve? Learn a novel skill - because of curiosity or to primarily acquire a job?

I can speak to my brief, very limited experience in the space.

My first internship in college was working with COBOL programmers and migrating some legacy software to a modern, object oriented stack. I wrote COBOL, moved some things to a new stack, and write some documentation. Standard stuff.

It was a very different job (than my later roles in big tech).

The culture was old timers, very laid back, but some of the most genuinely kind and helpful people I ever worked with. My coworkers were at least a couple decades older than me, but I received some of the best feedback and mentoring on not just work but life lessons from their years of wisdom.

Attire was business formal. The environment was less, “think big innovation, reduce complexity and cost at mass scale, think about long term support and evolution”.

It was more, “Ozzythecat, you do A. Carl is going to work on B. For questions, go to Bill. Let’s check in tomorrow. Also we’re going to this diner for lunch if you want to join. The pancakes are great.” I was also just an intern, so maybe that stuff wasn’t as visible to me.

I was paid $12/hr. Not sure how the COBOL market pays these days, but that’s obviously another consideration.

I suppose it depends on your career goals.

Myself I love development. I love all SW development. I would find a career in COBOL too stagnate.

If your goal is a career of steady paycheck. If you are happy doing mostly maintenance work. Then COBOL could be a career for you.

There is always the risk of the companies redeveloping their SW, but at this point, you have to wonder, if they have not done it yet, why would they in the future.

Yes if you don't mind mainframes.

COBOL is available on pretty much all platforms; from 8-bit systems all the way through PCs and laptops to minis and mainframes.

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