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Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

I worked with COBOL during the Y2K thing. Forget for a minute about the (very valid) downsides of startups: COBOL development in institutions such as banks is utterly boring. If, like me, you got into computers because you were fascinated by programming, run like hell from COBOL and forget the money argument. Run like hell whenever someone tells you "it's not that bad", like in the article. Nothing good can come from something introduced as not being "that bad".

If you're in this mostly for the money, then sure, learn COBOL.

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Or, use COBOL to pay the bills while you work on your hobby or startup on the side. Having a steady job that doesn't require overtime is sadly often underrated by our industry, but it provides quite a bit of flexibility of its own.

Then again, being stuck in crappy, uninspiring code all day and then getting to use something interesting and exciting in your off time can sometimes make the day job all that much harder to handle...

Yes to your second part. Working with COBOL at a bank was soul-crushing to me. I think the combination of COBOL+bank is deadly: obsolete, boring technology combined with an utterly conservative environment, unwilling to take risks.

I fully agree that no overtime is great -- that's why I'm not arguing anything about startups! -- but when you realize how many hours a day you spend in your day job, working with something that sucks cannot be compensated by a hobby. For me, at least. I fully understand someone could find the trade-off acceptable.

Maybe all banks aren't the same. I choose the one that seemed to be the one that would be more fun to work at. Also probably depends on what country you are living in.

That's a great recipe for burnout. Coding 12+ hours a day isn't healthy.

I think it depends entirely on how you view your off-time work. I used to be fairly active in developing for the Roku with a friend, and 2-3 times a week he would come over and we would work on our Roku app(s) for 3-5 hours. It felt very much like hanging out with a friend screwing around in the garage to build something, and usually left me feeling more energized than tired.

I've also done (and am doing) the solo hacking on startup stuff. Getting motivated for that can be really hard.

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