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Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

reuters.com

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Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#121

Post by whatusername »

cdsx wrote: post #17
catmanjan wrote: post #6

From the article "Experienced COBOL programmers can earn more than $100 an hour" In Australia that's a lot, but my understanding is that it's common for American developers to be on way more than this...

I'm curious what your experience in Australia has been for you to think that. In my experience that's not what I'd call a lot in Australia, most commonly your average basic IT contactor will charge $80-120/hr, let alone any sort of speciality.

Is that a contractor doing 40+ hours a week, 45+ weeks a year for the same company? Or are you talking people doing shorter more targeted projects?

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#123

Post by acchow »

djaychela wrote: post #117
acchow wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can "high 6 figures" mean high 100-200k? Ugh, I hate english.

While I agree, I heard a similar thing on the weather (here in the UK, in degrees Celcius), when the weather woman said we would be in "mid double figures" tomorrow, clearly meaning around 15 degrees, not 50!

They don't use "mid-teens" in the UK?

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#124

Post by mseebach »

stickfigure wrote: post #114
acchow wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can "high 6 figures" mean high 100-200k? Ugh, I hate english.

It can't. This is not reasonable English, it's (presumably) a misspeak by the OP. People make these kinds of mistakes in every language. It is highly unlikely that that the OP is making $800k/yr consulting as a programmer. That's $400/hr sustained for more than a year of fulltime work.

$800k/year is possibly unusual, but these are unusual people. I see nothing unlikely about a highly skilled contractor with 30 years of experience, a good network and in the right location to be pulling down $800k/year.

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#125

Post by jmknoll »

sanguy wrote: post #52

Been working on accounting systems in RPG and COBOL since ~1992. I also know C/X86ASM/Pascal/Delphi/VB/Fortran. Never bothered with C++ that much; played with Java a bit but Oracle irritates my bowels so moved away from that. As mentioned in the article it's good work; but it is also not easy work. You tend to go through cycles of being pushed out to brought back under extreme emergency at any costs to get stuff work…

As a developer who recently turned thirty, I think about this a lot. I like working in startups, but its not going to fly forever. I'm already the old guy in the room.

Would learning 'ancient' technology be a good career move? These systems aren't going anywhere, right? But the people who know how to maintain them are. Which means that maintaining these system, which already pays well, will pay even better in the future? Or is there something I'm missing here.

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#126

Post by nraynaud »

nsxwolf wrote: post #31
clumsysmurf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my last employer, there were a few "mainframers" (we called them). I was curious so I would ask my mainframer coworker how things worked on his end. I always struggled to understand, because it seemed everything was different ... the terminology, the culture, the ideas. I couldn't use analogy to tie what he was describing back to what I knew.

You got that right. I had to deal with an interesting banking file format and I asked a question on Stack Overflow and got this gem of an answer. I politely accepted it as the right answer but boy oh boy does it feel like it's from an alien civilization. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28640159/what-is-the-diff...

maybe re-describing that stuff with the ASN.1 terminology would help make it more googlable ?

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#127

Post by osullivj »

defined wrote: post #81
jfoutz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unix has a few tricks up its sleeve from when it wasn't the top dog. I hesitate to ever recommend perl, but pack [1] and unpack are pretty sweet for this kind of stuff. I only learned about them when a state sent me files in EBCDIC [2]. As with all things perl, you can convert from that to ASCII as a one liner. Or, rather, i helped someone much smarter than me do that, 20 years ago. [1] http://perldoc.perl.org/functi…

Please don't remind me. I had to convert the expat XML parser to compile on z/OS and work in EBCDIC, and found that round tripping between ASCII and EBCDIC was sometimes impossible because of the existence of not two, but THREE line terminator characters: CR, LF, and NL (0x85). Not to mention that you cannot test for uppercase or lowercase like the ASCII `ch >= 'A' && ch <= 'Z'` because they are not contiguous in EBC…

I did the same to enable XML messages to flow over MQ between an RS/6000 based front office FX options system, and a back office S/390 system. IIRC there were six (!!) different EBCDIC codepages that could be in play. I had a code generator that would crank out C or Java bindings that could martial between the expat results and the COBOL data structure. 20 years ago now!

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#128

Post by z3t4 »

Joeri wrote: post #86
sanguy wrote: post #52

Been working on accounting systems in RPG and COBOL since ~1992. I also know C/X86ASM/Pascal/Delphi/VB/Fortran. Never bothered with C++ that much; played with Java a bit but Oracle irritates my bowels so moved away from that. As mentioned in the article it's good work; but it is also not easy work. You tend to go through cycles of being pushed out to brought back under extreme emergency at any costs to get stuff work…

> Companies never think of the old guys as the ones to implement the new system - that's a job for the "enterprise experts" Exactly this is why rewrites fail. The challenge of a rewrite is not in mapping the core architecture and core use case, it's mapping all the edge cases and covering all the end user needs. You need people intimately familiar with the old system to make sure the new system does all the weird stu…

all features and edge cases should have a test. if possible also have tests for all the bugs ever found in the old system. it helps if the tests are not too coupled with the code and are well documented. a test could be making an entry where deb and cred dont match. or trying to enter an extra decimal. and if the system adds two decimals corectly.

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#129

Post by osullivj »

gaius wrote: post #79
contingencies wrote: post #32

First employee/architect of Kraken here. (Now does >USD$10M+/day of volume by my estimate) Accounting systems of all kinds should be generic and open source. Why do we need banks at all? It's not like this infrastructure really has any special characteristics. Most of it even has downtime and batch jobs. Fact: The bulk of banking is just recording some numbers at a stupendously simplistic resolution, with maybe 64 ch…

A few weeks ago I spent a day interviewing 20 different Hong Kong banks about API availability for cross-border RMB transactions. None at all offered it. They don't do it because doing it while complying with all relevant regulations is more complicated than you realise. That's what banks are ultimately in the business of, finding ways to do business across jurisdictions. And it's why most fintech companies fail: the…

Strongly agree based on my work in the financial sector since 2009. Everything's driven by regulatory compliance now. To the point where RegTech is a thing.

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#130

Post by z3t4 »

jmknoll wrote: post #125
sanguy wrote: post #52

Been working on accounting systems in RPG and COBOL since ~1992. I also know C/X86ASM/Pascal/Delphi/VB/Fortran. Never bothered with C++ that much; played with Java a bit but Oracle irritates my bowels so moved away from that. As mentioned in the article it's good work; but it is also not easy work. You tend to go through cycles of being pushed out to brought back under extreme emergency at any costs to get stuff work…

As a developer who recently turned thirty, I think about this a lot. I like working in startups, but its not going to fly forever. I'm already the old guy in the room. Would learning 'ancient' technology be a good career move? These systems aren't going anywhere, right? But the people who know how to maintain them are. Which means that maintaining these system, which already pays well, will pay even better in the fut…

it the cost becomes too high or rather if there are uncertainties they will just replace them.
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