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Do You Know Cobol? If So, There Might Be a Job for You

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Re: Do You Know Cobol? If So, There Might Be a Job for You

#31

Post by kamaal »

raincom wrote: post #3

Well, Indian offshore companies have been training many COBOL guys since Y2K. These days, most of the SAP related jobs are outsourced to India. How can one expect that the same fate won't befall those who want to master COBOL now? How about salaries?

>>Well, Indian offshore companies have been training many COBOL guys since Y2K.

COBOL in Indian offshore companies is often a shorthand for Mainframe experience. And many people do Java on Mainframes along with COBOL.

>>These days, most of the SAP related jobs are outsourced to India.

Been happening since more than a decade. You could point to any random tech, and some one in an big IT offshore firm will be working on it.

>>How can one expect that the same fate won't befall those who want to master COBOL now?

What fate? Until a while ago, mainframe skills were one of the most important ones in the industry.

>>How about salaries?

If you work for somebody through a third party contracting firm, your salary is going to be low. Not just if you do COBOL, but any tech.

Re: Do You Know Cobol? If So, There Might Be a Job for You

#32

Post by hugg »

Replying to the title here, but from my experience knowing how to program COBOL was only one small part of the problem at my previous employer. Knowing what the programs where doing and what other programs the output affected mattered much more. Such knowledge was not set in documentation but rather in people's heads, more often than not that knowledge disappeared as soon as the person that had been working in that part of the system retired.

Re: Do You Know Cobol? If So, There Might Be a Job for You

#34

Post by emodendroket »

tumetab1 wrote: post #9
guitarbill wrote: post #5

> The problem is that Cobol isn’t popular with new programmers. Enough with the COBOL shortage myth. Don't be fooled, not being popular is not the problem. The problem is COBOL jobs aren't competitive, they often even pay worse than other tech jobs. That's why they are either being outsourced or offered to 60 year olds in their spare time. (So arguably they're not that mission-critical, either.) But then who is writi…

The answer to why would news paper would run a bad story usually is just selling ADs. Usually you see more of this on non-mainstream topics or stories that don't get much traction because there will be no backlash.

That's a little too simple. The basic fact is they have consistent and helpful sources who put a nice little bow on an easy-to-write story that nobody will really object to.

Re: Do You Know Cobol? If So, There Might Be a Job for You

#35

Post by emodendroket »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #24
barry-cotter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£400 a week, in York? Hell yes. £800 once you’re done training for someone who couldn’t program before they started is not just good, it’s fantastic for anywhere in the U.K. outside London for a junior.

Thanks! I don't know anything about York, and am honestly not even sure what the £:$ conversion is at the moment. (Being paid to learn a skill from scratch does sound pretty objectively good, though.)

It's about two pounds to the dollar last I checked, but PPP is probably of more interest if you're considering working there.

Re: Do You Know Cobol? If So, There Might Be a Job for You

#36

Post by PNT510 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #24
barry-cotter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£400 a week, in York? Hell yes. £800 once you’re done training for someone who couldn’t program before they started is not just good, it’s fantastic for anywhere in the U.K. outside London for a junior.

Thanks! I don't know anything about York, and am honestly not even sure what the £:$ conversion is at the moment. (Being paid to learn a skill from scratch does sound pretty objectively good, though.)

I think the conversion is somewhere around 1 pound to 1.30 in dollars. So 26k for training and 52k afterwards.

Re: Do You Know Cobol? If So, There Might Be a Job for You

#37

Post by motogpjimbo »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #16
MatthewWilkes wrote: post #10

I can't tell if this is in the article as it's paywalled, but a company in York recently put up an advert for £20k/year for Cobol programmers with no programming experience required, doubling at the end of the training period.

Is that a livable wage there?

I'm not sure from grandfather's post whether the candidates would be expected to be computing graduates or not.

In the UK, £20k is below average for a junior programmer straight out of university. For example, we've just employed such a person for £25k, in a PHP role.

However, the jump to £40k, provided that the qualifying period wasn't too long, would shortcut several years of career development for a recent graduate. I'd say that's a good deal, except that I'd be concerned about the long term prospects for a COBOL programmer in the UK.

Re: Do You Know Cobol? If So, There Might Be a Job for You

#38

Post by exabrial »

I could learn COBOL; I've had to take classes in my undergrad and one of my careers involved it. There's a couple of reasons why I dont:

* Putting my career on a trajectory where I am using a dying technology. Unless it paid 3x-5x what I could make using a JVM language (my current career path), the risk/reward isn't there. So market forces will need to drive the cost of salaries up even farther before I consider a jump.

* Outdated development methodologies. My experience with COBOL so far is a lot of entrenched practices that we later learned are inefficient. Both tools and management have been extraordinarily reluctant to improvement and change. I'm not willing to undertake the additional stress to deal with PITA, so until the management over these ares is forced into retirement, companies will endure a shortage of fresh talent.

Re: Do You Know Cobol? If So, There Might Be a Job for You

#39

Post by waynecochran »

crdoconnor wrote: post #11
tumetab1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to why would news paper would run a bad story usually is just selling ADs. Usually you see more of this on non-mainstream topics or stories that don't get much traction because there will be no backlash.

Uh, usually it's hastily reprinted press releases and journalists with a tight deadline. In this case it's almost too obvious whom the press release was sent out on behalf of ("Cobol Cowboys").

I looked it up. "Cobol Cowboys" is a thing. http://cobolcowboys.com "Not their first rodeo" -- hilarious.
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