Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap
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Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap
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Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap
#2My recommendations:
- Give lots of young people the opportunity to learn the necessary mainframe skills (ideally by themselves). Lots of today's great programmers learned their programming skills on their own. This is very hard to do for mainframes because of access to them.
- Pay really good salaries and advertise it. Money nearly always has a huge attractive force.
Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap
#3My recommendations: - Give lots of young people the opportunity to learn the necessary mainframe skills (ideally by themselves). Lots of today's great programmers learned their programming skills on their own. This is very hard to do for mainframes because of access to them. - Pay really good salaries and advertise it. Money nearly always has a huge attractive force.
- Make sure the jobs that are available are serious roles at real companies and not contract gigs sourced via body-farming consultancies.
Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap
#4Fear of not keeping up with the Technical Joneses is a huge influence in our industry because everyone sees "old" programmers booted first when a company or the economy sours. Nobody wants to be That Guy (or Gal).
If mainframes are perceived as a shrinking or outmoded technology, obsolescence fear kicks in and people avoid it. It may need some clever marketing to trick people into giving up that fear or impression. BS works in other areas, per mind-share. Call mainframes "high-up-time cloud", Cloud++, cloud.js, Deep Cloud, or something. There's better BS'ers out there than I.
Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap
#5My recommendations: - Give lots of young people the opportunity to learn the necessary mainframe skills (ideally by themselves). Lots of today's great programmers learned their programming skills on their own. This is very hard to do for mainframes because of access to them. - Pay really good salaries and advertise it. Money nearly always has a huge attractive force.
- Make sure the jobs that are available are serious roles at real companies and not contract gigs sourced via body-farming consultancies.
This. A long-term job is indispensable for this kind of programming. Since the tooling is very stable and backwards compatible, you can get really good at it. Now if you get laid off after 5 years of doing just that, you better find another mainframe job because your resume won't look as diverse.
OTOH, body-farming consultancies are excellent for networking and finding a full time job.
Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap
#6Fear of not keeping up with the Technical Joneses is a huge influence in our industry because everyone sees "old" programmers booted first when a company or the economy sours. Nobody wants to be That Guy (or Gal). If mainframes are perceived as a shrinking or outmoded technology, obsolescence fear kicks in and people avoid it. It may need some clever marketing to trick people into giving up that fear or impression. B…
Local-cloud or onprem-cloud!
Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap
#7My recommendations: - Give lots of young people the opportunity to learn the necessary mainframe skills (ideally by themselves). Lots of today's great programmers learned their programming skills on their own. This is very hard to do for mainframes because of access to them. - Pay really good salaries and advertise it. Money nearly always has a huge attractive force.
- Make sure the jobs that are available are serious roles at real companies and not contract gigs sourced via body-farming consultancies.
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Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap
#8Fear of not keeping up with the Technical Joneses is a huge influence in our industry because everyone sees "old" programmers booted first when a company or the economy sours. Nobody wants to be That Guy (or Gal). If mainframes are perceived as a shrinking or outmoded technology, obsolescence fear kicks in and people avoid it. It may need some clever marketing to trick people into giving up that fear or impression. B…
Dunno, I'm a millennial (didn't even know I was part of that group till recently, gotta love being profiled by things I cannot control) and all it took me to like Mainframes (although I don't work with them) was hearing an older developer tell me all about them and their capabilities. I'm a total computer nerd aside from a programmer so I love learning about tech old, new and upcoming.
Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap
#9My recommendations: - Give lots of young people the opportunity to learn the necessary mainframe skills (ideally by themselves). Lots of today's great programmers learned their programming skills on their own. This is very hard to do for mainframes because of access to them. - Pay really good salaries and advertise it. Money nearly always has a huge attractive force.
IBM runs a student competition to try get people into it: https://masterthemainframe.com/
Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap
#10My recommendations: - Give lots of young people the opportunity to learn the necessary mainframe skills (ideally by themselves). Lots of today's great programmers learned their programming skills on their own. This is very hard to do for mainframes because of access to them. - Pay really good salaries and advertise it. Money nearly always has a huge attractive force.
IBM runs a student competition to try get people into it: https://masterthemainframe.com/
Is there something similar available if you are no student?