How does anyone apply for this job if they know all these skills ? Covid19.nj.gov does not seem to post the Job at its site.
Can someone help with where did you apply or saw the JD?
New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
301–309 of 309 posts
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#302I was sort of tempted to pursue this. I did a few years in the salty COBOL mines back when I was a PFY about 20...plus years ago. This niche probably hasn't moved very much since then and I could probably recall most of it after a few hours. I'm freelancing right now anyway and some other projects just vaporized. But. A quick skim of the postings is finding that what they're really screaming for is somebody who's bee…
Or they, like many non-technical organizations, have no idea how to hire programmers. Could be worth a shot; even at regular companies they often over-state resume requirements.
Yes, they hired a 24 year old college grad into personnel and she/he copied some old specs used by companies that wanted to bring in H1b programmers from off-shore.
The job specs were 40 lines long and pay was $60,000 a year for 10 years experience.
Then there were the places that brought in consultants that were doing a big rewrite, ignored the local staff and impressed management with their dark blue suits and white shirts, and left 6 years later without the project done. During that time the best of their own programmers left and they were left with the dregs and those a few years from retirement. Thought about doing this but I remember how we were treated. I left a job like that in Texas, worked in a shop in Connecticut with a room full of empty cubicles, and one very old guy and one new hire who knew Access.
Even the Director of MIS was being cut there but allowed to stay a few more months to apply for other jobs without saying he was unemployed.
I left.
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is honestly a terrible take. NJ did try to modernize the benefits system in 2007, awarding the contract to a company that is now owned by HP. News article: https://www.nj.com/politics/2014/11/nj_ends_118_million_cont... EDIT: surprised at the downvotes. Parent asserted: > we didn't listen to all those competent people that told us we should have cleaned this system a long time ago because one day it will bite us…
Surely outsourced and offshored isn't something to praise them for
Like off-shored protective medical gear, off-shored pharmaceuticals manufacturing, and now a country full of unskilled 20 somethings that can only do phone apps and coffee baristas.
Companies will not like it, consumers will not like it, State budgets will not like it,
But like cobol programmers, we need to learn how to make things and build our own supply chain.
My old employer did not listen last year when I retired. Nobody was assigned to make an annual change to a REXX program. I learned it on my own because it predated me. But the process was so rigorous because we had to be our own RACF Admin to make our own RACF I’d to get to the datasets to change, then run the programs, but they got rid of printers connected to the mainframe and tighter up FTP so much that if took days to refresh passwords and ftp print files to your pc hard drive. Then run programs in C# that scalped off the first column and read the mainframe page skips....
Am I was suppose to teach this to a C# programmer who would not need to run this for 6 more months. I blame management. They loved outside consultants and treated our own programmers like loading dock employees, write ups when 5 minutes late for work.
They wanted me to take a brand new high end pc with me when I retired. I left it on my desk when I left. They had 6 months to learn it.
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is honestly a terrible take. NJ did try to modernize the benefits system in 2007, awarding the contract to a company that is now owned by HP. News article: https://www.nj.com/politics/2014/11/nj_ends_118_million_cont... EDIT: surprised at the downvotes. Parent asserted: > we didn't listen to all those competent people that told us we should have cleaned this system a long time ago because one day it will bite us…
No, it's not. These state IT systems and this habit that leads to their inevitable downfall needs to die. They respect nothing. Scope? No, we need to fulfill every need and some. Budget? No, of course we don't have cash, and we have to be very careful, it's the taxpayers' money! Time? It's already late! (Yet they weren't able to get it done in 10+ years.) They have no real competency, they don't even have competency…
Yup. Exactly right. And they think the 26 year old outside consultant knows how to fix the problem better than the 50 year old government programmer, who management has spent 17 years beating down their self respect.
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
Problem is, that's how they get away with everything. They fix nothing, then wait for somebody to need them enough, or have compassion enough to handle their mess. Basically here, they are saying: we didn't listen to all those competent people that told us we should have cleaned this system a long time ago because one day it will bite us back. We didn't think technical debt was a thing. It has always worked. And it's…
> So you have the choice between saving the money of poor people now and reinforcing the suck of the whole system, of letting people suffer for a chance of a redo and purging the ones that lead to this. What a terribly wrong take. If you really believe the system is that corrupted, and that horrible then you know darn well that the count of people who suffered during this emergency won't make a difference. There will…
The big corporations, will get $18,000 from every taxpayer from their future tax dollar.
But they struggle just to give each worker in this country $1200.
It is hush money. Then next year they will tell us it is taxable income. Watch.
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Fixing this system will make the difference between real people getting unemployment checks or nothing. That's worth enduring a bad boss for. In absolute terms, perhaps. But if you are moving away from taking jobs out of self interest, and into doing something for the public good; you might as well check out https://80000hours.org/ and pick the job that has the most positive impact. My guess is that working any kin…
10% of my salary wouldn’t be nearly as impactful as helping millions of people get unemployment checks quickly.
Would do it myself. For free because of the unemployed.
But I see no link to who is hiring, not going thru a head hunter who takes a rake, and states cannot send you a firewall link and password without a month or more of red tape. And rightly so if it is a payroll system, the opening it would make for abuse.
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not an issue with "style of programming", it's just complete disregard of software engineering basics.
Did software engineering exist back then.
No. Nothing existed before you started using Javascript in your moms basement a couple of years ago. Wirth, Booch, Brooks, Neumann, Bachman, Dijkstra, Belady, Parnas and the rest never did anything worth much.
Why do some people take joy in wallowing in ignorance. Sad.
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most government hiring does not work like that. "HR Specialists" decide if incoming applicants are qualified, and the hiring manager has little or nothing to do with it.
Lots of people are giving up before even trying.
States have done this to themselves. They can't expect people not to treat them warily just because they've suddenly discovered that their inattention to their own problems has consequences.
Re: New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
#309Interesting. My family is pressuring me I should help out. I’m a retired expert with Cobol68, Cobol74 and Cobol85 (w/embedded SQL). Entire 42+ years career was on Burroughs/Unisys (early years) and Tandem Nonstop. I was on a Y2K project for a very large telecommunications company and had to change A LOT of COBOL code. In later years I managed software development teams. But at 64 years old, I ask myself do I want to work in any Covid-19 epicenters.