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0 pointsrimmjob14y ago0 comments

i always hear about how many jobs there are for cobol programmers to maintain legacy code. i've never actually met any though. maybe they all commit suicide.

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flomo14y ago

My only encounter with the mythical COBOL Legacy Architect was at one job where we indadvertedly shared a desk. Since he was only in the office about 2 hours a months, others had assumed it was an empty cube and put me there. The rest of the time, he was making consulting bank in his mountain cabin. I think other than myself and the CIO, maybe 3 people knew who the guy was.

The flipside is that probably 90% of mainframe programmers were washed out of the industry in the mid-1990s. I remember seeing tons of useless resumes full of RPG and JCL and no C++/Oracle/Java/WinNT or whatever was hot back then.

Stwerner14y ago

I've heard about a lot as well, especially in the banking industry, yet not actually met anyone. Does anyone have any data or any numbers on how much someone can get paid doing cobol legacy maintenance? Just for educational purposes of course.

rluhar14y ago

A lot of banks still have mainframes lurking somewhere on which they run (legacy?) accounting and settlement systems. Interestingly, a lot of the mainframe / COBOL programming jobs are outsourced, mainly to Indian companies. Infosys and TCS (the two huge outsourcing shops) actually train some graduates in Cobol / Mainframe programming. When I worked at ${Wall Street Bank}, we had an outsourced team in Chennai looking after a mainframe system. I had a quite a shock when I visited the Chennai office and discovered that most of the guys were straight out of college!

Stwerner14y ago

Ah so it isn't like theres all these American companies that are going to be paying top dollar to maintain their legacy, mission critical COBOL systems. They're outsourcing it for minimum wage.

calebmpeterson14y ago

An article [1] showed up on HN a while ago. In it the author gave a list of business which run their entire business on the mainframe. I work as a Java dev in rail transportation. The author is dead-on right - COBOL runs the world.

1. http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2011/06/hate-java-fight-wrong-b...

Stwerner14y ago

Yeah I remember that article, just don't see many jobs available, or any kinds of approximate numbers on what you could make for doing full time COBOL

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flomo14y ago

Stwerner14y ago

rluhar14y ago

Stwerner14y ago

Ah so it isn't like theres all these American companies that are going to be paying top dollar to maintain their legacy, mission critical COBOL systems. They're outsourcing it for minimum wage.

calebmpeterson14y ago

1. http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2011/06/hate-java-fight-wrong-b...

Stwerner14y ago

Yeah I remember that article, just don't see many jobs available, or any kinds of approximate numbers on what you could make for doing full time COBOL

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse