cobol? 5

[jwa6]

Hi everyone.

Im 51 and doing nothing in this job to further my career.

I have 10 years experience in oracle and crystal reports.
Due to the diverse nature of what I do I am now ( the master of none). Im at a dead end here.

I have taken a java class to see whats up w/ that technonlgy. Frankly Im thinking that at my age and w/ family I dont want to spend the next 3 years taking night classes again.

I have seen an artical recently about cobol people being in demand due to the retirement of many who grew up w/ cobol so to speak. It seems many up and coming have no interest in the older technologies.

I have a few years of rpg . I have also taken 2 cobol classes a few years back for a degree in IT.

I dont feel the urge to compete w/ the up and coming who have a few years headstart. Ill be 55 and looking for a java
job?
right.

I was thinking about looking for cobol work. Its all the same to me ( technology)
Im looking for stablilty these days as kids college is getting to be an issue.


just some reamblings here.

Is the artical correct? Is there and will there be a demand for cobol people.

 

[BNPMike]

Just checked on Jobserve (a UK site). There are 240 USA and Canada Cobol jobs being advertised.

 

[harebrain]

Oh, yeah, just what we need: more immigrant programmers who can't even speak English!

 

[flapeyre]

Oh, yeah, just what we need: more immigrant programmers who can't even speak English!

The last time I checked, they do speak English quite well in the UK.

Tibi gratias agimus quod nihil fumas.

 

[harebrain]

Oops, got my threads crossed and posted a response to the "Speak English, dammit!" thread. Now, where's that smiley key?

 

[strongm]

>The bank I consult for pays me well

Bank I used to work for indeed paid their consultants well. Very well. And used to give good increments to the consultants at any pay review.

They did not do the same for their internal IT staff.

(I ended up working for the consultancy)

 

[johnherman]

COBOL is a niche but necessary skill. There's alot of code out there written in Cobol. However, most of it is bug-free or relatively so after many years of being in production. So, although there's lots of code, there's no new development and a small need for maintenance. And the code is SLOWLY being replaced. However, I'm betting there will still be COBOL around in older businesses (banks, insurance, etc) for 20 years. I think the trick is to get your foot in the door at one of these older businesses and become more valuable as the older COBOLers retire.

Being on paid retainer from some large corporation is a gig I'd love to have after I retire F/T. Good Luck.

-------------------------
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright

 

[jwa6]

thanks john herman

Ill be looking into cobol( 2 3 credit courses)
and a cics class...in a few years itll be am marketing tool
as I think your may be right

( I think the trick is to get your foot in the door at one of these older businesses and become more valuable as the older COBOLers retire.
)

 

[timw]

there's no new development

... tell that to my colleagues New COBOL development forms the bulk of what they do. Development tool companies like MicroFocus and AcuCorp are still agressively promoting COBOL as a development platform.

Tim

 

[johnherman]

In whose best interest would it be for you to continue to develop in COBOL? It wouldn't be MicroFocus and AcuCorp, would it?

They were saying the same thing in the early 90's when we ported our Data General COBOL to Unix/Microfocus with Oracle Pro*Cobol (embedded SQL).

-------------------------
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright

 

[timw]

We have a large MRP / Accounting / Payroll application that we've developed over the last 20 years or so and our company has too little resource to make any major changes such as rewriting it in something else. As new customer requirements come in, they are mostly met with new COBOL code. We used AcuCOBOL to produce a 'true' Windows-style GUI instead of a character-based terminal / screen-scraped UI, but that itself was a huge job for us.

Tim

 

[dandan123]

One way to get new skills, if that's what you are looking at, is to to do some reading up on your own and then take up short consulting gigs - 2/3 months. This way you learn on the job and if they kick you out no big deal, also a lot of experienced people may not be interested in these short term projects.

A friend of mine at age 44 decided he wanted to get into IT, mind you he had no IT background.

He did a one month SAP course then took up a 3 month project and now he's employed full time at a very large financial institution drawing a salary of over 100K. It wasn't easy, he put in a lot of hard work with very little sleep but it worked for him.

 

[pinkgecko]

Check into the US government. Due to the security restrictions and red tape before new programming languages are accepted, the feds are very slow to move to approve new languages, and I know of quite a few older COBOL programmers that work for the US government. I would take a look at the IRS, VA, etc.

[blue]Never listen to your customers. They were dumb enough to buy your product, so they have no credibility. - Dogbert[/blue]

 

[burtsbees]

Ha ha---I started in 1979 on a Timex Sinclair 1000---BASIC...then TRS-80, Apple 2c/e, Commodores...now I am a server systems engineer who is a CCNP with NO Cisco professional experience! I'm stuck, and I don't see light at the end of the tunnel...any other Cisco certs out there in the same boat?

Burt