Did you know that COBOL is not dying? 2

[Glenn9999]

But also, most of the new hires had no idea how to write a computer program.

I'd guess 80% of the mainframe COBOL programmers whose resumes pass initial screening can't satisfactorily pass even a cursory technical interview on COBOL, CICS, JCL, and DB2.

None of this really surprises me for what I've seen in my college experience. Usually, most of them would get help to the point of it being a "do my program for me" affair or just muddle through with sub-par passing grades (C or D). And quite easy to figure out that they were learning nothing out of the venture, too.

A great example (out of many!) was a large group of people in a senior-level Oracle class (with pre-requisite class involving SQL - the senior-level class was about database administration) who could not even perform the most basic of SQL queries.

Rant time
It's become quite obvious to me in my numerous interviews that the last thing all the companies I have encountered are hiring for is ability to do the job at hand. With the first being the ability to be the life of the party (i.e. exemplary social communication skills - not professional communication skills), it should be no surprise that they are getting what they bargained for.

And I know I wasted all my time studying/working/preparing/training to be as good as I could be at the job I was looking into, given how I fared compared to these folks in my examples. Perhaps I should have been like those in the examples and just merely skate by in the course work, and concentrate my time on plotting the next party to attend to sharpen those prized social communication skills while getting drunk.

But that's the nature of the beast...
Ending rant now

 

[k5tm]

Glenn9999, did you receive my email?

Tom Morrison

http://www.liant.com