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As a young developer, do you know where and how I could go about getting into the COBOL industry? All the job listings seem to require a decade's worth of expe
by Gaessaki 11y ago
As a young developer, do you know where and how I could go about getting into the COBOL industry?
All the job listings seem to require a decade's worth of experience and lists expertise requirements in technologies that are proprietary and only available on a mainframe. COBOL on its own is not very hard to pick up, but I'm lost as to how to learn about the ancillary technologies. I'm not sure it's so much that nobody wants to learn, but that nobody knows where to learn it.
- ctdonath 11y agoContact the companies looking for COBOL coders. They're desperate, and will tell you exactly what you need to learn and probably pay for any training you need. Sure they'd prefer someone with a decade or five of experience, but seriously: COBOL coders are literally dying off at this point. 17 years ago was the last great hurrah for hiring & training COBOL developers, averting the "Y2K crisis" before calendars ticked over to the year 2000; we've got kids born after that who are entering the software workforce now. About 5 years ago I had someone speak in my C++ class begging students to consider a career in "mainframe" technologies; there was virtually no interest shown, and methinks most of the students didn't even know what he was talking about. But...the need remains. Those systems are so large & profitable they're not going anywhere, and employers must be quite willing to take on new coders willing to learn, directing & funding their education as needed. If you're interested, contact a hiring company directly and ask - even if you have 0 of 10 years required experience.
- wfn 11y agoI wonder, are there any good tools for translating COBOL into something else? There must be at least some demand? Wouldn't that be a good approach in some cases? (I suppose it requires longer-term thinking, and is sometimes simply not possible in a business context, etc.)
- Gaessaki 11y agoThanks for the advice. I guess it doesn't hurt me to give it a shot. The worse a recruiter can say to me is no. There seems to be no shortage of available COBOL positions at the major banks and telecoms where I live.
- Blackthorn 11y agoWhy would you want to? There's a lot of smoke and noise made about how companies are desperate for COBOL developers because the old ones are retiring or dying blah blah blah, but I've never seen actual good salaries to back it up. And to add insult to injury, you're unlikely to be able to take the skills you've learned to your next job when you inevitably change jobs.
- Gaessaki 11y agoI suppose you're right. After going through some publicly available COBOL salaries in Canada, it seems the salaries for senior COBOL positions were about what I was able to ask for as a junior frontend developer (50-60$/h CAD). I think I would primarily consider a short stint for the heck of it. Maybe some short term contracts to see what it's like.
- brobinson 11y agoWhat kind of salaries have you seen? I've read that most of the companies still using COBOL are banks, insurance companies, etc. They seem like the companies, if any, that could provide really compelling salaries for something with allegedly high demand and increasingly small supply.
- Spooky23 11y agoDon't. The job requirements are impossible on purpose because the posts are just there to justify getting guest visas. You're better off going towards other enterprise technology stacks with more action and rewards.