3 ms·

Easiest thing to do at this point would be an excel spreadsheet and a single employee who venmos everyone their unemployment manually.

giantg2 6y ago
I had a COBOL class and sort of liked it. The debugging wasn't great and the JCL can be tricky, but it wasn't bad. The real problem is that companies/goverments didn't anticipate the retirement of COBOL resources. Nobody wants to train anyone or give them a career. They all want to hire senior people. I see a similar trend emerging in other technologies. I see tons of senior positions but very few positions where the company will provide training. Even internal transfers at my company provide zero training.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > The real problem is that companies/goverments didn't anticipate the retirement of COBOL resources. Yes, they did. What they didn't anticipate was that major system change would not be driven by policy changes that they were free to time (and, if necessary, take the time to make it a replacement of major system components or whole systems with newer technology), but that there would be an emergency causing simultaneous needs across the nation which would exhaust the limited (mostly contract) resources that everyone reliea on for major changes to major systems.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    That's pretty much the same as what I'm saying - demand has outpaced supply and nobody is willing to train. Policy changes are never able to be timed more than the duration of the election cycle. And frankly, neither party will pony up the money for a technical upgrade that the constituents could care less about.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > That's pretty much the same as what I'm saying “Didn’t anticipate retirement of COBOL resources” is what you said. That's very different than “anticipated and have been dealing with retirement of COBOL talent with strategies that didn't accommodate an unprecedented black swan event creating a massive simultaneous nationwide demand surge.” > Policy changes are never able to be timed more than the duration of the election cycle. Yes, they are; it's very common for new laws that would have system impacts (either to the adopting government, or externally entities, or both) to come with implementation timelines that are long to provide time for system implementation, which certainly often cross election cycles. Sure, intervening elections sometimes change those plans, but almost exclusively to eliminate the requirement or extend the timeline, not accelerate it.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        The retirement of COBOL resources across the nation, whether anticipated or not, has no difference on the outcome of situation - management did not adequately plan for the scarcity of the resources. You can only plan based on what you know. You could plan based on implementation timelines in legislation. You can't plan on what may or may not come in the next 2-4 years. Waiting indefinitely for modernization plans is not realistic, although that is what happens in many states.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > The retirement of COBOL resources across the nation, whether anticipated or not, has no difference on the outcome of situation Sure, but I'm not the one who claimed that the problem was “failure to anticipate the retirement of COBOL resources.” I agree that retirement of COBOL resources is basically irrelevant.
        giantg2 6y ago
        LOL ok. I guess resource scarcity is not the primary driver of the lack of COBOL resources (what else could it be?).

giantg2 6y ago

I had a COBOL class and sort of liked it. The debugging wasn't great and the JCL can be tricky, but it wasn't bad. The real problem is that companies/goverments didn't anticipate the retirement of COBOL resources. Nobody wants to train anyone or give them a career. They all want to hire senior people. I see a similar trend emerging in other technologies. I see tons of senior positions but very few positions where the company will provide training. Even internal transfers at my company provide zero training.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> The real problem is that companies/goverments didn't anticipate the retirement of COBOL resources. Yes, they did. What they didn't anticipate was that major system change would not be driven by policy changes that they were free to time (and, if necessary, take the time to make it a replacement of major system components or whole systems with newer technology), but that there would be an emergency causing simultaneous needs across the nation which would exhaust the limited (mostly contract) resources that everyone reliea on for major changes to major systems.
- giantg2 6y ago
  That's pretty much the same as what I'm saying - demand has outpaced supply and nobody is willing to train. Policy changes are never able to be timed more than the duration of the election cycle. And frankly, neither party will pony up the money for a technical upgrade that the constituents could care less about.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > That's pretty much the same as what I'm saying “Didn’t anticipate retirement of COBOL resources” is what you said. That's very different than “anticipated and have been dealing with retirement of COBOL talent with strategies that didn't accommodate an unprecedented black swan event creating a massive simultaneous nationwide demand surge.” > Policy changes are never able to be timed more than the duration of the election cycle. Yes, they are; it's very common for new laws that would have system impacts (either to the adopting government, or externally entities, or both) to come with implementation timelines that are long to provide time for system implementation, which certainly often cross election cycles. Sure, intervening elections sometimes change those plans, but almost exclusively to eliminate the requirement or extend the timeline, not accelerate it.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      The retirement of COBOL resources across the nation, whether anticipated or not, has no difference on the outcome of situation - management did not adequately plan for the scarcity of the resources. You can only plan based on what you know. You could plan based on implementation timelines in legislation. You can't plan on what may or may not come in the next 2-4 years. Waiting indefinitely for modernization plans is not realistic, although that is what happens in many states.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > The retirement of COBOL resources across the nation, whether anticipated or not, has no difference on the outcome of situation Sure, but I'm not the one who claimed that the problem was “failure to anticipate the retirement of COBOL resources.” I agree that retirement of COBOL resources is basically irrelevant.
        giantg2 6y ago
        LOL ok. I guess resource scarcity is not the primary driver of the lack of COBOL resources (what else could it be?).