8 ms·

Its awful that most people here are criticizing COBOL, yet they don't even know it, but they just "heard bad things about it". In my country and in Sweden it i

by hansor 6y ago

Its awful that most people here are criticizing COBOL, yet they don't even know it, but they just "heard bad things about it". In my country and in Sweden it is quite easy to get good and stable job in banking/insurance/consulting business with Cobol on Z/OS. Salary is around 10-30k PER MONTH. Around 3x more then in let's say Java.

mprev 6y ago
30k in Swedish krone?
- mrweasel 6y ago
  I doubt that very many Swedes in IT works for less than 30.000SEK, so I would assume USD.
  - levosmetalo 6y ago
    My guess would be EUR. In most of the Europe people don't mentally convert to USD but to EUR.
    - mrweasel 6y ago
      That kinda depends, as a Dane I honestly only ever need to think in EUR when I shop online from Germany. I do however need to convert from DKK to USD and back much more frequently when reading news online. Technically most of Europe don't need convert to EUR, they already use Euros so they're also more likely to need to convert to USD.
the_only_law 6y ago
I’ve always heard COBOL devs referred to as either highly paid consultants keeping critical applications alive for corporations or wage slaves maintaining a painful app for below average pay.
- Jakobeha 6y ago
  I've heard it's the computer science equivalent of a plumber or janitor. The job doesn't sound particularly fun, but because of this it's high demand and great pay. It's a good job if you accept that work isn't fun, and you don't care about climbing the ladder, you're just looking for a decent, reliable income.
  - nescioquid 6y ago
    An alarming amount of software development, especially now, is little more than plugging part A into part B. The major trend of software development has been to increase the degree of similarity between software developers and plumbers.
    - cle 6y ago
      That kind of reductionist argument can be made for any kind of software development...we're all just plumbing bits around at the end of the day. If you're a web dev, you're plugging web tech, if you're a backend dev it's network protocols and storage tech, if you're a kernel dev it's instruction sets and memory buffers. As we build tools to make that plumbing easier for certain use cases, we might move around in the hierarchy to plug different things together, but I don't think anything has fundamentally changed in an alarming way. We're still just moving bits around!
      - nescioquid 6y ago
        Of course, you're absolutely right in your reductive view, but it is not what I was trying to suggest. I remember an explanation that Sussman gave for why MIT retired the SICP course, replacing with it a course in which students program robots with Python. He said (and I'm badly paraphrasing) that one used to be able to scale up your reasoning about how a piece of software works in a similar way to how you do it when looking at a circuit diagram: you have these little components with discrete behaviors and you can simply combine them and be able to predict the result. Today, however, as programmers (to a greater extent than before) we create systems by cobbling together large, opaque, libraries whose properties are poorly described and require one to essentially "do science" on those black boxes. And the trade-off is that we're often better off plugging A into B, and hence there's a lot more of that sort of line work in industry. edit: I should say that I don't much like that sort of work, but it was unwarranted to say it is 'alarming' that the trend has gone this way.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
necheffa 6y ago
I was forced to take a COBAL & z/OS course during college. And I was pretty good at it. Local bank wanted to make sure it had a steady supply of COBAL programmers. I hate COBAL a lot, and incidentally for many of the same reasons I hate Java.
- galoisgirl 6y ago
  You were pretty good at COBAL?
  - Iwan-Zotow 6y ago
    He was good at CABAL
Misteur-Z 6y ago
Until some COBOL developer publishes his pay slip, I will stick to reality, top IT salaries are at tech giants. From personal experience: BNP Paribas is one of the biggest bank in the world, top 5 if you exclude Chinese state owned ones, and they pay mainframe related jobs like shit. Being young, smart and with a whole career ahead, you have no future working has a COBOL developer, no one should spend his life picking up shitty code left by his elders decades ago.
- ab_testing 6y ago
  That is true, but you have to understand that not everybody is FAANG material. The top 5-15 tech companies receive hundreds of thousands of resumes every year of which less than 1% are selected. Also not everybody is interested in moving in to the tech hubs. There is still lot of work in legacy code - COBOL, Oracle and other legacy systems. Even in newer languages like Java, there is lot of work that is mostly application maintenance and adding new features to existing decade old applications. It is not bad work.
  - ta988 6y ago
    And you have to want to work for a FAANG. Not everybody dream of that either.
- pbourke 6y ago
  > no one should spend his life picking up shitty code left by his elders decades ago. Would you say that to a civil engineer who works on infrastructure maintenance? Computing is critical infrastructure in many areas of government and business. The solution to all problems cannot be “screw it, we’ll just rewrite in Go with a React frontend.” Some things should be rewritten and some should be maintained.
  - beezle 6y ago
    Back in the day... COBOL programmers were often 'analysts' as well - meeting with the end users and/or management to design and then implement the required system. Funny to me how so many in this thread rag on COBOL, yet when other languages come up it is always 'well this language is good for abc but I wouldn't really do xyz in that one'. COBOL is extremely good at what it was designed for - data processing, and lots of it.
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Recently I had a look at some COBOL out of curiosity, and as someone used to modern languages it appeared very verbose and awkward - far less complex conceptually, but the syntax itself is not at all lightweight. It seemed to be more or less as expected - fairly straightforward and apparently easy to learn, but unattractively bureaucratic. My understanding is that you don't get paid the top money for knowing the language but for being able to understand and maintain/revise the kinds of systems it operates - which is a whole other level of skill and experience, and not something you can just pick up in a few evenings of side projects.
the_af 6y ago
At least for me, I criticize from experience: I worked with COBOL, and think it's an awful, unfun language, commonly used for unfun projects. And COBOL jobs don't pay particularly well where I live, either. > In my country and in Sweden it is quite easy to get good and stable job in banking/insurance/consulting business Yes, that much is true: a stable job in banking/insurance. Mostly maintaining clunky legacy systems. If that's what you aspire to, and aren't passionate about software -- which is perfectly fine! -- I guess learning some COBOL is a reasonable career choice.
- arabelladonna 6y ago
  > If that's what you aspire to, and aren't passionate about software -- which is perfectly fine! -- I guess learning some COBOL is a reasonable career choice. This is a completely unfair assessment. Even if you're passionate about something, job stability and good pay are going to be the primary drivers in decisions about jobs. I doubt that most people choose, say, Java jobs because they're passionate about Java, or even software in general, for example. From what I gather, most people leave the "passion" part of their work to part-time hobby work, allowing them to do both. If it then translates into money, good, but the few successes that have been put on blast have blinded people to the reality that passion != money.
  - the_af 6y ago
    Believe me: writing Java is on average more interesting than COBOL (I've done both, including some terrible Java systems using Enterprise Java Beans -- I still shudder at the thought -- and Java still wins). Then again, Java has been called "the next COBOL", so that's an interesting comparison. > Even if you're passionate about something, job stability and good pay are going to be the primary drivers in decisions about jobs. For a lot of people, yes. Not for all. And even then, it's hard to argue that COBOL is cool or interesting. It's just paying the bills, but nothing to get hyped or write gushing articles about. And there are more interesting programming jobs that will also pay the bills, anyway.
    - arabelladonna 6y ago
randmeerkat 6y ago
Do these jobs train you in on COBOL, or do you have to be an expert in it already? If you have to be an expert already how are people learning COBOL / preparing for the interview to get this kind of job?
- phendrenad2 6y ago
  Having applied to a few COBOL jobs in my youth, and getting no response back, I suspect that the COBOL shortage is like the general "programmer shortage" in that it really means "(senior) programmer shortage (willing to work for below prevailing wage)"
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  If you're experienced in another language, you can learn COBOL in a week or two. My first job out of school was with a consulting firm that would take new-hire non-programmers and have them on a client site writing COBOL in 3-4 weeks.
  - randmeerkat 6y ago
    That’s fast. Aside from the common complaints people have about legacy code and so on, what was the hardest part of ramping up in COBOL?
mike_ivanov 6y ago
Is that in SEK? 30k SEK is about 3k EUR.
fennecfoxen 6y ago
I make a bit under $20k per month base (a bit under $30k with equity) for a Silicon Valley firm, doing Python and Java and Go and the like, and I suspect I have a lot more career portability. That said, it's extraordinarily impressive for Europe, even the expensive parts of Sweden!
einpoklum 6y ago
The salary you can get working on something is almost entirely independent of whether it's a decent technology or not.
remexre 6y ago
A list of many of these "bad things" can be found in BabyCobol [1, 2] -- it's a "toy model" of COBOL, specifically because COBOL has a lot of strange features that modern tooling doesn't/can't handle well. [1]: https://grammarware.net/text/2020/babycobol.pdf https://grammarware.net/text/2020/babycobol.pdf [2]: https://slebok.github.io/baby/ https://slebok.github.io/baby/
koolba 6y ago
> Salary is around 10-30k PER MONTH. Around 3x more then in let's say Java. What currency? The kroner is with about $.12 so that’s not particularly enticing.
- jussij 6y ago
  Since the OP offers a relative comparison in saying COBOL jobs pay three times more than a Java jobs, the currency or any currency conversion to $USD really doesn't matter.

by hansor 6y ago

mprev 6y ago

30k in Swedish krone?

mrweasel 6y ago
I doubt that very many Swedes in IT works for less than 30.000SEK, so I would assume USD.
- levosmetalo 6y ago
  My guess would be EUR. In most of the Europe people don't mentally convert to USD but to EUR.
  - mrweasel 6y ago
    That kinda depends, as a Dane I honestly only ever need to think in EUR when I shop online from Germany. I do however need to convert from DKK to USD and back much more frequently when reading news online. Technically most of Europe don't need convert to EUR, they already use Euros so they're also more likely to need to convert to USD.

the_only_law 6y ago

I’ve always heard COBOL devs referred to as either highly paid consultants keeping critical applications alive for corporations or wage slaves maintaining a painful app for below average pay.

Jakobeha 6y ago
I've heard it's the computer science equivalent of a plumber or janitor. The job doesn't sound particularly fun, but because of this it's high demand and great pay. It's a good job if you accept that work isn't fun, and you don't care about climbing the ladder, you're just looking for a decent, reliable income.
- nescioquid 6y ago
  An alarming amount of software development, especially now, is little more than plugging part A into part B. The major trend of software development has been to increase the degree of similarity between software developers and plumbers.
  - cle 6y ago
    That kind of reductionist argument can be made for any kind of software development...we're all just plumbing bits around at the end of the day. If you're a web dev, you're plugging web tech, if you're a backend dev it's network protocols and storage tech, if you're a kernel dev it's instruction sets and memory buffers. As we build tools to make that plumbing easier for certain use cases, we might move around in the hierarchy to plug different things together, but I don't think anything has fundamentally changed in an alarming way. We're still just moving bits around!
    - nescioquid 6y ago
      Of course, you're absolutely right in your reductive view, but it is not what I was trying to suggest. I remember an explanation that Sussman gave for why MIT retired the SICP course, replacing with it a course in which students program robots with Python. He said (and I'm badly paraphrasing) that one used to be able to scale up your reasoning about how a piece of software works in a similar way to how you do it when looking at a circuit diagram: you have these little components with discrete behaviors and you can simply combine them and be able to predict the result. Today, however, as programmers (to a greater extent than before) we create systems by cobbling together large, opaque, libraries whose properties are poorly described and require one to essentially "do science" on those black boxes. And the trade-off is that we're often better off plugging A into B, and hence there's a lot more of that sort of line work in industry. edit: I should say that I don't much like that sort of work, but it was unwarranted to say it is 'alarming' that the trend has gone this way.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

necheffa 6y ago

I was forced to take a COBAL & z/OS course during college. And I was pretty good at it. Local bank wanted to make sure it had a steady supply of COBAL programmers. I hate COBAL a lot, and incidentally for many of the same reasons I hate Java.

galoisgirl 6y ago
You were pretty good at COBAL?
- Iwan-Zotow 6y ago
  He was good at CABAL

Misteur-Z 6y ago

Until some COBOL developer publishes his pay slip, I will stick to reality, top IT salaries are at tech giants. From personal experience: BNP Paribas is one of the biggest bank in the world, top 5 if you exclude Chinese state owned ones, and they pay mainframe related jobs like shit. Being young, smart and with a whole career ahead, you have no future working has a COBOL developer, no one should spend his life picking up shitty code left by his elders decades ago.

ab_testing 6y ago
That is true, but you have to understand that not everybody is FAANG material. The top 5-15 tech companies receive hundreds of thousands of resumes every year of which less than 1% are selected. Also not everybody is interested in moving in to the tech hubs. There is still lot of work in legacy code - COBOL, Oracle and other legacy systems. Even in newer languages like Java, there is lot of work that is mostly application maintenance and adding new features to existing decade old applications. It is not bad work.
- ta988 6y ago
  And you have to want to work for a FAANG. Not everybody dream of that either.
pbourke 6y ago
> no one should spend his life picking up shitty code left by his elders decades ago. Would you say that to a civil engineer who works on infrastructure maintenance? Computing is critical infrastructure in many areas of government and business. The solution to all problems cannot be “screw it, we’ll just rewrite in Go with a React frontend.” Some things should be rewritten and some should be maintained.
- beezle 6y ago
  Back in the day... COBOL programmers were often 'analysts' as well - meeting with the end users and/or management to design and then implement the required system. Funny to me how so many in this thread rag on COBOL, yet when other languages come up it is always 'well this language is good for abc but I wouldn't really do xyz in that one'. COBOL is extremely good at what it was designed for - data processing, and lots of it.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

Recently I had a look at some COBOL out of curiosity, and as someone used to modern languages it appeared very verbose and awkward - far less complex conceptually, but the syntax itself is not at all lightweight. It seemed to be more or less as expected - fairly straightforward and apparently easy to learn, but unattractively bureaucratic. My understanding is that you don't get paid the top money for knowing the language but for being able to understand and maintain/revise the kinds of systems it operates - which is a whole other level of skill and experience, and not something you can just pick up in a few evenings of side projects.

the_af 6y ago

At least for me, I criticize from experience: I worked with COBOL, and think it's an awful, unfun language, commonly used for unfun projects. And COBOL jobs don't pay particularly well where I live, either. > In my country and in Sweden it is quite easy to get good and stable job in banking/insurance/consulting business Yes, that much is true: a stable job in banking/insurance. Mostly maintaining clunky legacy systems. If that's what you aspire to, and aren't passionate about software -- which is perfectly fine! -- I guess learning some COBOL is a reasonable career choice.

arabelladonna 6y ago
> If that's what you aspire to, and aren't passionate about software -- which is perfectly fine! -- I guess learning some COBOL is a reasonable career choice. This is a completely unfair assessment. Even if you're passionate about something, job stability and good pay are going to be the primary drivers in decisions about jobs. I doubt that most people choose, say, Java jobs because they're passionate about Java, or even software in general, for example. From what I gather, most people leave the "passion" part of their work to part-time hobby work, allowing them to do both. If it then translates into money, good, but the few successes that have been put on blast have blinded people to the reality that passion != money.
- the_af 6y ago
  Believe me: writing Java is on average more interesting than COBOL (I've done both, including some terrible Java systems using Enterprise Java Beans -- I still shudder at the thought -- and Java still wins). Then again, Java has been called "the next COBOL", so that's an interesting comparison. > Even if you're passionate about something, job stability and good pay are going to be the primary drivers in decisions about jobs. For a lot of people, yes. Not for all. And even then, it's hard to argue that COBOL is cool or interesting. It's just paying the bills, but nothing to get hyped or write gushing articles about. And there are more interesting programming jobs that will also pay the bills, anyway.
  - arabelladonna 6y ago

randmeerkat 6y ago

Do these jobs train you in on COBOL, or do you have to be an expert in it already? If you have to be an expert already how are people learning COBOL / preparing for the interview to get this kind of job?

phendrenad2 6y ago
Having applied to a few COBOL jobs in my youth, and getting no response back, I suspect that the COBOL shortage is like the general "programmer shortage" in that it really means "(senior) programmer shortage (willing to work for below prevailing wage)"
throwaway201103 6y ago
If you're experienced in another language, you can learn COBOL in a week or two. My first job out of school was with a consulting firm that would take new-hire non-programmers and have them on a client site writing COBOL in 3-4 weeks.
- randmeerkat 6y ago
  That’s fast. Aside from the common complaints people have about legacy code and so on, what was the hardest part of ramping up in COBOL?

mike_ivanov 6y ago

Is that in SEK? 30k SEK is about 3k EUR.

fennecfoxen 6y ago

I make a bit under $20k per month base (a bit under $30k with equity) for a Silicon Valley firm, doing Python and Java and Go and the like, and I suspect I have a lot more career portability. That said, it's extraordinarily impressive for Europe, even the expensive parts of Sweden!

einpoklum 6y ago

The salary you can get working on something is almost entirely independent of whether it's a decent technology or not.

remexre 6y ago

A list of many of these "bad things" can be found in BabyCobol [1, 2] -- it's a "toy model" of COBOL, specifically because COBOL has a lot of strange features that modern tooling doesn't/can't handle well. [1]: https://grammarware.net/text/2020/babycobol.pdf https://grammarware.net/text/2020/babycobol.pdf [2]: https://slebok.github.io/baby/ https://slebok.github.io/baby/

koolba 6y ago

> Salary is around 10-30k PER MONTH. Around 3x more then in let's say Java. What currency? The kroner is with about $.12 so that’s not particularly enticing.

jussij 6y ago
Since the OP offers a relative comparison in saying COBOL jobs pay three times more than a Java jobs, the currency or any currency conversion to $USD really doesn't matter.