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And "companies" could be replaced by "people" and "labor" could be replaced by "stuff"... The case of COBOL is of interest as there was a wave of articles this

And "companies" could be replaced by "people" and "labor" could be replaced by "stuff"... The case of COBOL is of interest as there was a wave of articles this year suggesting there was some sort of anomaly on the market: tons of COBOL programs and not a soul alive to maintain them.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> The case of COBOL is of interest as there was a wave of articles this year suggesting there was some sort of anomaly on the market: tons of COBOL programs and not a soul alive to maintain them. There’s probably something more like a legitimate short-term shortage in that case, because you have lots of immediate demand for changes (because of urgent business process changes) to stale legacy systems, so you really don’t have the luxury of waiting on long-term corrective mechanisms like retraining, price signalling through the pipeline for workforce entrants, etc., before the value opportunity is missed. COVID-19 and the resulting (many probably short-term) legal and business changes created a number of market anomalies of that kind.
- the_af 6y ago
  Do note this kind of wave of articles is recurrent, is not tied in general to COVID-19 (might be in the current situation, but I've seen it at least once or twice a year), and has been almost always false. "False" in the sense that no, learning COBOL is not such a great career choice to enter a life of wealth and untapped riches.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    Right; I agreed that the general idea was false, but then also pointed out that in the specific case of COVID-19 it is, at least, somewhat less false.