4 ms·
But surely there is a shortage, and you can't just pay more. My mom knew COBOL. She retired in the 1970s. You're going to have a tough time hiring her now.
by perl4ever 5y ago
But surely there is a shortage, and you can't just pay more.
My mom knew COBOL. She retired in the 1970s. You're going to have a tough time hiring her now.
- codebolt 5y agoI've never written a line of COBOL, but pay me enough money, and I'll be up and running in a mainframe terminal by the end of the month.
- perl4ever 5y agoLooking at in.indeed.com, you can make ₹10,00,000 or more per year. Up to as much as ₹25,00,000. ...but that's if you have "3-5 years of Experience in Cobol, IMS, DB2, JCL". I imagine an entry-level job might pay ₹7,00,000 or so, if you can show sufficient coursework in COBOL?
- tdeck 5y agoSome quick googling shows that ₹10,00,000 is about $13,560 USD. edit: I made the mistake of multiplying this by 12 originally since I didn't read carefully.
- yunohn 5y agoThe commenter specifically said that the Indian salaries are per year. So they definitely underpay even for the Indian market, given salaries for non-COBOL.
- tdeck 5y agoYou're right, not sure how I missed that.
- perl4ever 5y agoOne might ask, setting aside the task of getting accurate and representative numbers, because that's too much work, what do Indians believe is plausible? Some people are surely trying to set expectations low, while others may be exaggerating what you can make with a few years of experience. However, I've seen quite a few different sources claim an entry level developer makes around 4-10 lakh rupees a year. This makes me think they think their audience considers that good but not unbelievable. And then when somebody claims you can make 60 lakh or more with 5 years experience, it makes me think that their audience knows roughly what US salaries are, whether or not the figure is realistic.
- yunohn 5y agoI think the confusion stems from the fact that India has a surplus of IT employees. The sheer number of universities and software graduates is hard for Western countries to imagine. As such, you will see a massive salary range, anywhere from 3-60 lakhs per year. It’s hard to calculate based on experience - tenure, tech stack, or otherwise. The lower end is dominated by body shops that take the bulk of offshored projects, since that’s exactly what Western companies want. The higher end is dominated by FAANG and VC funded startups. Moreover, the majority of companies do not have significant yearly raises, and jumping jobs is the often the only solution.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoLearning COBOL doesn't require you were born in the 1940s though. If COBOL jobs were paying what "AI" jobs are now, more people would start learning it. A shock or major unforeseen event could cause a shortage for a time. But we've been hearing about the dire shortage of COBOL programmers for 30 years or more haven't we? Yet in that time apparently they haven't either migrated their systems off COBOL, started paying people more, or decided they don't need to invest as much effort into it? Doesn't seem all that credible.
- perl4ever 5y agoWell, yes, you've cleverly deduced there is no real shortage. There aren't any significant number of people wringing their hands over it for 30 years either.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoYou're welcome, glad I could clear that up for you.
- perl4ever 5y agoLocal vs global.