The thing is - the bank referenced in the story has COBOL programmers, but they kept recalling the effective COBOL programmer. That's the issue with self-train

The thing is - the bank referenced in the story has COBOL programmers, but they kept recalling the effective COBOL programmer. That's the issue with self-training for mission critical systems. Sure, some people can self-train, but a company doesn't want to pay people to learn on the job, while thwey are counting the beans.