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In the late 1990s, when I joined a bank that used IBM mainframes, there was a group of 30ish new CS graduates who would spend many months being trained internal
by hoistbypetard 4y ago
In the late 1990s, when I joined a bank that used IBM mainframes, there was a group of 30ish new CS graduates who would spend many months being trained internally and by IBM to learn to program and operate those. As I understand it, that's still the case today.
The people who operate these mainframes have tremendous access to internal IBM resources. I remember having to stifle my laughter as, during a meeting about a major outage, a seasoned programmer explained that he "took a dump and sent it to IBM" and was expecting to hear back any time.
The channels that exist for this knowledge are expansive and just aren't on the internet, though they do occasionally spill over there.
- davidrupp 4y agoThis was the model when I joined Eastern Airlines' reservation system (aka, System One) out of college, although the training was entirely in-house; IBM was not directly involved, that I could tell. I enjoyed spending the first few months of my career getting paid to sit in a classroom and learn this stuff.
- throwayyy479087 4y agoI would love to hear about that experience, if you’ve written about it
- davidrupp 4y agoI haven't yet, beyond some quick comments I've posted on other HN threads. I may capture it in long form after I've retired. My career has taken a meandering path, and there have been aspects of it that I think might be entertaining to the right audience. If there's something specific you're curious about, I'd be happy to try to address that.