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It will be like COBOL programmers now. We'll pay a lot of money for the graying experts in emergencies and declare non-AI advanced development obsolete. Eventua

It will be like COBOL programmers now. We'll pay a lot of money for the graying experts in emergencies and declare non-AI advanced development obsolete. Eventually there will be no senior developers either.

ravenstine 3y ago
What compounds this issue is that most of the graybeards don't actually get paid that much money to come out of retirement to fix code for mainframes, and the incentive simply isn't there for new programmers to learn COBOL and mainframes. It's not even enough to learn COBOL and mainframes because the graybeards are getting paid not just for those skills but familiarity with the quirks of particular systems. Financial institutions want COBOL programmers with experience working on financial systems. There's no way anyone born in my generation can even get started in that realm; not without training or mentorship, which firms seem completely uninterested in providing. The question is what happens when all the graybeards are dead. Are the institutions that are refusing to replace their systems banking on future AI being able to solve all their problems single-handedly? Or are they going to offer a pittance to any one who chooses to learn COBOL? Maybe it will be something in the middle; they will only hire senior engineers with specialties in developing AI/ML models for legacy systems. That is until those seniors become obsolete by their own creations.
- medvezhenok 3y ago
  No, the solution that will be implemented is likely to be write-from-scratch. Ultimately, you can start a new bank with new technology, move clients money to new technology, have the old bank go belly-up and bankrupt. Sometimes that happens in a new company, sometimes it happens in the same company (i.e. re-writes). Maybe not so extreme, but I think that's likely what will happen over time. Maintaining old software is a choice, and is sometime more expensive than it's worth (depending on what that software does). It can certainly be very painful in certain cases (the Great Depression was a similar "reset" for the financial system as a whole - though without code involved), but the market mechanism will accomplish the objective, though likely not without collateral damage.
- f0ld 3y ago
  Easy. Their heirs will inherit their jobs.

ravenstine 3y ago

What compounds this issue is that most of the graybeards don't actually get paid that much money to come out of retirement to fix code for mainframes, and the incentive simply isn't there for new programmers to learn COBOL and mainframes. It's not even enough to learn COBOL and mainframes because the graybeards are getting paid not just for those skills but familiarity with the quirks of particular systems. Financial institutions want COBOL programmers with experience working on financial systems. There's no way anyone born in my generation can even get started in that realm; not without training or mentorship, which firms seem completely uninterested in providing. The question is what happens when all the graybeards are dead. Are the institutions that are refusing to replace their systems banking on future AI being able to solve all their problems single-handedly? Or are they going to offer a pittance to any one who chooses to learn COBOL? Maybe it will be something in the middle; they will only hire senior engineers with specialties in developing AI/ML models for legacy systems. That is until those seniors become obsolete by their own creations.

medvezhenok 3y ago
No, the solution that will be implemented is likely to be write-from-scratch. Ultimately, you can start a new bank with new technology, move clients money to new technology, have the old bank go belly-up and bankrupt. Sometimes that happens in a new company, sometimes it happens in the same company (i.e. re-writes). Maybe not so extreme, but I think that's likely what will happen over time. Maintaining old software is a choice, and is sometime more expensive than it's worth (depending on what that software does). It can certainly be very painful in certain cases (the Great Depression was a similar "reset" for the financial system as a whole - though without code involved), but the market mechanism will accomplish the objective, though likely not without collateral damage.
f0ld 3y ago
Easy. Their heirs will inherit their jobs.