Mainframe jobs

From: Matt (mcollins_fl_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 03/15/05 

Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2005 07:31:05 GMT

Every few months I do a job search for COBOL and mainframe jobs in my
city, Tampa. This time quite a few results came up, over 20. And some
weren't stating the 5 year minimuum experience either. Maybe the time is
nearing, the opportunity for some new talent in the mainframe world.
I've read all the articles from the past 5 years talking about how the
mainframe isn't dead and new programmers and administrators will be
needed. But I'd look at the jobs, and the few that would come up were
asking for all kinds of knowledge and many year of experience. I read
articles from guys talking about their first experience with a System
360 during Vietnam. How am I ever going to match that? To make matters
worse I'm turning 31 this St. Patricks day, and I just got my AA degree.
But I'll have my bachelers in a couple more. It's not like they're going
to teach me any mainframe stuff anyway. They discontinued their COBOL
classes. But I can teach myself COBOL, I have the Sams book. It all
started 5 years ago when I was a junior programmer on this legacy system
called Qantel. It was crude, DOS terminals and ISAM files. But I liked
it. It was so opposite of Microsoft with their dogs running around the
screen. But unfortunately it was a very proprietary BASIC they used and
I never was able to parlay it into IBM systems. I want to be working on
CICS terminals, COBOL, JCL, DB2. I don't even know what it all is but I
know I'll like it. It's serious, hardcore computing. Mega number crunching.

Matt

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: RW - yet again (was: If you were inventing CoBOL...
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  • Re: RW - yet again (was: If you were inventing CoBOL...
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  • Re: RW - yet again (was: If you were inventing CoBOL...
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