Re: Is a career switch to the mainframe/cobol world responsible?

PeterC wrote:
Hello all,

I am in my mid twenties and got five year fulltime IT experience (system
engineer in the microsoft world)
I found out that these days a lot of major companies are in desperate need
of mainframe people.
A manager told me they are hard to find, especially young people dont wanna
learn mainframe anymore.

I found a big financial enterprise which search a lot of mainframe
application developers (cobol, pl1, etc..).

Is the choice to switch to the mainframe world, and lets say become a cobol
developer, a responsible choice for a young
guy to make? Does the mainframe and the cobol has a future?

Thanks in advance,

Patriarch

First, to paraphrase an old quote: Rumors of the death of the mainframe has been greatly exaggerated.

While most of the trade press would have you believe that the world of computing started with the PC, the mainframe is still alive and well. And, there are active programs trying to attract younger professionals into the mainframe arena.

You did not indicate your local, so it is a little difficult to make recommendations for specific investigations that you might undertake.

For the moment, assuming you are in the U.S., I would suggest a look at the zNextGen program between IBM and SHARE. SHARE is the large systems IBM User Group. You can get a good view of the activities by checking at:
www.share.org
From that page, you can:
1) Find out more about SHARE, IMHO, the premier source for IBM mainframe eduction and technical information. SHARE is an independent, volunteer run association providing IBM customers with user focused education, professional networking, and industry influence. It is not your typical 'management fluff' or 'marketing' type conference. You can get detailed and heavy technical information there.
2) See the agenda and activities from the last SHARE Conference in Seattle last March.
3) See a first look at the agenda for August in Baltimore. If you are particularly interested in programming languages, you can see the topics that will be presented by the "Language Environment, COBOL, PL/I, C/C++" project at:
http://shareew.prod.web.sba.com/displaymod/SingleConf.cfm?conference_id=14
From there, select 'Search by Project'...
4) See a summary of the zNextGen program at:
http://www.share.org/About/industry_news_conference.cfm

Good luck!

Carl

.

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