A mid-level IT professional with tons of mainframe experience assumed that her skills were obsolete and despaired of being able to find a decent-paying job based on her "dated" experience.To test her assumptions, I did an Internet search for "mainframe jobs" and discovered over 2000 listings on Dice.com alone.
It turns out that there is actually a window of opportunity for programmers and systems analysts with mainframe experience. Apparently there are still lots of legacy mainframe systems that have not yet been replaced by newer technologies and fewer technical professionals to work on those systems. Many people with mainframe experience have retired or moved onto the newer technologies. As a result there is a lot of contract/consulting work for people with mainframe experience.
Obviously mainframes are not the wave of the future; but people with mainframe experience can still support themselves (and apparently support themselves quite well) while they either prepare for retirement or seize the opportunity to upgrade their technical skills and learn newer technologies.
The moral of the story. Do your homework before you make assumptions. Your livelihood may depend on it.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
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