[Info-vax] Hiring maintainers for legacy VMS systems

[Tom Adams]

On Thursday, September 11, 2014 6:17:02 PM UTC-4, David Froble wrote:
> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> 
> > In article <29efc57f-91a1-4294-b714-f72f29079fa8 at googlegroups.com>,
> 
> > 	Bob Gezelter <gezelter at rlgsc.com> writes:
> 
> >> On Thursday, September 11, 2014 8:58:17 AM UTC-4, Tom Adams wrote:
> 
> >>> I plan to retire in about 2 years.
> 
> >>>
> 
> >>>
> 
> >>>
> 
> >>> Is it going to be very hard to find a programmer/analyst to maintain a few 100,000 lines of custom code, mostly Fortran, some C, some Datatrieve, some VMS command procedures?
> 
> >> Tom,
> 
> >>
> 
> >> There are still plenty of us around who know more than simply a smattering of C++ and Linux (smile).
> 
> >>
> 
> >> In my repertoire, I can count FORTRAN, BASIC, C/C++, COBOL, PL/I, various assemblers (System/360, IBM 1620, IBM 1130, PDP-11, VAX, ALPHA, x86, nVidia, 12-bit PIC, and others), plus the usual collection of command languages.
> 
> >>
> 
> > 
> 
> > Bob,
> 
> >   I think he was looking for someone who wasn't right behind him in the
> 
> > retirement line.  :-)
> 
> > 
> 
> >   I'm out of consideration because I'm in front of him.
> 
> > 
> 
> > bill
> 
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> The key question is, "is this a full time position?".  If so, hire and 
> 
> train.  If not, then you're looking for a part time consultant, and 
> 
> we're lazy and expensive ....
> 
> 
> 
> Worst part if you go the consultant route, you're still going to have to 
> 
> train him / her on the applications ....

It will be a full time position, the pay ceiling is probably 80-90K (I don't even recall exactly what I am making).   Most likely, the hire would have to cross train in some other roles, it's not an everyday full time software/system manager job, unless they decide to do something like port the system, and there seems no urgency to jump out of the slowing warming pot of water so far.