[Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 12/16/18 7:47 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2018-12-15, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> On 12/15/2018 10:06 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> Experience varies.  The places I mentioned fo0r COBOL are
>>> constantly in the hiring mode.  Finding qualified people
>>> is becoming the problem.  (The last COBOL gig I did was
>>> in GA in 2012.  After I left they spent 3 years repeatedly
>>> advertising for another COBOL programmer.  No one who
>>> applied had any COBOL experience at all.  After three
>>> years they just stopped trying.  I have spoken with them
>>> about the problem and know for a fact what transpired.)
>>> It is not a lack of demand but a lack of supply that is
>>> driving this market.
>>
>> That is a hypothesis.
>>
>> And a very easy one to test.
>>
>> If it is a supply problem then salaries for Cobol
>> would skyrocket.
>>
>> Well - they have not.
>>
>> So that hypotheses van be rejected.
>>
> 
> You and Bill are both overlooking something when it comes to Cobol
> and Fortran jobs.
> 
> You are both wrongly assuming that dedicated programmers, based in
> western countries, will always be hired for both types of jobs.
> 
> In the case of Cobol, how much Cobol development is now done in India
> and similar places ? 

None of the stuff I have posted.  No US Government work is offshored
(for some rather obvious reasons.)  Banks tend to keep things in house
where they can be closely watched.  None of the Insurance Companies I
have ever had any contact with outsource any of their development or
maintenance.  And the Largest Credit Card clearinghouse is definitely
all onshore and hires additional staff regularly.

>                        Supply problems there may not result in salaries
> skyrocketing (at least by western standards).
> 
> In the case of Fortran, how much of the Fortran development is done by
> dedicated programmers, and how much is done by people (say researchers
> and cheap/free labour otherwise known as students) who do the development
> as part of a larger research project ?

I am not aware of any students actually working at NASA although they
do probably have interns.  But I doubt they are writing any of the
serious code.  :-)

> 
> In the case of Fortran especially, the latter type of usage is not going
> to show up on the job boards as "Help! Fortran programmer wanted!".

Good researchers would hire real programmers to write and maintain
their code.  Their time is too valuable to spend it keyboarding and
they usually know what their strengths and weaknesses are.  Scientists
and engineers are seldom computer whizes and they know it.  And then
you have the other part from scientific, engineering.  Real time.
A lot of embedded aircraft software is still done in Fortran.  But,
as previously stated, people like Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Raytheon,
General Dynamics and McDonnel-DOuglas do not use Monster or Indeed
to hire.

bill