[Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/17/2018 11:00 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 12/17/18 10:07 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> Simon Clubley  <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>>>
>>> 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 ?
>>
>> Many years ago, we had fortran programmers who would sit down with an
>> engineer and the two of them would work together to produce code.
>>
>> But now in the New Age, engineers all write their own code.  So yes,
>> although we have a couple dedicated programmers, we have only a couple
>> of them compared with a couple thousand engineers writing fortran and
>> matlab.  And those couple dedicated programmers spend their time fixing
>> stuff that engineers broke.
>>
>> My belief is that productivity has gone down as a result, and certainly
>> code efficiency has gone down, but management does not see this.
>>
>>> 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!".
>>
>> It might be mentioned in the job description, but then again it might not
>> be.
> 
> And, to demo even more how this method is of very little value,
> how many jobs list Fortran and Pascal in the vacancy announcement
> because it's just boilerplate and the guy in HR who actually wrote
> the announcement hasn't a clue what is really needed or even what
> a programmer is.  (Yes, I can point out ads listing COBOL, Fortran
> and other languages where the actual work is installing PC's and
> printers.)

Usually HR use the skill list they receive.

Mistakes happens.

But not obvious why mistakes should special target any
particular languages.

But the again a theory that Cobol is much in demand but not
show up in jobs ads because the HR departments systematically
replace requirements for Cobol skills with requirements for
skills in other languages is tin foil hat theory.

Arne