And the companies that out-source to them get what they want. Cheap under-educated in-experienced SYSPROG's maintaining their most critical DP operating system. I have heard calls that the L1 people have to take from them, it involves explaining how to submit JCL; how to use SMP; and how to use standard IBM utilities such as IEBGENER. How a "senior systems programmer" can NOT know how to use IEBGENER speaks volumes about how they define a "Senior Systems Programmer".
Seriously, if some of these companies saw the incident reports opened by these Systems Programmers that are running their systems they would (should) be very scared. But this is strictly my own opinion. Russell -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]]on Behalf Of Scott Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 4:28 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: IBM driving mainframe systems programmers into the ground No, that's entirely wrong. IBM is not trying to reduce the cost of mainframe ownership. Less cost = less profit. IBM is simply tackling the Mainframe market's low hanging fruit--the grunts who keep things moving--because no other areas for dramatic profit expansion really exist. IBM sells this to clients as reducing the cost, but that reduction is either non-existent or negligible. Rather, the purpose is to get even better margins. Assume the average pay rate is $60-80/hr for one of these sysprogs. The contract agency takes $40, which gives half to the grunt. Huzzah, IBM has snatched half of your pay check, with a quarter headed to the agency and you get 25%. If you're not happy then they'll fire you and you can't go after IBM because you never actually worked for them. I'm not sure if this is Capitalism or Canibalism, but I wouldn't doubt IBM's pursuit of the later if it helped with the former. Scott On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 1:45 PM, Bill Fairchild <[email protected]> wrote: > Or become a contractor to IBM yourself. Then you can try to make a profit > by offering your subcontractors considerably more than Veritas does. > > If IBM is trying to drive down the price of Sysprogs and they succeed, then > they will have reduced the total cost of ownership of a mainframe system to > a mainframe customer, and perhaps they will be able to sell more mainframe > systems that way. > > Bill Fairchild > > Software Developer > Rocket Software > 275 Grove Street * Newton, MA 02466-2272 * USA > Tel: +1.617.614.4503 * Mobile: +1.508.341.1715 > Email: [email protected] > Web: www.rocketsoftware.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
