Counterpoint. This isn't about IBM, this is about reality assessment skills.
Here's my story. My last mainframe contract petered out in 2003 after shrinking for several years. I last worked on DFSMShsm on a Z900. In spite of everything I did, I could not find another contract or expand the work. I lost money in 2001 and 2002. This is a shrinking market. Growth is over. Recognize and accept that. This has nothing to do with IBM or IBM's business philosophy. Each of us has to find our own way. We can hope for a mainframe renaissance or we can apply our skills to other endeavors. After the Tech-wreck in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, my mainframe consulting business faded away. I took whatever work I could find, which turned out to be doing websites as a Junior Web-head. That's was a step down from z/. I did websites using Dreamweaver and hand coding for a few years. Then I built and maintained applications on Lotus Notes Domino. About 2005 or 2006, I heard that my last mainframe client de-installed their Z900. At one point in the 1980's, they had multiple 3084's which were replaced by 3090's, two 9021's, then the Z900. They gave up on IBM and mainframes and ported their applications off. I have a couple advantages in this brutal market. I was always an "Interface" person in that I have a sense for design and minimizing clicks, mouse strokes, visual contrast. For example, in the 2741/3270 days, I realized that the keyboard-unlock event should have sounded an audible alarm. The 2741 actually did produce a quiet mechanical click but 3270's required the user to press a key to hear the "keyboard-is-locked" beep. Bass-ackwards, dumb, but then, no one asked me how 3270's should work. Someday, I'll add faint vertical lines to a screen editor so that you can "see" the columns. This sense for the "Interface" let me do good work on websites. Another advantage that I have is unlike most "System Programmers", I did not come out of operations. I started my career as an applications programmer on MVT. I can program. Most system programmers are smart operators who know SMP, MVS facilities, and MVS dumps. I see them typing with two fingers, D C, K K E, D K D, F I can crank code. As a result I wrote tools and utilities, post-processed SMF using custom code rather than SPSS, wrote my own performance monitoring utilities. If I needed something, I wrote it. My other advantage is that in the early 1990's I picked up an MS/CSci from GWU's school of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Not to be arrogant but there is something to Computer Science at the graduate level at an engineering school. If you don't have that, you face this business at a disadvantage. So. Programmer, interface aware, academics. Not your average web-head or Notes Domino mechanic. Gradually, gradually, I built my Web-head and Domino skills and expanded the scope of my work. Twice, once on the website job and more recently on my current Notes Domino contract, I've written large, sophisticated Rexx programs. Rexx is my secret weapon. While other consultants are cutting and pasting into Excel (not many can program, remember) or struggling with Visual Basic and Access, I use Regina, stems, and know state engines, associative memory, set theoretic operations, I can write programs to manipulate the data, fast, easily, in ways that they cannot. Step back from the job problem. If you can't find a job doing MVS or z/OS, apply your skills, which are substantive, to other venues. These are hard times but each of us has valuable experiences and expertise. Stop thinking of yourself as a JES2 or CICS expert. No one cares. There are no jobs. The problem isn't IBM, it's your own mind-trap. Find something else to do, do it well, then expand the scope of your work. If Dubuque is paying $20/hour for experienced MVS systems programmers, then find something else in that salary range and build on that. Amp up your skills. Try something, anything. Rather than move across the country for $20/hour, you're smart, find something else. If you are working on a 'frame, even if the money is OK and the job seems secure, build a backstop, a Plan-B doing something else. Then when they tell you, "Surprise! You're laid off!" You can tell them, "Does this mean I get to work full time on my side business and I can earn twice as much as you've been paying me?" -ckh ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
