I've been able to be productive on the first day for things that didn't require institutional knowledge, but I've never picked up all of the non technical things anywhere near that quickly. I've also never taken as long as 6 months. But if the installation is a real mare's nest, all bets are off. YMMV.
In general, I can learn a new language or a new OS more quickly than a new shop. Search for "dusty card deck". -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of Mark Zelden [m...@mzelden.com] Sent: Friday, February 17, 2023 6:35 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: How long for an experiened z/OS sysprog to come up to speed on a new environment? Wow! I think I'm pretty good and I would never say "1 day". Even back when I was consulting full time at different small-ish clients it normally took a few days to get into the groove and figure out the local environment. And that's with bringing all my own tools to help figure things out because they are rarely documented well as someone wrote. Even if things are documented, each site has naming conventions, processes and procedures that are unique. Figuring out and learning all the red tape takes longer than one day! Back at that time I did a lot of jumping around to different clients there were usually local sysprogs around and they didn't want to help a consultant anyway. So someone helping / volunteering information would make it a bit easier. I still run into that today with people that think it is job security to share information or purposely don't document something. I always felt it was my duty and it also let me move onto other things if someone could do what I was doing easy enough with proper documentation. Today, I work in an environment with 8 sysplexes, 30 LPARs, different standards for things in different sysplexes. I've often wondered how long it would take a good experienced sysprog to be productive in it. Not a "superstar". What I deal with is "experienced" off shore resources that typically have 6-8 years of z/OS system programming and even with a ton of documentation about everything they still aren't productive at all for 6 months and it takes another 6 months before they're doing real work. I'm not talking about being able to do parmlib APF and LNKLST updates. I'm referring to being able to install, configure and roll out software upgrades (not just installing PTFs) across a large complex environment without breaking something. And hardware? Forget it... they don't have a clue. And my comments above refer to "OS" system programming. Other areas like CICS, DB2, MQ, Network have similar challenges but the local learning curve is probably half or less than half. Regards, Mark -- Mark Zelden - Zelden Consulting Services - z/OS, OS/390 and MVS ITIL v3 Foundation Certified mailto:m...@mzelden.com Mark's MVS Utilities: http://secure-web.cisco.com/1omHWGxIkiiMSX-BcfoSVGoO99e23DSy9x98OyPh1DcTN24ve7mVeOQFWQh40PrhekHuuLemMeR8pdcoGO6Yl3H-aB7nZwjs3UCaGGdQZVrrkl8lNHNamcjrCmT63aAiAmZ34T38nQOJLiKfGaovT5DK8alcAfVBFYQi9Wn3WTRuIJtnXQ0qKdyMqjK3wBl7DmMQobkelwp9CsYIGSPKbPC_mrMNigfarMjjFiukLOseNsCcktKRnrYOCLTktEWtF3As35enhjqkzaSZgEDtd1cIlFk2SiHree05AV71zd-K2t61IfzjzntxcTgqAT-QAeZb1wJFcOpC0Y17TieYjp0OFjCliG7eJgVfZpeDSCQ6HnvkgeP17AjsQ-UfE6x8H-617Bbdqxu5mrYoDVcBnISVjjM5RQ11StSarp-qGgw4/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mzelden.com%2Fmvsutil.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
