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Comment by nikisweeting | Hacker News Reader

I remember the government's plea for COBOL programmers last year and was surprised we haven't seen that many more posts about it since then.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/what-is-cobol-what-d...

https://onezero.medium.com/our-government-runs-on-a-60-year-...

Just this one yesterday:

https://www.govtech.com/opinion/An-Apology-to-COBOL-Maybe-Ol...

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Maybe if they took the time to train people and create a sustainable talent pipeline then they wouldn't be in this position. They only want experts and nobody want to train.

They are also somewhat underpaid. I’d totally like to be paid to work on mainframes, even if writing COBOL code, but not by taking a pay cut.

How much do you make?

Many of the postings I see are $250k+. That's like 3x what I make.

I never saw one of those, but I don’t think I could be a senior COBOL developer. I’d need training on both language and zOS.

I think it depends on the skill. I see young programmers from big companies like IBM or Accenture making peanuts and working constant overtime while the older guys (I'm talking 30 years experience) who are independent consultants quote 1000€+/day.

> Many of the postings I see are $250k+. That's like 3x what I make.

Proof please.

Ah, I see. I was looking at consultant jobs. Regular jobs seem to be less.

Wasn’t the plea a please for “volunteers” as well?

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