Lesley Carhart 
On immigration as American IT people
Anna@AnnaGeeks but VITAL to have a chance to leave without education restart
Gwyn Ciesla@AnnaGeeks @hacks4pancakes absolutely. I've basically been an IT janitor my whole career. It's fun and more lucrative than you'd think.
No.@hacks4pancakes I got pretty miffed once when some programmer acquaintance called what I do, system administration, being an IT Janitor, in a derogatory tone. It is a noble task. Civilisation run on an enormous amount of legacy systems of all kinds.
@m and it might get you out right now.
@hacks4pancakes I am a Dane in Denmark, so I am currently not in a situation I want to get out of. I was just commenting on the relative sexiness of things.
@m oh, I meant an ambiguous “you”!
Nicole ParsonsStill adore "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" @pluralistic
https://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_-_Overclocked_-_When_Sysadmins_Ruled_the_Earth.html
It was included in the anthology "Wastelands"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wastelands:_Stories_of_the_Apocalypse
Ryan Lounsbury@hacks4pancakes I suppose that should be the thing I should focus on. As a lone wolf IT pro at my current company I do literally everything. It is exhausting to have to find it, build it, implement it, train it, and maintain it.
Liminal witch 🧙♀️ Sarah@hacks4pancakes in case anyone wants to ask, where to learn COBOL, IBM has a course for that https://www.ibm.com/blogs/ibm-training/free-course-announcing-learning-cobol-programming-with-vscode/
Free course: Announcing Learning COBOL Programming with VSCode - IBM Learning Blog
You can take this 16 hour course for free and earn your badge. Get set and dive in for some actual COBOL! This introductory COBOL course helps a novice learn the Structure of COBOL programs, Data types & Variable Handling, Intrinsic Functions, Branching logic and more. The goal of the course is to enable the […]
Jenna Smith@xgebi @hacks4pancakes what in the world is COBOL? this is my first time hearing about but I’d love to know what the uses are for
@jennasmith @xgebi one of the oldest programming languages. The age of your grandma or great grandma. It’s still used all over.
@hacks4pancakes @xgebi omg really? That’s crazy. Ive never heard of it before in other tech spaces despite the fact it’s still used today. Maybe cause I’m still new in tech, so I’ll definitely read about that IBM course.
@jennasmith @xgebi welcome to a super fun rabbit hole!!!
@hacks4pancakes @xgebi LOL thank you, this is what I’m spending my Saturday on than touching my assignments 🫡
Dale@jennasmith @xgebi @hacks4pancakes indeed it is a very fun rabbit hole, I was introduced to it forever ago but forgot about it until I read an article like this. I saved the article for years as a “in case of layoff emergency try this” because of my job search experience during the tech bust of 2001. I lost the article but remembered ‘COBOL cowboys‘ which now I guess has a Wikipedia article 😲!! https://www.npr.org/2020/04/22/841682627/cobol-cowboys-aim-to-rescue-sluggish-state-unemployment-systems
mr_tenorIn many problem domains, when something is working and gets to a certain level of complexity, it bakes in the accumulated knowledge of lots of people, many who will no longer be working there ("no-one knows how this works or why it does certain things"). At that point it is either too risky or pretty much impossible to replace it with some new shiny technology, so it just keeps getting maintained forever.
No new projects are implemented in COBOL
@mr_tenor @hacks4pancakes @xgebi oh okay, so it’s like hospitals and all still using legacy systems?
Eleanor Saitta@jennasmith
Every bank in the world (to the first approximation by capitalization) would be bankrupt within 24 hours if their COBOL code stopped working.
@mr_tenor @hacks4pancakes @xgebi
Every bank in the world (to the first approximation by capitalization) would be bankrupt within 24 hours if their COBOL code stopped working.
@mr_tenor @hacks4pancakes @xgebi
Su_G@mr_tenor @jennasmith @hacks4pancakes @xgebi
A good & helpful explanation on the past, current & future role of COBOL. Thanks. 🙂
Michael Weiss@jennasmith @hacks4pancakes @xgebi COBOL enabled my father in law to retire in 2000. There was a demand for COBOL programmers that far exceeded the supply at the time, due to Y2K. He was paid handsomely for his work that last year to fix software written in the 60s and 70s.
Andy D@hacks4pancakes @jennasmith @xgebi
It's still widely used in the financial space and quite a lot of legacy banking still runs on mainframes 🦕
@IckleAndy @hacks4pancakes @xgebi wait really? is there any security risks to using it or is it that good?
@jennasmith @IckleAndy @xgebi it’s fantastically vulnerable like 60% of the legacy stuff providing you electricity, trains, gas, and water. Security has to be delicately implemented around it.
@jennasmith @hacks4pancakes @xgebi it's reliable (lots of overnight batches etc) so used as systems of record - ledgers/customer records and the like but there will be a lot of plumbing between them and the internet facing bit that is your banking app/Internet Bank website.
But being old and reliable means that a large amount of tech debt has built up so migrating to a more modern platform is quite a large undertaking.
dr_barnowl@jennasmith @IckleAndy @hacks4pancakes @xgebi
It's flat out _terrible_.
But it is the implementation of enormous quantities of critical infrastructure. Banking. Public services. We're talking multi-million line codebases that underpin society.
You stick your card in an ATM, at some point, COBOL will be involved.
@jennasmith @IckleAndy @hacks4pancakes @xgebi
And because most of these codebases predate modern development practices, they don't have automated tests, specifications, or often even version control that'd you'd recognise.
The system itself is the spec. Porting it to something else is a hard hard option. And taking it offline while you wait for something else probably isn't either.
Guess we might find out what that looks like soon if the DOGEbois get their paws on one of these systems.
Graham Phillips
QRSS_Test@jennasmith @xgebi @hacks4pancakes It runs banking and inventory systems all over the world. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL
🌴 Seph 💭 👾@jennasmith @hacks4pancakes @xgebi Computer language, rather out of date these days as far as I know, however a lot of old legacy systems run it because of a combination of no budget for upgrades, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
staringatclouds@xgebi @hacks4pancakes I wonder if Musk has seen this
He might not think the US send cheques to 150 year olds if he does this
Even more niche : Natural.
https://documentation.softwareag.com/natural/nat911mf/overview.htm
Same vintage as COBOL, similar application space.
mav 
@hacks4pancakes
also, for reasons I completely can't justify, some of us think it's fun.
Being a tech janitor is near-infinitely employable. I'm hoping it stays that way as I age,because tech is notoriously ageist.
Tom@mav @hacks4pancakes I'm a SysAdmin ... I think that makes me a tech janitor! 😂
Tim Clevenger 
@hacks4pancakes I feel like there's a decent market for COBOL programmers who also know other languages as organizations seek to build and connect more web/cloud/mobile-friendly applications to their mainframes rather than having disparate teams just throwing shit over the wall at each other.
Samofhearts@hacks4pancakes I'm trying to go from pentester to manager because it's a lot more universal of a skill and I just really like solving big picture issues and working with people.
Geekmaster 👽
@hacks4pancakes 100% agree across the board here. I pride myself as a one-man-army in tech. It keeps me employed, but I too have learned to focus my efforts this past decade, using my full knowledge and skills to connect all the dots, and plug as many holes as I can. It's not "just a job" for me. It's a responsibility I take proudly, a passion that feeds my soul, and to some extent foresight. We see the world in ways most could not comprehend. It's true, there aren't many left who can manage, let alone secure, legacy systems. It's solid advice to specialize in these technologies. They're highly valuable as well, for those motivated by money - they pay mid to high 6 figures. But, you need to be an expert, so put in the work, and be the best at it.
As a community, we need to be prepared, prepare our spaces, and enlighten the next generations. I feel there's a rouge wave brewing out there, bigger than we can imagine, and as a society we're not ready. Time to clean up the mess, so we can get ready. 
Binder🅅@hacks4pancakes I've love to do old legacy stuff... all the position I've seen aren't very good though.
Like 30% below market.
Like 30% below market.
@binder yes, but I’m talking about people who are trying to stay alive or married by getting out
⁂ Kaleb@hacks4pancakes that is a hard reality. I’m just technical enough to to understand things, but in all honesty I’m just a guy who:
- was educated to look at 🌧️ and 🛩️ around it
- drove big 🚛 and then 🚔
- eventually stumbled into touching 💻
Now I don’t even do a lot of that, I’m more a cheerleader and advocate for users than anything truly technical anymore. Professional level immigration is competitive.
anyone seeing this who might be hiring for a Director of Product Development, or Director of Technical Support, HRIS Systems Administrator, or even a solid MSSQL DBA in Canada or Europe, please just forget you saw this and meet me for the first time on https://haugenh.us/kaleb instead
Rich Smith "@hacks4pancakes likewise I earned a nice steady living doing NetWare to Windows conversions. There’s career security in niche fields. As I told a colleague who made an honest mistake that resulted in a 2 day outage, “look at the bright side, you owned up to it. Who else are they going to get to do the restoration? In 2-3 days, cooler heads will hopefully prevail”. They did prevail. He brought me aboard after a 3 year career break. We converted legacy technology debt for 6 years.
silfra@hacks4pancakes What about people that have your background? By the way, congratulations on making it to Australia.
IrishMASMS@hacks4pancakes dam have to break out my Cobol books again
PrivacyDigestHeh heh, COBOL. Those were the days😀
And PL/1 , PL/S , SVC calls, little pink/blue/red cards, PUT Tapes, VSAM , TCAM ,MVT, SVS, MVS. And while Z/OS itself is kind of new, it runs on those IBM style Mainframes
Hardly anyone has the time, people and resources to totally rewrite/re-create those old platforms and backends. And as you mentioned, they aren’t sexy … Maybe I should dig up some of my old documentation 🤔
Pusher of Pixels@hacks4pancakes remember a quote - "People love to hate on Visual FoxPro...but it put my kids through college"
Wombatadon@hacks4pancakes sometimes those people have just moved on to second careers 😊
For compliance in Australia the standards are generally the ACSC Essential 8, and for government the ISM (Information Security Manual)
I second your advice, but it would take a lot to get me back to COBOL