RE: Future Programmers - The future of IBM i

Dr. Franken,

I totally agree with you, in fact I'm starting back at grad school at UT
this fall for their masters cert in business analytics...lots of SAS, neural
nets, and other really nice model building and database analytics ahead of
me...and no, none of it will be on an (AS/400) except for what I do on my
own...

(ANYONE remember the COMMON in Austin where that teacher literally BEGGED
Gerstner to put AS/400's into the school system similar to how M$ was doing
Windows??????)

However, there is a darker side to this educational coin. I've got an MBA,
had one for years...and I try to keep up on the education side....BUT one of
the most infuriating things is to have some catbert'ish dolt in personnel
tell me "you're OVER-qualified"...whatever the heck that means...which is
usually translated something like "you've got great education and
experience, but we're too damn cheap to want to pay you what you're really
worth".... So, go figure... :)



-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of DrFranken
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2013 9:36 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Future Programmers - The future of IBM i

decryption? :-)

Here's the thing it pretty much doesn't matter what area of IT you're
part of these days. Ever since Susan tagged me as the MQC for RPG (you
need to know the 'M' is for Minimaly :-) ) I've basically phased that
out of my repertoire as I just wasn't keeping up any longer. Instead I
focus on admin and connectivity and upgrades and such.

BUT if you think I did that because admin and upgrades and PTFs have
allowed me to stop learning, let me say: "Vios" "Image Catalogs" "LPAR"
"HMC" "SAN" "VLAN" and a lot of other four letter words. :-)

The key with any part of IT is recognizing that knowing what you learned
10, 20, 30 years ago is helpful, and sometimes profitable, but learning
MUST never stop. Once it stops your value trends downward on an
increasingly steep curve.

I dare you to ask Pete Massiello, Jim Oberholtzer, Rob Berendt, Jon
Paris, heck even Paul Nelson if they've learned anything in the last
week. I was talking to Jim this morning and we BOTH had 'Aha' moments in
the last 24 hours!

When I talk to any IT professional I can tell those who want to AND are
trying to learn and those who want to coast. Coast away but I'm not very
interested in your thoughts if you're on that path any longer. Thing is,
lots of employers feel the same way.

So if you're not investing in educating yourself you're not just staying
even you're falling behind!

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com

On 6/14/2013 3:27 PM, Jon Paris wrote:

Oh dear two disagreements in two posts.

I'm not saying _All_ greybeards Paul - hell I'm a lot older than most of

the ones I teach! But I have worked with a lot of employed greybeards who
meet the decryption I used.

On 2013-06-14, at 3:19 PM, Paul Nelson <nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The graybeards are unemployed because they got outsourced. I saw 2 more
cases last week.

It's not due to their lack of desire to learn new stuff.

Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 512-392-2577
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jon Paris
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2013 2:16 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Future Programmers - The future of IBM i


On 2013-06-14, at 3:03 PM, Michael Ryan <michaelrtr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I think there may be value in teaching
integration techniques along with modern RPG and ILE, but there are

enough

graybeards around to handle the old stuff.

Sorry Michael - in my experience you're wrong.

I've talked to multiple large customers in the past 12 months who are
considering a move away form IBM i because they can't get staff.

Correction

- can't get _affordable_ staff. And a large number of unemployed

graybeards

just want to keep doing same old same old until they retire. These
businesses need to integrate mobile, web, etc. with what they have.
Maintenance is rarely just a fix-it issue - upgrades of existing apps are
always needed.

I have also talked to a number customers who are actively training their

own

newbies - or considering developing such a program.


Jon Paris

www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com




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Jon Paris

www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com