New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system
I was sort of tempted to pursue this. I did a few years in the salty COBOL mines back when I was a PFY about 20...plus years ago. This niche probably hasn't moved very much since then and I could probably recall most of it after a few hours. I'm freelancing right now anyway and some other projects just vaporized.<p>But.<p>A quick skim of the postings is finding that what they're really screaming for is somebody who's been familiar with <i>their particular</i> pile of toxic waste for at least four years at minimum. They're asking for people with 4+ years of COBOL, and JCL (ok, fine), and DB2, and VSAM, and "SDLC" (proto-waterfall), and, oh yeah, a four-year degree.<p>Heck, there's a posting asking for somebody to draw diagrams and document their existing processes, and for that they expect you to have 10 years of COBOL experience.<p>Okay then. This is not yet a mess that they're motivated enough to fix.