what attracted me to the mainframe
industry was the fact that it's
indispensable it's pervasive and
persistent coming out of college I
didn't really have any idea what a job
developing for the mainframe would be
like it really blew me away seeing how
important the stuff I worked on was for
someone coming into the mainframe
industry I'd probably tell them to keep
an open mind and not be afraid of a
challenge it's a mistake for companies
to kind of just give up and say well we
can't you know find anyone who wants to
work in this space people want to feel
like what they're working on is
important and impactful so you have to
make it more interesting and a place
where someone does want to work I didn't
really think I was gonna work on
anything big for a while and then out of
the blue my manager just comes up to me
says there's this new product we're
coming out with and that's kind of a big
deal but I want to work on it I think
the expectation that someone out of
school has five years of COBOL
experience is really unrealistic we
don't have that skill but we can learn
it the learning curve on the mainframe
can be a little bit steep I think the
important thing is kind of work to
mitigate that we have a good training
program making sure you're setting them
up to be successful I work with very
experienced developers it makes all the
projects we work on both very
educational and fascinating I think I
have the full ability to learn what I
need to learn especially surrounded by
people who are willing to train and
mentor I think millennial developers are
just as passionate about the mainframe
as the more experienced developers for
IT teams to be really successful I think
the one thing they really need is like a
really flat environment everybody's
thinking about the problems everybody's
solving them I definitely feel like I've
had opportunities advance my knowledge
of the platform both technically and
kind of in other aspects as well also
transition from being a developer to
being a scrum master that was vastly
different from what I
worked on before I see the mainframe
being the same position as like the
cloud and everything else we haven't
even thought of all the things that the
mainframe can do and eventually that's
going to be our job dream big and I
solved those problems I want the future
could be something we can't fathom
there's just insane the amount of
opportunity like no possible way to
really describe it other than like you
can come in and do anything
