Re: Biggest issue facing YOUR IBM i shop? -- MIDRANGE-L

You had me going until you said "with OS/400" :-) Seriously though I believe this is a larger issue than we want to admit. Far too many reasonably well qualified developers have 5250 disease (see my most recent blog) and are no longer moving forward, so they don't fit your qualifications. Then you have fewer schools with good curriculum on IBM i because its not "sexy." Except that it IS but they don't hear that, they hear AS/400 and OS/400 and RPG and they run away in droves. WE are all at fault here every time we use the old names and terms!

I just hired a young man still in college who had never heard of this machine. I started out explaining that it has a 128 bit object oriented architecture, that it is effectively insulated from the hardware, that it cannot get a virus, that it's fully SQL complaint database is included and built into the OS. Explained that it can run java and apache and C and PHP and and. He was nearly drooling at the thought. Yes I admitted its heritage was the AS/400 which led to further discussion.

Would you sell a Toyota Prius by starting with a discussion of the corolla? I wouldn't.

WE must sell Our platform to any and all by extolling its virtues, it's strengths, it's capabilities, and yes, in the end admitting that it runs all that stuff of iSeries legend as well.

If we do a good job more will want to have theses skills and more will be inclined to provide them as well! In the mean time training up our own is one option.

DrFranken

On Aug 12, 2013, at 6:37 PM, Sam_L <lennon_s_j@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

*This message was transferred with a trial version of CommuniGate(r) Pro*
Biggest challenge: Finding qualified, full time developers.

(Defined roughly as, but not limited to:
Recent experience with OS/400, RPG IV & free and embedded SQL;
strong SQL skills for ad-hoc analysis & research;
comfortable with modern development tools like RDP;
good communication and analysis skills;
the ability to see the "big picture" beyond a piece of code.)

We have all our critical data on the iSeries and are committed to it,
and have been for 20 years, thought we have a lot of .net front end code
as well. But finding full time developers is hard (our setup is not
suitable for a consultant or telecommuting)

Sam

On 8/11/2013 9:34 PM, DrFranken wrote:

I am curious what is YOUR view, the view from your seat of the most
important challenge facing your shop

--
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list
To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.