from Hacker News

Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset (2017)

by carlchenet on 10/4/18, 6:48 AM with 126 comments

  • by romwell on 10/4/18, 9:04 AM

    The IT 'cowboys' didn't ride into sunset.

    They were fired by banks which are/were stupid enough to cut corners on people who know things about their infrastructure before migrating to more modern systems.

    FTA:

    >One COBOL programmer, now in his 60s, said his bank laid him off in mid-2012 as it turned to younger, less expensive employees trained in new languages.

    >In 2014, the programmer [...] was brought in as a contractor to the same bank to fix issues management had not anticipated.

    Also FTA:

    >Accenture’s Starrs said they go through a “black book” of programmer contacts, especially those laid off during or after the 2008 financial crisis.

    >The job ultimately took five years and cost more than 1 billion Australian dollars ($749.9 million).

    So, in short: a bank fired some old people to pay a billion dollars to a contractor who would hire the same (!) people to do the job.

    The 'problem' is entirely self-made.

  • by tannhaeuser on 10/4/18, 8:55 AM

    It's cheap to portray COBOL programmers as cowboys, but COBOL and the ecosystem around it is actually one of the most organized and fit-for-purpose programming languages around even if it isn't modern by any means. Time will tell if banks and insurances will fare better with J2EE-based systems (meaning classic Java-based enterprise stacks such as EJBs and portlets running under shudder Websfear, which count as new-fangled compared to COBOL in these circles). I could imagine classic J2EE maintenance is being neglected as career path for millenials, just as COBOL is/was for the generation before. J2EE exposes much more escape hatches into system programming and rope to hang yourself, and at the same time will be around for a long time to come, since Java has been the go-to language for almost all big-time eCommerce and FinTech projects at banks/insurances since 2000.

    Edit: a-ok, "cowboys" is part of name of that guy's consulting business

  • by taneq on 10/4/18, 10:54 AM

    Using "cowboys" as a pejorative term ignores the fact that cowboys are fine in their natural environment: The wild west, where self-sufficiency, resilience, adaptability and creativity are more important than engineering processes, documentation, and bureaucracy.

    A cowboy is a loose cannon in the big city, but a "proper software engineer" is useless in the wild west. These banks have just realised that there are a few ranches left.

  • by arethuza on 10/4/18, 9:52 AM

    I watched "The Bank That Almost Broke Britain" about the RBS debacle and it seems a bit rich for bankers to be calling anyone cowboys:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bmbhzb

  • by pbadenski on 10/4/18, 9:12 AM

    100$ an hour? It doesn't sound like a serious expense at all.

  • by mxuribe on 10/4/18, 1:44 PM

    One little side comment: within one of the photos shown as part of this article, they show a photo of Grace Hopper, but no mention nor credit of COBOL's roots to her, nor her contributions to COBOL. So, the past was only made up of cowboys, but not cowgirls, eh? Tsk tsk.

  • by mikorym on 10/4/18, 8:53 AM

    I think this needs a "(2017)" string in the title. I also remember seeing this on HN (probably in 2017 then).

  • by RickJWagner on 10/4/18, 11:57 AM

    I started in COBOL back in the 90s. When I was working in that shop, one of my older co-workers told me about a guy he knew. That guy left his service/repair gig at IBM to start his own shop, he knew how to fix punch-card machines.

    For the decade I worked there, my buddy told me that his pal made a very good living repairing those machines, even though they were long out of fashion and 'there was no market'.

    Seems the same is true for software, too.

  • by xte on 10/4/18, 10:04 AM

    I use this news as a ignition for another point: in the past for business reasons we have evolved concept of "platforms" witch means independent software layers build like a trailer to carry on other software on top.

    Before we have another concept, those from LispM, the "system" as a single entity of well_integrated stuff.

    We have many example of those two way of thinking today: on "platform" side we have snap, flatpack, appimage, lx[cd]/docker, ... on system side we have Emacs, NixOS, GuixSD, ...

    Well, for years the "platform" model seems to be the most reasonable, today seems ancient MIT&c hackers ware right, "system" approach is better. Simple to manage, for good software, do not hide bad practice, force collaboration etc.

    On datacenters today and not from today we do substantially the same, in the past datacenters was a big collection of independent computers, now their are substantially all "a single computer" (even before The datacenter as a Computer by Google), made of many well_integrated components.

    My poor English may not help, but I hope I have been clear up there, if so, what you think?

  • by zoggenhoff on 10/4/18, 11:14 AM

  • by ovrkil on 10/4/18, 9:25 PM

    This article really hit home for me because this is exactly what my current career consists of. I am coverting old AS400s running RPG to QNX servers running C. And like the Cobol Cowboy's say the financial institutions will pay what ever you demand. I owe all this work to a college professor that encouraged me to thoroughly learn RPG for this very reason. Thank you Professor Her.

  • by bryanrasmussen on 10/4/18, 8:50 AM

    didn't we just have this article a few days ago and the consensus was you don't actually get that much money for knowing Cobol?

  • by thanatropism on 10/4/18, 4:05 PM

    > The risk is “not so much that an individual may have retired,” Andrew Starrs, group technology officer at consulting firm Accenture PLC, said. “He may have expired, so there is no option to get him or her to come back.”

    Is "expired" a standard English synonym for pining for the fjords?

  • by tmaly on 10/4/18, 4:20 PM

    > But COBOL veterans say it takes more than just knowing the language itself. COBOL-based systems vary widely and original programmers rarely wrote handbooks, making trouble-shooting difficult for others.

    There never seems to be time for documentation, specifications, and clean code

  • by bsg75 on 10/4/18, 3:10 PM

    > was brought in as a contractor to the same bank to fix issues management had not anticipated

    And continue to ignore. This is not a new issue, but the same story repeating over and over. Management purely via cost control is a terrible approach.

  • by _pmf_ on 10/4/18, 1:50 PM

    This meme has been around for at least 15 years. Banks will be fine, since they have unlimited resources.

  • by cafard on 10/4/18, 4:03 PM

    Is it by any chance COBOL season at HN? This is about the third COBOL article in a week.

  • by polskibus on 10/4/18, 11:33 AM

    [2017]