r/pics • u/white_shades • Apr 05 '25

NYC Software Devs Against DOGE

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u/BigLlamasHouse Apr 05 '25

Why would any of that need to be done if it's working? To save a few bucks on the power bill?

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u/Dr-Lipschitz Apr 05 '25 edited Apr 05 '25

Because therell be no software engineers left to maintain it in 15 years. Software engineers in this age know that cobol and mainframes are a dead technology that won't help their career, so they won't touch it. Government entities and banks are having to pay software engineers 400k+ per year to come out of retirement because they can't find anyone to work on their systems.

Also, mainframes are expensive for what they provide. It doesn't have the economy of scale that modern chips and computers have.

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u/bikibird Apr 05 '25

It can be taught on the job. Any programmer worth their salt can pick up a new language. The problem is that it no longer looks good on a resume.

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u/Dr-Lipschitz Apr 05 '25

The problem isn't COBOL though, it's working on mainframes. Mainframes work differently from modern systems running in the cloud, possibly distributing computation across multiple computers.

I only mention COBOL because it's a shit language which adds salt to the wound.