COBOL Developer Demand

COBOL developers are highly sought after and well compensated due to the number of legacy systems still around. Many COBOL developers are nearing retirement, so if you are young and know COBOL you will be attractive. Almost no new development though, it is almost exclusively maintenance.

All your banking transactions run over old mainframes using COBOL. Probably on systems maintained for 20 years. They will not even be replaced as most already have tried this and not succeeded.I know of companies training COBOL developers to make sure they can maintain these legacy systems. Mostly they are also the mission critical systems.The web applications at these financial institutions will be in more modern crappy frameworks. But rest assured the expert COBOL developer gets paid mu

I'm 31 and my first job was in COBOL for a big mortgage company.To me, it's impossible that people lack COBOL skills, I was ready to push code to production in less than a week, so I started with a one-week self-teach COBOL which included the specifics of working with this particular mortgage company with its way of naming files, separating DB2 SQL requests in files, never using GOTOs, etc.So when I see this kind of news, once or twice a year, I know it's probably more about

I actually know a bank with an office close to me that still recruits COBOL developers to maintain some of their old legacy systems, while they slowly transition to newer tech. These people get paid pretty well by the way.

Would bumping starting salaries for Cobol devs to 150k, resolve it in the US? (I am assuming banks could afford it.)

COBOL is actually very good money nowadays. There are more legacy systems than programmers left. Learn COBOL and #StayAflotForAWhile

There is a ton of COBOL code out there, and banks are not going to retire those mainframes any time soon :(

There are still jobs for COBOL devs.

Not true, a lot of banks still use z/OS and Cobol, and you can make a good living with those skills.

No one is doing anything new in COBOL but there is so much old stuff that could only be replaced by a massive investment in rebuilding infrastructure. COBOL isn't dying anytime soon.At one point, like 10-15 years ago, I knew experienced well paid COBOL programmers being laid off and being replaced by kids fresh out of school. And then CS programs, if not outright stopped, at least greatly reduced teaching COBOL courses. And no one coming out of school learning Java and Python and Node wa