There are a lot of people leaving the company now and as someone has already said, I am afraid it will be too late for those who are still insecure and are hesitant to quit.
I just came to give well-meaning advice that now is the best time to jump out of this ghost ship and leaving it for later might make it harder to find a new job.
17 replies (most recent on top)
@1ujv+1bH9345h - Your proposing fanstasies... it has nothing to do with pity and everything to do with experience and trying to find better paths...
Now let me address your insults and fairy tales...
1) i tried to explain nicely but you seem like someone on self pity path. 0th step is obviously self belief.
A: I've been in this biz 35-40 years... solved many problems... have code in commercial products running in Fort 500's... I have no problem with self belief, LOL!
2) Dont put mainframe on the resume if that's what gets you the interview. Recruiters are lame and dont understand anything.
A: So what am I supposed to do? Fabricate skills on my resume that the first round of tech interview would find out? Duh. What part of "doing mainframes leads to more mainframes and not AWS is so hard for you to grasp???"
3) Once you get to talk to the team, explain what you can do for them. Most of the time they don't care because it's a standard process - they'll ask you to code stuff or high level design.
A: Now what are we talking leetcode BS and whiteboarding "recursive Fibbonaci number generation" BS? My degree was done in 1992... I work by looking up what I don't know... have never had that answer fly in an interview. Heck even offered to logon and diagnose a dump in real time once... they declined the demonstration...
4) If you're on hardware side, lot of fang companies are hiring there as well.
A: Nope not a real engineer.
5) Job market has never been hotter.
A: Agreed it is hot... But same old IT biz BS... "There's a skills shortage of people with 10 years of skills in a 5 year old thing" LOL!
What part of "there's no entry point" don't you get? Every posting is for "Sr. This-That-or-The-Other"... no on ramp...
Been looking and interviewing for years if not decades in reality.
This isn't about pity... it's about how one basically has to be given a break to start into the "modern" stuff, if one is to ever get started in it at all.
Somehow, my little AWS EC2 Demo website just isn't going to get me around the realities of getting into a FAANG or fang ecosystem company.
So... reality is... JD, MD or MBA would have been much better investment of life as folks with those creds slip between companies with more ease. Have seen it time and again.
You're proposing solutions that simply don't fly in the real world.
This is the best job market I’ve seen since 2007 overall. Strike while the iron is hit. If you can’t a job now, you should be concerned.
@1vpa+1bH9345h i tried to explain nicely but you seem like someone on self pity path. 0th step is obviously self belief.
Dont put mainframe on the resume if that's what gets you the interview. Recruiters are lame and dont understand anything.
Once you get to talk to the team, explain what you can do for them. Most of the time they don't care because it's a standard process - they'll ask you to code stuff or high level design.
If you're on hardware side, lot of fang companies are hiring there as well.
Job market has never been hotter.
"just go out and fail some interviews you'll start succeeding. "
You can't get the interviews without prior paying experience. Heck even some certs are designed for folks that already have some experience.
Folks saying this sort of stuff really don't seem to understand what's going on out there in the market and how it confronts mid-career mainframers.
Mid-career web folks, perhaps a different story.
I agree that finding a software engineering job is a 6 month to 1 year job. Need time to brush up on algorithm and coding speed. Even my son with a new CS needed some months to prepare for interviews. Yes, expect to fail a bunch and you will get better with practice.
This is common and I see this when I interview new kids at a startup.
I don’t agree these interviews are the best way to assess candidates. However, once FAANG started this interview format, many other companies followed the format because a manager doesn’t want to get blamed for a bad hired.
Twenty years ago, I led a team of fresh CS grads. Now I see on LinkedIn that 80% have left IBM for better companies. They were always smart young cookies.
Guess they are considered oldies now and smart enough to to see the handwriting on IBM’s wall.
Finding a job in tech is 1 year project.
Just find time (which ideally you should have last year) and update your skills and leetcode. It'll also take some interviewing and failing first few to get the hang of the process etc.
Even the legacy companies like cisco, orcl etc. Are offering much higher pay compared to ibm to retian and attract new talent.
Job market has never been hotter, just go out and fail some interviews you'll start succeeding.
"Better plan for a youngster is to get OUT of the tech industry. "
If I had kids, I'd definitely steer them elsewhere, unless they really just had a flair for IT...
"Who says he's referring to FAANG? There's a lot of mid-sized tech companies that are growing quite fast and hiring."
Have any examples?
That said, they seem to have the same requirements in postings as the FAANG Co's.
Seems to me whoever is saying, "Chicken and Egg" has it correctly. Every posting I see is for "Senior Muckety Muck". I don't see any on ramps, unless you are a recent college grad. Which leads into the ageism discussion.
There's a reason old timers in this biz are crusty and cranky... It is like that one poster is saying... there's barriers to mobility that MBA's etc. don't have.
Look at Lou Gerstner's trajectory... Harvard MBA, 20 years at McKinsey, Then CEO of Nabisco, CEO of AMEX, CEO of IBM...
No one said... "Have you been a CEO of a cookie company before? Been a CEO of a Finance co. before? Been a CEO of a Tech before???"...
They just said, "Oh a CEO, that's fine."
Never does a posting in this industry at our level say, "Oh a programmer, that's enough".
(Said no recruiter ever, LOL!)
Better plan for a youngster is to get OUT of the tech industry.
Average postal worker is in 6 figure territory.
Average tech worker is doing the 40k shuffle.
And who cares if you make 100k living in NYC, that's pi$$ in NYC.
"It's that self-limiting, low confidence that's keeping you at IBM."
No it's not... it's the requirements on the job postings vs. my resume, LOL!
Chicken and Egg problem... Can't get the experience without the job, can't get the job without the experience.
What planet are you living on? (In jest, don't take personal.)
Who says he's referring to FAANG? There's a lot of mid-sized tech companies that are growing quite fast and hiring. It's that self-limiting, low confidence that's keeping you at IBM. If you feel like your skillsets are outdated, start learning new stuff. There's a lot of certificates and courses you can take. I'm so glad I don't work with people like you anymore.
"Only reason to stay now is if you have some personal reason to stick around. But from a career perspective, get out now."
Not everyone has the skill sets the hyperscalers want.
I've also read that 0.2% of applicants make it into the FAANGS.
So while I see a lot of postings, with really nice salaries, out there. To a mainframer like me, all I see is barriers to entry.
Chances I'm going to be able to choke down AWS training and regurgitate it, then do enough LeetCode to regurgitate that in an interview/whiteboard session... not likely.
This is the headache with the industry having splintered into dozens of competing skillsets... too many of them for anyone one person to master... forcing one to guess which trend to follow... maybe you guess right, maybe not.
No other degreed profession I can think of has this headache. MD, JD, MBA, etc. all seem to be able to fluidly move around. Not InfoTech.
One Project Manager on an IBM project I did, who was about 20-30 years younger than me... left IBM and went to one of the Big Pharma companies... as a Project Manager.
Good luck jumping from IBM z to AWS tech "as a programmer"... our industry doesn't work that way.
A major failing of how we've managed it and allowed it to evolve IMHO.
I strongly recommend you leave now. I've never seen the job market so strong in the past 5 years. Is it perfect? No. But you're pushing your luck if you wait longer. Depending on your role, all the hyperscaling tech companies are hiring right now. Half my team left in the past 6 months for much greener pastures. We both know IBM is on a long road to oblivion. Only reason to stay now is if you have some personal reason to stick around. But from a career perspective, get out now.
This is all I needed. Thanks.
I am working on leaving ASAP. I do agree with the folks saying later will be too late. Now is the good time as the job market appears to be great.
lol. I left the same day Jim left. Two bright minds think alike. Get out or you'll go down with the ship.
Ibm is dead