What's an antiquated programmer to do?
 

Hmmm....a predicament.

I have been programming in a Unisys proprietary language called LINC for 16.5 years. I've dabbled in a few other things. When I began in 1990, it was relatively new, hot, and growing. However, it is dying in the US, though in Europe and New Zealand it still has a presence. It is a language for programming financial systems, though it could be used for any sort of massive data management.

Changes in management to where I contract (and have for the last 10 years) have resulted in political pressure to change to something called SAP. A big ugly monster that will cost this place an estimated 8 million bucks to convert to. Up until February the general manager was completely against this expenditure. He retired. New guy comes in from corporate. He wants to move in the new direction.

I had been told about a month ago that they were going to reduce my billable hours due to budgetary concerns. That was a bummer and a surprise, as I had only two months before gotten a 13% rate increase approved.

So.....based on what they've communicated to me, I could have this work for anywhere from six months to four years, and the level of billable hours could decrease further.

So what to do? Learning other languages is not a problem, however, everyone wants someone to have experience in a given language. I have no desire to start at the bottom of the food chain somewhere with 16.5 years of management, analysis, design, and programming under my belt.

Career change? Go back to school? Everything I have been trying to think of to do results in a dramatic decrease in income and also takes away my home office, and I LOVE working from my home office.

Sigh. Sad to be 37 and antiquated.

Ideas?

I have no idea...but now I'm curious what mainframe you're running on. I used to work for Unisys, you know.

Used to be A-series. I worked locally on a Micro-A, but the client was running on an A-12. However, 11 years ago or so they went PC based for development, and the client has downsized from an A-12 to a Clearpath machine, but I have no idea on the specs of the Clearpath. Only that it crunches numbers and accesses the database really, really fast.

Consulting
Teaching
Move in with ML and become a kept man

Oooh, Clearpath. Yeah, definite upgrade from the A-series.

By the time I got to Unisys, they were out of the mainframe business. We had a few of the old bastards lying around, 'cause they were so damned reliable that we just had to keep supporting them. But I never touched them. I was firmly entrenched in the open systems (ES2000, ES5000, ES7000, etc.).

Geezer.

Is it possible that your skills will be come more valuable now that there are less LINC programmers around? Any contract jobs on monster? Maybe a two pronged approach, LINC, and learn SAP. If you know where they are headed, maybe you can get your skillset up to speed before it's needed.

I have no good advice, but my thoughts are with you on your quest for your next move. I must confess, although you're all writing in plain English, I understand almost nothing being said in this thread.:blush:

Ditto what she said ;)

This is actually a strategy I am formulating as far as how to approach my client with it. Does my client need an experienced SAP programmer, or do they need someone completely familiar with their current system and business who can learn SAP?

But....I do confess to being burned out on programming. I really have only stayed with it because I make a good contract rate and I get to work from home and set my own hours and coach basketball. Working out of an office building somewhere takes at very least some of that away.

I was thinking the same thing. Seems your company wouldn't want to throw away someone with all those years of management, analysis and design experience.