The New Guy Rant

I’m the new guy.

Sort of.  I’ve been the “new guy” for about 6 or 7 years.  In the mainframe world I’m still a green thumb, to the open systems world I’m ancient.  And it’s this well known and common difference that leads me to my current woes about my future.

As the new guy I’ve had the great opportunity to take up more and more responsibilities as more and more “not so new guys” have retired.  This seems to be a common thing in the mainframe community from what I understand, thus a push for the next generation of mainframers (google: zNextGen) and certain IBM educational initiatives.

So what happens when upper management drags their heels searching and rehiring vacant positions left by these experienced mainframe personnel to some of these up and coming generation and instead invest filling computer floors full of racks of servers and open system equipment instead?

Simple arithmetic would lead some to conclude that as more and more people retire that eventually the mainframe supporting personnel will give more opportunities to “new guys” like me, but consequentially hindering the investment in my future.  What’s troubling is that finding a single new mainframe person is exponentially more difficult than hiring a baker’s dozen of open systems people and installing a row of servers to accomplish the same requirements.  Open systems department continues to experience dramatic growth (“Ahh toss it, we’re buying new ones next month.”), and the mainframe department continues to shrink (“Yeah, sorry no training funds this year.”).  But come on, this is often bureaucratic decision making.  Do you think they care about my future?  Probably not.

Rather I’ll talk in their language.  If short sighted gratification for this year and next year’s budget is what’s at stake here…what will the cost be to purchase, install, support, and lifecycle these rows of servers vs the cost of a single mainframe box?  Oh, and we haven’t even touched on actually utilization.  Are those servers running applications that could be accomplishing the same task on a more efficient platform?  Thankfully someone here is looking at zVM and zLinux as a solution that would have literally cost a million dollars on licensing fess had they decided to set up server after server for an upcoming project. 

I suppose my main idealistic rant and frustration is seeing everyone unable to relinquish control and desiring total ownership of application AND hardware that leads to this inefficient planning and waste.  If a CIO were to actually focus on “team building” and utilizing current technology to work together as oppose to throwing MORE money at hardware to solve growing projects, I guesstimate you would see half the computer floor freed up overnight. 

We have an industry built upon technology that thrives upon personal control and ownership leading to plentiful administrators segregating islands of inefficient waste.

But what do I know?  I’m the new guy.