Angus: Ok, so I am an IBM i smartarse..
I received this email today..
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On Dec 22, 2015, at 6:04 PM, Arie Neumann
Hi Trevor,
We are working on a fresh Long Island based immediate consultant to hire need for a Senior AS/400 Programmer Analyst . Located is eastern Nassau county.
Our client is looking for a professional with general AS/400 knowledge, working experience with RPG400, program rewrite, revision etc. If you have senior level experience in these areas please reach out to me right away.
I apologize if this position is not a good fit for your background/experience or if you are not local to the area.
If this position sounds interesting please respond with your latest resume as soon as you can. Please no calls at this time if there is a match my recruiting team will call you immediately.
Happy holidays!
Arie
Arie Neumann
Sr. Account Manager
OPERATIONIT (formerly Staff IT)
www.OPERATIONIT.com
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My reply
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Arie,
I appreciate your email.
However, I am an IBM i Professional.
In 2008, IBM created a new server platform called Power Systems, and at that time, moved the operating system formerly known as OS/400 and i5/OS to Power Systems and branded it IBM i.
If your customer still thinks it is an AS/400 – which has not been sold by IBM since the year 2000 – I expect they are behind the times and would not be able to offer an environment that is modern, up to date, agile, flexible, or creative. Working on old AS/400 applications would be worse than writing DOS batch files to run on Windows 10. IBM i can run RPG alongside PHP, Ruby, node.js, Python and connect MySQL databases to SQL tables on DB2 on i, but an AS/400 is stuck in a world 15 years old.
And, have you asked the customer what hardware and operating system they are ACTUALLY running? The chance of it being an AS/400 is pretty close to zero.
It is sad that there are customers who are not aware of how the platform has evolved into IBM i and have not embraced moving forward. It is much sadder that recruiters continue to use old and out of date branding to represent IBM’s best operating system for business running on the best server platform in the business world. It would be wonderful if recruiters could stay abreast of the IT world, especially IBM i, and attract new and amazing talent to the platform. Instead, we have ads for jobs on a platform from the 20th century.
Until the customer and yourself reference the platform as it is today and as it will be tomorrow – that is, IBM i – this position does not sound interesting in any way at all. It is a great fit for my skills as they were 15 years ago in 2000, however I have moved far beyond that and consider myself to be much more skilled than I was when I was an AS/400 consultant last century.
And that is sad for the platform, for your customer, and for your reputation as a recruiter who should understand the community in which they are engaged.
I wish you luck in finding an old person to code on your customer’s AS/400. I guess SENIOR is the correct honorific.
Trevor Perry
IBM i evangelist
Long Island resident
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