Need More Help? Help Yourself

We've blogged a few times about the number of shops that tell us the lack of skilled IBM i staff is a major problem for them. Some even say it is one of the reasons they are considering moving off the platform--they just can't find people to fill positions--especially developers who can create modern applications based on i. We hear this a lot.

Fortunately, someone has decided to do something definitive about this problem. Regular readers of our blog will recall that we've talked before about our friend, Jim Buck. His IBM i program at Gateway Technical College has companies clamouring for his graduates. We've often said how great it would be if we could clone Jim to replicate this success elsewhere.  Well, maybe we can't clone Jim, but Jim (and others) are working hard to create clones of his program!

The project is not simply about increasing the number of colleges teaching IBM i curriculum--although that in itself would be a welcome improvement. It also wants to address the disconnect that exists between colleges and companies that need their graduates. Developing a partnership between business and academia ensures that the skills that today's companies require are being taught. Ultimately the project aims at developing an industry-led standardized curriculum that focuses on the skills that today's businesses running IBM i need, with accompanying certifications to give hiring companies assurance of the skill level achieved by the graduate.

This is not just a pie in the sky effort. First of all, Gateway already has experience at creating industry-led standardized curricula for non-IT programs and replicating those programs across the country in partnership with other schools and companies. Nor is it a shoestring project, the intention is to obtain funding from a U.S. Department of Labor program--money always helps!

So why is your help needed?

Even with their experience to draw on and (hopefully) the money to fund it, the project organizers need your help. They are looking for companies that need or anticipate a need in future enterprise-level IT skills to help them gear the curriculum to the requriements of businesses. That's where you come in, readers.

Here's a link to a brief survey to begin that process. The survey will help guide the organizers to understand where the specific skill gaps are (e.g., rank in importance to your business the need for skills in CL, RPG, PHP, .Net, etc. ). You'll also see on the survey the five schools that have initially signed up to work on this. This list is expected to grow over time but you may select one or more schools that you would particularly like to work with. You will also be asked for your company name and location as well as a business contact so that someone from the project can follow up with you to get more details and determine some of the ways in which your company can participate in guiding this project to meet the needs of businesses like yours.

As usual, we're interested in your feedback on this idea. But most of all, we encourage you to take the survey and get involved in helping ensure the future supply of IBM i skills in the marketplace. 

Mentoring and More

We were particularly pleased to see the comments to our blog two weeks ago on training new RPG programmers. It's always gratifying to know that you are not the only people in the world who think that educating our replacements is a good idea. Maybe some of you want to work forever--not us--we have many things we'd like to do.

Among the comments was one from Torbjörn Appehl who mentioned that in Sweden a company named Tieto had recently undertaken a program to train young recruits in the joys of RPG. We mentioned this story last year in our blog, but at the time didn't know the name of the company, etc. Now, thanks to Torbjörn, we have been able to look at the company's website and we highly recommend you to pay a visit too. This is a company to be watched. If you don't live in one of the countries Tieto serves, you're forgiven for going off and weeping quietly in a corner as you bemoan the state of IT companies in North America and probably elsewhere.

So many companies seem content to simply deal with resource shortages by outsourcing, which is not only a short-term solution, but also one that in our opinion is also shortsighted. Do we really want our children to be the hewers of wood and and drawers of water for the rest of the world because we were not willing to invest in them? On the Tieto website pay attention to the mention of mentoring programs and other similar investments the company makes. Do you know of anyone in North America doing that? Or are most, as we suspect, simply bemoaning the skills shortage, which is not just an IBM i and RPG issue, and doing nothing about it.

This issue is fresh in our minds as it came up during the roundtable discussion that opened the annual WMPCA Spring Conference, which we are attending this week. Present at the meeting were a number of present and former students of our friend Jim Buck, who we mentioned in the earlier blog entry. Some of them described the importance of mentoring and internship programs to their success and how hard such opportunities were to come by. Jim is currently working on ways of extending the reach of his programs and we hope to work with him on that. Something needs to happen.

Another comment on the blog came from Christian in France who works for a French training company that runs introductory IBM i and RPG training two or three times a year for clients whose companies have recruited young programmers. We were particularly pleased to see Christian's comments regarding modern programming practices and tooling.

In part he said: "Of course, we use SQL and free RPG, even if we have to talk about DDS and fixed form RPG. Our tools are system i Navigator and RDP, no choice!..."

"As you can see, it is possible to teach 'IBM i', it's a wonderful system with many advantages that can be interesting for young people, but we have to show them the 'sunny side'."

The "sunny side" indeed Christian! No young programmer in their right mind is going to be interested in RPG II style fixed-format coding and SEU. You'll be lucky if you keep them for a month, even if they are an unpaid intern! Show them modern RPG and RDP and you'll find a very different response.

Thanks also to the others who commented on the blog. We really appreciate your feedback.

Another point that came up during this evening's discussion was that most IBM i programmers aren't just programmers. They're really business analysts that implement the results of their analysis in RPG. This in some ways reinforces the point we made about retraining experienced business people and teaching them how to program. It was the way Jon's father broke into programming and we know many other people whose entry into the world of computing took a similar path. Now if only we could work out a way to make that happen on a large enough scale to make a dent in unemployment levels and the RPG programmer shortage that would be progress!