• The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
Menu
  • The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
  • RPG Programmer Shortage Blamed For CSC’s Earnings Miss

    February 18, 2015 Alex Woodie

    Depending on where you live in the world, there’s either a shortage or a surplus of RPG programmers at any point in time, a dynamic we have covered here in IT Jungle. But rarely has the availability of IBM i programming talent so publicly affected a company as it did last week, when the CEO of Computer Sciences Corp. blamed his company’s $230 million-plus revenue shortfall in part on a shortage of RPG coders.

    Mike Lawrie, the president and CEO of CSC, said “execution missteps” related to personnel recruitment were partly to blame for a revenue shortfall in the company’s third fiscal quarter ended January 2. The publicly traded Virginia company, which develops an IBM i-based insurance application (among many other products and services), reported revenue of $2.95 billion. That was 7 percent below the Wall Street consensus of $3.18 billion and 8 percent below what it brought in during the same quarter last year.

    Lawrie, a former senior IBM executive who spent 27 years with the company before leaving in 2004 to head Siebel Systems, says about $25 million to $40 million of that shortfall can be attributed to the difficulty in finding and hiring RPG programmers to implement insurance applications for its customers.

    “We were, this quarter, in a major rollout with an insurance company that required some very specific skills, RPG,” Lawrie said during a Q&A with securities analysts, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript of the call. “RPG is not a programming language where a lot of people are learning it today, so there is a finite supply. We had difficulty recruiting and getting those people on-boarded in time to be able to bill all the work that was under contract in the quarter.”

    RPG, of course, is the most popular programming language for the IBM i server. While the server platform supports other languages, including COBOL, Java, PHP, EGL, Node.JS, and Ruby, the vast majority of existing applications were written in the proprietary procedural language that IBM first rolled out as Report Program Generator in 1959.

    Nobody in the industry is predicting demand for RPG skills to hit zero, considering the large number of existing applications still running critical applications for companies in every industry. But the tightness of the market for RPG programmers apparently surprised CSC.

    “I think this [difficulty in recruiting RPG programmers] is a result of a much tighter labor market,” Lawrie said while pointing out the projects require some very specific and specialized skills.

    CSC has taken steps to fix the problem, including working with partners who have the programming skills the company needs. It also raised the salaries being offered for the open positions.

    RELATED STORIES

    IBM i Job Market: Not All Doom and Gloom

    The New Normal For The IBM i Job Market

    Your Next Big Tech Job Is . . . Freelancing

    Avoiding Application Modernization Disasters

    If COBOL Is Too ‘Un-Cool’ For School, What’s That Make RPG?

    Scant New Talent Is Finding IBM i

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    Tags:

    Sponsored by
    Maxava

    Migrating to a new IBM Power System?

    Whether it be Power8, Power9 or Power10 – Maxava has you covered

    Our migration service moves data from the old to the new server without disruption while the business continues to operate without impacting performance. Our service avoids long periods of downtime and means businesses can reduce the risk of moving to new hardware.

    To learn more about Maxava’s migration service, call us on 888 400 1541 or VISIT maxava.com

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    Sponsored Links

    ASNA:  Turn RPG subfiles into great mobile apps. Free Mobile RPG Webcast. February 19
    Profound Logic Software:  Reach Your Modernization Goals. Register for the February 25 Webinar now!
    System i Developer:  Upgrade your skills at the RPG & DB2 Summit in Dallas, March 17-19

    Conference Puts IBM i System Management In Spotlight IBM Grants After License Amnesty For Software Maintenance

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Volume 25, Number 10 -- February 18, 2015
THIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY:

Maxava
BCD
COMMON
Computer Keyes
LaserVault

Table of Contents

  • Five IBM i Facts That Will Surprise Your CIO
  • RPG Programmer Shortage Blamed For CSC’s Earnings Miss
  • iFD Streamlines Document Workflow With New Product
  • Considerations For Implementing Encryption On IBM i
  • CYBRA Getting Creative With RFID Solutions

Content archive

  • The Four Hundred
  • Four Hundred Stuff
  • Four Hundred Guru

Recent Posts

  • COMMON Set for First Annual Conference in Three Years
  • API Operations Management for Safe, Powerful, and High Performance APIs
  • What’s New in IBM i Services and Networking
  • Four Hundred Monitor, May 18
  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 20
  • IBM i 7.3 TR12: The Non-TR Tech Refresh
  • IBM i Integration Elevates Operational Query and Analytics
  • Simplified IBM i Stack Bundling Ahead Of Subscription Pricing
  • More Price Hikes From IBM, Now For High End Storage
  • Big Blue Readies Power10 And IBM i 7.5 Training for Partners

Subscribe

To get news from IT Jungle sent to your inbox every week, subscribe to our newsletter.

Pages

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Four Hundred Monitor
  • IBM i PTF Guide
  • Media Kit
  • Subscribe

Search

Copyright © 2022 IT Jungle

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.