Situation Wanted

March 13, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

There have been a tremendous number of layoffs in the tech sector in the past several months, and we are grateful that the IBM i market is part of the economy but also somewhat set apart from the go-go tech sector that sometimes engages in irrational exuberance. But we also know there is a talent shortage and a skills gap in this IBM i market. The question is, what can we do about it?

Well, The Four Hundred can do one simple and easy thing: We can start a Situation Wanted column, which are doing today to help get people looking for work in the IBM i market in front of people who are looking for prospects to fill empty positions at their companies. And that is precisely what this column is. If you send us some information about the job you are seeking, we will publish it and get your name and desires out there. It is that simple. If this is successful, we will consider putting up a companion Help Wanted column.

Our first Situation Wanted comes from Nate Wolf, whom I have known since he was born. You can see his resume here.

Wolf is my best friend’s nephew, and also the great nephew of one of my several mentors throughout my life, Richard Rubenstein, who I have written about many times. Uncle Dickie adopted me as a nephew and brought me into an intellectual and computational world that I was sorely in need of as a teenager, and importantly when he bought an Apple II – I believe it was in 1979 – for his nieces and nephews as well as for himself, I inherited the older Ohio Scientific Z80 system with the dual 8-inch floppy disk drives that was my very first computer. But more importantly, Uncle Dickie was a marine biologist who didn’t like that career path, and he was intelligent enough to do anything. So when the Spark-o-Matic Corporation, a manufacturer of car stereo systems, in 1980 got its hands on one of these new-fangled IBM System/38 minicomputers, he was at a party and was asked if he could program it – meaning, build a custom MRP II system from the ground up. He, of course, said yes. And then did it.

Less than 10 years later, and after switching from being an aerospace engineer to being a tech writer and after many system architecture discussions with Uncle Dickie, I was the founding editor of a publication called The Four Hundred, dedicated to the child of the System/38.

Nate is just like us – he started out somewhere else but he belongs here in the IBM i community. After working as a mechanical engineer for a few years, he decided he, too, wanted to create programs, not physical objects, and he did an aggressive boot camp to learn all of the modern tools at our disposal. But what Nate really wants is to find a company where he can make a difference and be a part of something, just like Uncle Dickie did.

So, for all of you looking for young talent, this is your chance. And for those of you who are also looking for meaningful work in the IBM i market, send me your situation and what you want and we will keep this column rolling.