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California Can't Perform Pay Cut Because of COBOL
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Aug 05, 2008 01:41 PM
from the handwaving-only-gets-you-so-far dept.
from the handwaving-only-gets-you-so-far dept.
beezzie writes "Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered a pay cut, to minimum wage of $6.55/hr, for 200,000 state workers — because a state budget hadn't been approved yet. The state controller, who has opposed the pay cut on principle and legal grounds, now says the pay cut isn't even feasible because the state's payroll systems are so antiquated. He says it would take six months to go to minimum wage, and nine months more to restore salaries once a budget is passed. The system is based on COBOL, according to the Sacramento Bee, and the state hasn't yet found the funds or resources, in ten years of trying, to upgrade it." The article quotes a consultant on how hard it is to find COBOL programmers; he says you usually have to draw them out of retirement. Problem is, if there were any such folks on the employment rolls in California, Gov. Schwarzenegger fired them all last week, too.
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Submission: California can't perform pay cut because of COBOL by Anonymous Coward
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Why COBOL Could Come Back 405 comments
snydeq writes "Sure 'legacy systems archaeologist' ranks as one of the 7 dirtiest jobs in IT, but COBOL skills might see a scant revival in the wake of California's high-profile pay-cut debacle. After all, as Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister points out, new code may in fact be more expensive than old code. According to an IDC survey, code complexity is on the rise. And it's not the applications that are growing more complex, but the technologies themselves. 'Multicore processing, SOA, and Web 2.0 all contribute to rising software development costs,' which include $5 million to $22 million spent on fixing defects per company per year. Do the math, and California's proposed $177 million nine-year modernization project cost will double, McAllister writes. Perhaps numbers like those won't deter modernization efforts, but the estimated 90,000 coders still versed in COBOL may find themselves in high demand teaching new dogs old tricks."
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i knew it (Score:5, Funny)
This brings back memories of when we picketed our COBOL professor christmas party with signs of:
"COBOL raises taxes"
we couldn't have been more right
Re:i knew it (Score:5, Funny)
PWN3D YR PAYROLL.
I wonder if the guy who maintains the COBOL is sitting in an SF jail right now - he'll only tell the Mayor what the name of the right functions are..
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Re:i knew it (Score:5, Funny)
They need to update to more advanced frameworks. Like COBOL on Cogs.
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COBOL. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:COBOL. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:COBOL. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:COBOL. (Score:5, Funny)
No, the problem is that someone put a T-800 series Terminator in charge of California!
All the state's COBOL programmers have to work around the clock just to keep that early-80's piece of shit working.
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Re:COBOL. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:COBOL. (Score:5, Insightful)
no - the problem is that no one wants to be paid minimum wage to program COBOL
No, the problem is CompSci snobbery and VERY poor textbooks that went thru all sorts of contortions to be GOTO-less.
COBOL-74 had excellent capabilities for creating very structured, COBOL-85 even more. And "88" variables are just wonderful for decomplicating hairy IF statements.
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Re:COBOL. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you ask me, this is all payback for the original design of COBOL. If they had just extended FORTRAN and required any one interested in looking at code to have a 3rd graders grasp of math, California wouldn't be in this position and existing COBOL programmers wouldn't have to lie about their development language when talking to other developers.
Actually, this story is about how California can't screw their state workers to make a political point, right? I guess COBOL wins after all, but they really should have made the syntax a little more like befudge.
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Re:COBOL. (Score:5, Funny)
It was the Complete Idiot's Guide, thank you very much.
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Re:COBOL. (Score:5, Interesting)
the problem is nobody in IT wants to hire old people.
You are right and the situation is even worse with more engineering oriented firms. Age discrimination in software/hardware is rampant and out of control. Partly it is institutional but often it is that the average 35 year old manager isn't even aware of his prejudices.
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Re:COBOL. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure they do. When I do a job search for IT positions, nine out of ten are for "senior" level positions. Nobody is hiring junior or just normal engineers. Seniors only.
Usually "senior" means 5+ years experience with some piece of technology invented six years ago, though.
So to get a job in IT, you can't be old, you can't be young, and you must have started working with every one of the latest technologies professionally on the year it was invented (before most businesses even used such technologies).
I can't believe anyone can find a job with those requirements. Perhaps the mass of positions advertised these days are just a ploy to allow more H1Bs and outsourcing.
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Re:COBOL. (Score:5, Insightful)
They lie in their requirements, you lie on your resume, balance is achieved.
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I can code COBOL (Score:5, Insightful)
I can code in COBOL. It seems unlikely, however, that Califorina can afford my fee.
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Programmers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, wait; you don't. This is just more politics...
Re:Programmers? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Programmers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but I would need a high degree of evidence to show me what a pay rate change would require reprogramming.
And I work with a COBOL system.
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Re:Programmers? (Score:5, Funny)
I work with a COBOL system
How soon can you get on a plane to California?
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Re:Programmers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me the people who should get their pay cut are the governor and legislators. They're the ones who haven't produced a budget.
Don't give them back pay either - every day there's no budget is another day they lose a payday - forever. That might encourage them to get their job done on time.
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Re:Programmers? (Score:5, Informative)
The Governor refuses his salary, so that won't work.
I suspect the legislators are wealthy enough that their per diem cut wouldn't be too much hurt.
Now what *would* work...you know how they choose a pope?
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Re:Programmers? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's clearly 1960s and 1970s code. It probably has the pay rates hard-coded in, rather than using a database, because back then memory was expensive and logic had to be compact.
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Re:Programmers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes you really do. Often, with really old systems like this, data that ought to be in tables is hard-coded in the system, sometimes in really obscure places. Or the code may only support pay *increases* because nobody thought there'd ever be a pay decrease for a government employee. (Seriously.) If you've ever worked on a project to replace an antiquated system, especially for a utility or government entity, you'd be shocked at what you saw. It's amazing that anything works at all.
Job security? Incompetence? Micro-management? Probably a combination of all three.
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Re:Programmers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep I remember my first programing instructor explaining the idea of sentinel. You pick a number that would never come up to mark the end of data input. like 99 for a year. This was only 83 so 99 didn't seem that far away.
When I asked him about that his answer was.
Nobody uses software for that long.
You know I never used sentinels like that in any of my programs after I finished that class. I have to assume that it was a standard method back in the day like using i,j,k for integers in loops. "Fortran defined those as integers be default"
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Re:Programmers? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen how government applications are coded. The majority are either built by someone that can program but not engineer software and the rest are built by the lowest bidder. I find it perfectly feasible that a simple change will break the entire system.
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Re:Programmers? (Score:5, Funny)
Hell, where I work now we're having problems because a particular CBT REQUIRES a floppy disk. Nobody can get the money to have the CBT code changed. The new computers don't come with floppy drives and the old computers are required to be taken out of service. Emulation software can't be used because it won't pass the "approval process" and putting a floppy drive into a new system voids the maintenance agreement.
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Re:Programmers? (Score:5, Informative)
Also what is funny here is that dropping the wages wont get very many state workers to quit, they are so entrenched with their vacation time and specialized skills that they WONT go anywhere, they just like to bitch about it. Your average gov't worker is just that, a person who couldn't move on, every once in a while you run a cross a bright star keeping the mess together but they never amount to much as they leave after a couple years anyway.
I have suggested many times that entire departments need to be fired, halved and hire new employees with 20% raises. There is so much bloat in personnel that it is insane, most of the shops have one guy doing the work for 10 people anyway.
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Great programming job! (Score:5, Funny)
The programmers of California have created the greatest payroll application of all time. You can only raise salaries, not lower them. Ingenious!
Wrong! (Score:5, Funny)
They created the worst payroll application of all time... it takes 50% longer to raise them back!
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rule #1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Read in an Arnold voice: (Score:5, Funny)
I need a COBOL programmer, who is your daddy and what does he do?
Re:Read in an Arnold voice: (Score:5, Funny)
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Uhh... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have never seen a payroll program that has the wages hardcoded in it... there is no reason that this can't be done... she simply doesn't want to.
Re:Uhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can easily picture a system that encodes rules about pay grade differences derived from huge piles of laws, union contracts, and so forth. Changing everyone's pay to the same low level would violate all kinds of intertwined constraints and validation checks, and thus be rejected. I imagine the time quoted to make this change is due to the need to work around these cross-checks without eliminating them entirely, as most of the time (i.e., when the governor isn't posturing) they are quite useful to help avoid illegal or improper changes.
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When you pay minimum wage for labor... (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is not lack of programmers.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Problem is not lack of programmers.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is this person is lying. Seriously, wages change all the time; probably at least once a year people get reviewed and get raises; you're going to tell me there's a 9 month backlog?
And why on earth would it take 50% longer to raise them back up again? That makes absolutely no sense.
There's only one obvious conclusion: the state controller is lying.
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Re:Problem is not lack of programmers.... (Score:5, Informative)
As I understand it, Arnie wants to pay them minimum wage, and then grant them back pay once the budget is passed. That's a whole different calculation, and requires some kind of per-employee escrow account, etc...
If I was a Ca state employee, I'd be pissed. Thankfully, I'm not even a resident anymore.
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Re:Problem is not lack of programmers.... (Score:5, Informative)
My girlfriend works for the state. She handles part of the time/payroll process. Most of it is still manual and done in ledger books. For the facility she works at with about 500 employees there is a single person who handles all of the payroll data entry into the system. The entire system is so antiquated it would be a nightmare to sort out. It isn't as simple as updating a single value to $6.55 and being done with. Everything is tiered and based on seniority. Each position has a different pay rate and is influenced by how long the employee has been working for the state. There are so many layers of complexity in that system that it would boggle your mind. Hell... the state just LAID OFF 200,000 people. Those are only the part time folks. How many people are still employed? A million? Maybe more? Do you really want some amateur screwing with the production database that is responsible for paying a million people? And not just paying, but deducting social security, medicare, payroll taxes, pension payments, Cal-PERS and all of that?
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Take ours (Score:5, Funny)
We have about 20 Cobol programmers. We still run CISC and what have you. You can have them. Cheap.
Sounds like B.S. to me (Score:5, Insightful)
If (as someone above stated) a programmer is required to update what should undoubtedly be database fields containing salary information, then it sounds like a problem of implementation, and not one of technology/language of choice.
Re:Sounds like B.S. to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but do they still have the expertise in house to make any changes?
I've known organizations that had to pull people out of retirement (at 5x their old salary) to maintain old mainframe systems -- for the simple reason that there isn't anyone else left who knows how to modify the system, and if you don't throw cash at the old-timers, they'll laugh at you and go back to their golf game.
If it works, great. If it stops, some companies simply don't have anyone left who can fix it. And then you're SOL.
Well, if it's a Vietnam-era bit of software (as TFA indicates) then it's quite possibly an implementation problem. What we currently consider to be "best practices" are likely to all be younger than the code in question. In fact, most of them are probably gleaned from systems just like this.
I wouldn't really be surprised that a system for "which the state made a large investment decades ago and has been keeping it going the last few years with duct tape" isn't really easy to cajole along.
I've been involved in projects to replace legacy applications -- it's sometimes not possible to actually give them all of the functionality because nobody has a detailed list until someone comes along and says "oh, what about feature X, how do I do that?" Then you see a room full of people looking stunned and asking "why is this the first we're seeing of this??". Often, it's a feature which is so fundamentally incompatible with everything else you've been told -- "X can never happen. Oh, except there."
Never underestimate just how bad software of that vintage can be, and just how hard it is to fix or replace it.
Cheers
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Its not because of COBOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Its because of poor coding skills.
Convenient scapegoat there they have.
Should just fire everyone (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a lot easier to just fire them with the software is what they are telling us.
Seriously if California is in a budget crisis how will they pay firefighters and hospital staff? You can pay everyone full wage now and in 10 months stop paying EVERYONE entirely.
In a business with this kind of budget problem you simply lay people off. People who work for the state are up in arms over this, but I've been laid off a number of times. You just fill out your unemployment insurance paperwork and get like 1/4 to 1/2 your salary after a few weeks, and look for a new job in the meantime.
I'm not sure why unions act like every person should be guaranteed a job. What universe you have to live in for things to be so certain?
How will they pay hospital employees? (Score:5, Interesting)
I kid you not about this: when I worked in the Los Angeles County Health System, I was paid by both the county and the state bursars. The paperwork for my job stated specifically that I was required to carry out my job EVEN IF THERE WERE NO FUNDS AVAILABLE TO BE DISBURSED TO ME FOR MY PAYCHECK. I have that document somewhere in my vertical archaeological dig of paperwork from the prior century.
I pointed this out to the H.R. person after my employment physical, and she told me "Honey, don't worry about it, the state don't run out of money." I respectfully disagreed, crossed out the line, initialed it, and signed the paperwork. Nobody gave me any trouble, but if this happened nowadays, I bet they wouldn't let me in with that line crossed out.
Don't even get me started about the payroll records and timecard abuse: the department secretary always told me to sign the blank timecard and she would fill it out: I refused to sign it unless I also filled out my hours. When I put in more than forty, she said, "Oh no, don't worry about it, we'll take care of it," or something equivalent to that.
I never saw timecards again from the department.
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Time-consuming? (Score:5, Funny)
The problem is.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Those of you saying "how hard can it be to write a couple of lines of COBOL" are probably underestimating the problem.
If all they had to do was just lower people's salary to $6.whatever per hour, that wouldn't be the issue. The problem is they have to account for the ACTUAL salary the person should be making, because once the budget is passed they will have to pay all those people back for the salary that's owed.
So, there's a big issue here. They have to calculate their salary like they would anyway, and then pay them minimum wage for the number of hours actually worked (because I'd guess a number of State employees are "exempt"), remember how much they SHOULD have been paid and how much taxes SHOULD have been taken out, record that information, and then print out a check.
In a modern programming language with a modern relational database, no problem. In COBOL with an obsolete non-relational DB, perhaps even one with 80-column mindset? Yeah, right. Good luck with that.
Re:Not as lame as people are thinking... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't forget, the good governator is probably payed by that system too and you know HIS pay ain't going down.
The Governator is getting paid an annual salary of $1 a year. If his pay went down any further you'd probably end up with a divide by zero error somewhere.
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Re:can't find COBOL programmers? (Score:5, Insightful)
the kind that you can get for minimum wage
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Re:This state controller needs to be fired (Score:5, Insightful)
If your understanding of how government works is so limited that you didn't know that the Controller can't spend the money to upgrade the system without Legislative budgetary approval signed off on by the Governor, do us all a favor and stay home next election day.
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