Tell us the truth about ABSA, Maria

[rpm]

Tell us the truth, Maria

Absa silent about its IT division and where the pressure to restructure is coming from

[mercurial]

People still use COBOL?

[Jola]

People still use COBOL?

Banks have plenty old systems, sometimes they need to be updated / modified.

[ld13]

People still use COBOL?

Last time I heard, yes - met someone few years ago that earn $$$$$$$$$$² working almost just with COBOL! Its crazy.

[Hamster]

People still use COBOL?

You'll be surprised how many government systems still use COBOL, fixed length files and everything crap that is older than me.

[BGE]

Maybe it's time I consider where I bank... I really hate the way ABSA is going about this process!

[Hamster]

Maybe it's time I consider where I bank... I really hate the way ABSA is going about this process!

Meh, a year or so ago everyone hated Standard Bank for mass retrenching. People will forget about this within a couple of months.

[entrepr]

People still use COBOL?

My question exactly! I thought those staff would be retired, not retrenched.

[Naks]

People still use COBOL?

Yep, major $$$ if you know COBOL these days. The core systems at SARS also run on Cobol, I've seen one of these programmers light up R100 notes just for fun.

[Hamster]

My question exactly! I thought those staff would be retired, not retrenched.

It's definitely weird that they are retrenching their COBOL devs since those guys are really hard to get hold off. In other words (with no sugar on top) they old, dying out and losing their minds. You need them for transitioning your system to newer technologies.

[mercurial]

It's definitely weird that they are retrenching their COBOL devs since those guys are really hard to get hold off. In other words (with no sugar on top) they old, dying out and losing their minds. You need them for transitioning your system to newer technologies.

Either that or they don't want to pay those exorbitant salaries anymore, in which case, they are probably going to hire juniors for their roles.

[Hamster]

Either that or they don't want to pay those exorbitant salaries anymore, in which case, they are probably going to hire juniors for their roles.

I rate Paying a couple of COBOL devs those massive salaries should still be cheaper than either:

1. Hiring tens of juniors (inexperience costs a lot more...they just have a way to f$&k things up) and get nowhere,
2. Or outsourcing to a company with specialists in everything that is not COBOL which will charge you a crap load of money for design sessions and dissecting your system. Outsourcing will most likely result in a complete rewrite anyways.

[Johand]

People still use COBOL?

Because banks believe in tried and tested. Even new banks use COBOL. Capitec for example uses TCS BaNCS which is written in COBOL. On Windows. True story.

http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...rtnerGuide.pdf

[2012]

People still use COBOL?

It's a solid language, the fact that it's still around shows how solid these systems on cobol have been.

Fortran is still being used these days as well, because of it's great number crunching abilities - and when calculations take days to solve, the extra precision and speed adds ups (saving budget and other limited resources).

[Sinbad]

Maria choked off Transnet's capex and cut their budgets -now they have to borrow R100bn from the capital markets to get back on track.
She's doing the same to absa. That, and the fact that Barclays considers SA IT people to be backward 3rd world hicks.