CodeMonkey
Member
- May 31, 2017
- 393
- 144
it's because there's not enough people who know COBOL or the specific versions to be able to be able to switch over, so programmers that know all the ins & outs of Cobol tend to make rather large checks from banks either to keep their systems on life support or to transfer them over from, but basically cobol programmers are relatively high pay grade & in all honesty I think the Cobol programmers of the past were evil geniuses who made their programs so well integrated that it guaranteed job security. Unfortunately it guaranteed their job security so well that they still get contracted outside of retirement to work on systems they've made and worked on their entire careers.Well, i was really surprised that investment banks are really cutting edge of IT. Adoption of new technologies is really rapid compared to other industries. I've seen old software in other branches - energy, military but banks are paying big money to have new systems. Of course COBOL is there as well, but new projects are really fun to play with.
oh as far as your cutting edge comment, they just tend to layer on top of their main Cobol system. so you have a lot systems and subsystems relying on this old Cobol system.