It must be quite common to be in a big financial corp, work in IT and not see a green screen (mainframe terminal) in your entire working life there. I did a stint in one of the mainframe teams in my old workplace (Big Card Network™) but the vast majority of the people in my age bracket who were in IT worked with java and javascript, on the web applications that make up the corp's front-end.

As zhte415 lets on, most of the people working on the mainframes were third-party contractors. I don't think the company even advertises COBOL and mainframe roles. When I was hired (as part of a graduate programme) the job description didn't say a word about mainframes. I had to raise a little hell to get into one of the mainframe teams, and it wasn't even particularly easy.

I mean, you'd think with all the stuff people say about how the old guard is retiring and those ancient systems will need people who know how to maintain them, they'd have been waiting for me with open arms. Not quite.

My hunch is that there's a supply/demand thing going on. It's not that all those big banks etc. don't need modern-educated software engineers that can tend to the ancient tech. They do. Except, those new generation soft. eng's don't really care about the ancient tech, and the corps can buy cheap foreign labour to tend to the mainframes. There's no supply and all demand is covered. So they advertise for the roles that they do need filled, which is to say, everything on mobile platforms, the web etc.