Re:GnuCOBOL – a free/libre COBOL compiler
by wheels on Thursday April 08, 2021 @06:46AM
(#26737214)
I placed second in a statewide (Texas) COBOL programming contest in high school. This was the late 90s. While in college (which I started early), I kept having people track me down to offer mid-six-figure salaries. It was very tempting. It was pretty surreal (again, this was pre-web boom, and starting tech salaries were mid-5-figures) as an 18 year old having people offer me $400k/year.
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Re:GnuCOBOL – a free/libre COBOL compiler
by gghggfd on Thursday April 08, 2021 @08:06AM
(#26737714)
I call bullshit.
Just saw this now. Not sure you caught the context, which was implied by the poster above. This was 1998, when loads of major corporations were terrified of "the Y2k bug" which was talked about in very apocalyptic terms. There was a scramble to find COBOL programmers, because it was feared that the majority of the bugs were in long-running COBOL systems, but most competent COBOL developers at that point had retired. It's true that I didn't follow up with those folks (other than to say, "no thanks"), but being contacted by multiple recruiters promising six-figure salaries was very much a thing.