Two things can be true at the same time. Politics is broken but has never been more important. Music is ever-evolving, but old music is still better. Men are the stronger sex, but women shape the world. The mainframe is the modern epitome of enterprise computing but has been presumed dead since the nineties. Well, maybe not dead, but at least dying.

Cue the snorts and eye rolls from the true mainframers who have stood by System/Z since before the floppy disk was somehow passed over when we needed a save icon. And although I count myself firmly in the true mainframer camp, I worry.

I didn’t worry when client-server was going to change everything. Nor did I worry when virtualization would, or when everything-as-a-service would, or blockchain, containers, cloud, or AI. Two things can be true at the same time: each of those revolutions did change everything, wonderfully so, and at the same time, the mainframe’s position as a central fortress of continuity was affirmed each step of the way.

No, I worry about what has always been the weakest link: us.

Assuming AI is indeed ‘just’ machine learning, which, although impressive, is miles away from true AI, and therefore IT won’t be fully autonomous anytime soon. Meaning we, the mainframer camp, are an indispensable part of the mainframe ecosystem, which, lacking its own Paris Agreement, is struggling without plans for fixing it.

The silent but deadly threat is not technology; it is recruitment and education. Or rather, the lack thereof.

Mainframers used to be a mysterious, secluded, elusive group of people we would today categorize as ‘firmly on the spectrum’. But we took care of our own. Back then, it was just as hard to find new Padawans, but once aptitude was established, companies spared no expense in training them into full Jedi. Typically with in-house education, there was nothing else.

The ever-expanding diversity and ridiculous growth of IT have led to a flourishing job market and a broad scala of high-level degrees that universities and colleges promise will deliver the much-needed skills.

But although such a degree is arguably a much better aptitude test, if it’s a new mainframer joining, they start from scratch just like in past times.

The difference, however, is that the mainframer craft has lost its mysticism, and the no-expense-spared mentality has devolved into an aversion to treating the mainframer any differently from the rest. Jedi-ness is expected from day one. There simply isn’t time anymore for a protracted career path that eventually leads to mainframe magicians.

And I agree that time is short; we’re losing floppy disks quicker to retirement than we can throw college degrees in the deep end. And to further compound the problem, new mainframers have more to learn nowadays, not less. All the new tooling and technology on the mainframe live happily alongside the old and proven typical Z-stuff, and the newbies are expected to just know it all.

Ironically, the bigger loss is not the knowledge and experience that retirees are often unable to pass on, but rather the growing collective ignorance about the fact that in-house training really still is all we’ve got.

The solution is, of course, to reinstate the mainframe magician superiority in an ivory tower to look down on all that lack a Sysplex.

Just kidding. The solution is to acknowledge that two things can be true at the same time. Yes, everything has changed, multiple times, but the mainframer craft is the same as before, as complex as ever, more complex even, and requires the same old approach as it always has: we take care of our own.

We need to explain Z, teach Z, promote Z, evangelise Z, but also be honest about Z, admit its shortcomings, and together improve Z. Because I bet the newbies can teach us a thing or two too.

But numbers count. We need fresh meat. So if you know anyone ‘on the spectrum’, often with glasses, not very athletic, into nerdy stuff, tell them opportunity awaits. They could be tomorrow’s floppy disk. I mean, mainframe magician.

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