- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Direct link to the table, for those who block off-site scripts:
https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/19114866/embed?auto=1
Some of the labels don’t seem to show up unless you zoom out.
I think those jobs are a myth. You probably get like a 20% premium for using COBOL, so if you look up the salary of a Cobol consultant in America it’s going to seem like an enormous salary on an absolute scale.
But so is a C++ consultant in America or whatever. Probably not worth learning COBOL for.
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I have looked once or twice and the COBOL salaries seemed entirely normal.
You’re probably right. I think COBOL development is one of the cases where the crazier stories are the ones that bubble to the top. The regular scene is probably more mundane.
I do think there are a few advantages to learning COBOL over C++. COBOL seems to be much stickier - companies that use it seem much more hesitant to replace it than a lot of the companies that use C++, and as a result, they will probably get more desperate. And while there’s definitely a lot more C++ out there than COBOL, I have to imagine that the number of people under 50 that use COBOL is probably tiny, while C++ still has a very large userbase. On the other hand, consulting depends a lot on your portfolio, references, and past accomplishments, and nobody’s going to pay 1k EUR/USD/etc. per hour (exaggerating, obviously) if you don’t have any credentials. It takes time to build that up.
Ultimately, I do think you’re pretty spot on, but we’ll have to see. This is more just a fantasy I tell myself to make it seem like retirement is closer than it probably is…