Ask HN: Would you take a job programming VMS?
I’m an older programmer but I spent my career staying up to date. I’ve managed that for 36 years give or take. Now with AI doing a lot of my current job I can see that there’s a definite end point where the combo of competing with younger programmers for a shrinking pool of work is going to get tough.
However there seem to be a few niches where I could be productive until I’m ready to retire and there might be an opportunity to join a team working on a system they’re trying to get off of. My quick evaluation is that there’s 3 or 4 solid years doing that in a backwater where AI is going to struggle.
In this situation would you do it? I frankly don’t care about being on top of tech any more but I’m keen to use my years of experience being productive.
11 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 1684 ms ] threadPreach it, brother! :-D
> In this situation would you do it?
FWIW, if it would keep me productive and keep a roof over my head, i'd not at all be averse to working on VMS or a similarly obscure system, provided they didn't require me to know anything about it going in (which would rule me out).
At some point in our lives we have to accept practicality over bling. Let the young'uns fight out the LLM Wars, then walk in (if necessary) once that dust has settled.
I run an 11/780 emulated system on my phone on days I feel nostalgic.
But even if it's not your last gig... I think it's going to take three or four years for AI to become something stable. (Right now it's supposed to write all the code; I'm not sure that that's the actual end state, but we'll see.) But if you can skip all the crazy and come back after it's resolved, that's not a bad move either.
(Can you come back after it's all resolved? You won't know AI. Still, I think that 36 years of experience will be worth something, even then. And you can train someone with 36 years how to use AI easier than you can train someone who knows AI on 36 years of experience.)
Then you'll have a better idea of how managable it would be if your career was killed, and how much you need to worry about it. But given they're offering an increase in pay, and training, chances are the need is real and may last longer than you're willing to do it.
Also, after you've migrated the system, you'll have useful knowledge for that company, in that you probably deeply understand their business logic. And you'll gave useful knowledge for other companies, in that they want to leave VMS behind too.