Ask HN: Would you take a job programming VMS?

14 points by smackeyacky 24 days ago | 20 comments

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.

codingdave 24 days ago |

I am doing it. Not VMS, but a different niche legacy platform. The jobs are few and far between, but so are the people who can do them. In particular, people who can work on both legacy platforms and the modern stacks are quite rare, and AI's presence means there aren't any more of us showing up in the world.

smackeyacky 24 days ago | |

Ok that is an encouraging take thankyou

AnimalMuppet 24 days ago |

If you've been doing this for 36 years, you're probably not too far from retirement. So if this is the last gig before you retire, what do you care if it's a career dead end?

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.)

codingdave 24 days ago | |

> Can you come back after it's all resolved? You won't know AI.

In 3-4 years, nothing anyone is doing today will matter. It is rapidly evolving, and I'd rather sit back, do what I know, and let it all fall out one way or other other, then learn what I need to if I haven't retired by then.

For younger people, being on the bleeding edge of new things matters, but it really doesn't for us old folk. We know how to learn. We'll learn it when it matters. So long as we have work until then, I am not going to waste my energy re-skilling every 6 months to use a tech that is nowhere near stable with an entirely unclear future.

smackeyacky 24 days ago | | |

Exactly. I really think a place to sit this out for a while would be a good idea for me. Ironically part of my job is getting reluctant developers onboard with GitHub copilot but it’s a dance I’d rather watch from the sidelines for a bit

smackeyacky 24 days ago | |

I’ll acknowledge there’s a real risk that taking this u turn will be a career killer but it’s one I’m willing to take

toast0 22 days ago | | |

If I were in your shoes, I'd do projections for retiring today, +1 year, +2 years, +5 years, +10 years, etc. Maybe a few more intermediate values.

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.

markus_zhang 24 days ago |

I'd definitely love to, especially on system level. But I have rarely seen such jobs, and whenever I saw one it always requires like decades of experience. I believe you have one of the greatest job security in the world.

smackeyacky 24 days ago | |

They are struggling to find VMS savvy people and willing to undertake training along with a pay bump. I would expect they aren’t the only ones doing some quiet hiring like this

markus_zhang 24 days ago | | |

Interesting. I'll see if I can find something on LinkedIn, so far only IBM mainframes I think, and unfortunately I didn't have time to go through their courses, yet, my bad. I see that you are in Australia, so I guess Canada also has something.

Thank you!

mikewarot 24 days ago |

The nice thing about the DEC VAX/VMS system is that there is good help online, and enough good documentation to fill a library.

I run an 11/780 emulated system on my phone on days I feel nostalgic.

smackeyacky 24 days ago | |

Tell me more about this

mikewarot 24 days ago | | |

Termux, SimH, VAX780 emulator, OpenVMS 7.2 takes about 5.4 Gb for all of it. The tricky bits were getting gcc to work and compile SimH. I imported a set of virtual system disks that I had already installed OpenVMS 7.2 on to from my desktop machine. The huge obstacle there is getting a system license key. There are key generators in the wild.

I can telnet in to the virtual VAX from my other PCs.

One caution, updating Termux removes all your data. I lost a VAX that way once. 8(

late_night_fix 24 days ago |

This is exactly the kind of work where decades of experience still matters.Modern stacks reward speed,but legacy systems reward judgment and cautions.Not exciting but often valueable.

sgbeal 24 days ago |

> 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.

Preach 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.

smackeyacky 24 days ago | |

This is where my head is at right now. I don’t feel quite so crazy now.

guzfip 24 days ago |

God I wish. I love retro computing. There’s just so much more variety. Sadly I know I’m not the person for those sort of roles lol.