http://www.ibm.com/systems/z/education/academic/masterthemai...

This international roadshow has been running as a HR lead exercise for the last 10 years or so. IBM wheels in a Z then students compete in a set of instructions and if student is precise; which is the key element of a mainframer they will get everything from iPads to instant graduate intake at one of IBMs customers on a high six figure salary. Again this is international it runs throughout the U.S., Brazil, Australia and Europe to name a few every year:

http://www.millennialmainframer.com/mainframe-map/

This is IBM essentially solving the generational issue that most mainframers are old, have retired or are at retirement age.

If you ever want to run Z/390 there's the Hercules emulator shipped with most Linux distributions. IBM also has the virtual loaner program and will provide time on any one of their mid/big iron boxes to free of charge to ISVs.

(Source; I'm a Node + mid iron and sometimes big iron guy that does who does the challenges every year for the tshirt)

It accomplishes node sitting on zLinux which can connect to your transactional systems (where the unimportant stuff like multibillion dollar financials live) over hipersockets. Not as sexy as twitter, but probably lets you make more money.

> Where can we find rockstar mainframe programmers?

All over the place. If your value of rockstar involves "dealing with massive financial transaction workloads by being able to drop into assembler on an as-needed basis while keeping forty years of business logic and code in your head." Which isn't as sexy as continually throwing things away because SQUIRREL, I guess.