Re: Too late....
Not to mention the resource costs of hiring somebody to work with COBOL or any of those ancient languages. I worked with COBOL, Assembly, and JCL on IBM MVS years ago in my first job out of college, so can somewhat relate.
Just speaking for myself, I wouldn't abandon what I'm doing right now to go back to working with that stuff for less than a significant bump over what I'm making now. Maybe for $250k a year, and even then I'd have to think about it.
I'd have to imagine a lot of people who might have some familiarity with those old languages might feel the same. They're probably late in their career (as I am), and wouldn't deviate from what will carry them through the remaining years until retirement for less than big bucks.
A college kid out of college who knows more modern languages would probably be FAR cheaper than us old fogies who might have worked with COBOL in past lives. You could hire four of them for one of us I bet.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
