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Iffy vocational school Anonymous 15/01/15(Thu)12:09 No. 726

I'm attending a one-year training in COBOL. So far, I've seen these alarming signs of varying importance:

*There is these mandatory exercises. But you can pass a course despite not having made them all. The general modus seems to be dragging people trough the education so that they can get their tax money at the end of the spring semester.

*There is no paper towels in the dining room nor the toilets. Despite our complaints.

*We had a week with a horrible sales pitch with a representative from IBM. z/OS and stuff. He was knowledgeable, but he was the worst teacher ever. And of course a few megabrains did catch everything he said. But not the most of us.

*This education will be crowned with a 2-month period of an internship. But the school had only some 15-20 places earmarked for us. Then a few places disappeared, because one of the banks has decided to move all the COBOL-development to Balticum. Then a few places will be taken by children to people working at these banks.

*Applying for internship will be as if you was applying for a real job. So the last week before christmas there was this little course on how to promote ourselves. One of the panaceas suggested was LinkedIn, yeah THAT LinkedIn, THAT spam-engine.

So what do you think? Am I only training for unemployment?

Anonymous 15/01/21(Wed)03:45 No. 727

> COBOL
Please don't learn this dead language. There's going to be a few maintenance jobs, but the worst you could do for yourself would be to get one. You will be digging through the most horrible code to fix a crisis with bankers breathing down your neck. If you're paying for this, get out.

I do have to say, LinkedIn isn't awful for finding work (think of it as an online resume), but it's really sketchy that they won't help you look for a job. Writing a resume is a skill, and not something you'll get right on your first try. If you want to develop easy software, learn Ruby on Rails and some basic SQL instead of COBOL. You won't get paid as well, but you also won't want to tear your brain out.

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