Reply to: State of the Market

[Dorkeaux]

I've finished up on my last project before Crimbo.
Ate lots of mince pies and cheese, just back from a week skiing.
Now starting to look for a contract.

Lots of contact and phantom roles from agents, a few interviews.
I feel the agents and hiring managers are trying, but the prospective roles don't seem to materialise into actual contracts as they used to.

One of the prospective roles has a very keen agent trying (in vain) to get me to become a permie.
I've convinced him to pitch me to the client as a contractor.
He's giving it a go, bless him.
Seems a perfect fit from the job spec, but it's a long shot.

Never mind, if I line up 30 long shots in a row one will probably stick.

[rocktronAMP]

Well I learn new stuff all the time - and BTW, kids, this is what happens when everything is done in 3 letter abbreviations - you get confusing overlap.

VME (the one Malvolio mentioned) - mainframe operating system for ICL mainframes.

VME (as applied to DEC VAX etc) some kind of parallel bus thing that allowed VAX machines to connect directly to other tech.

DEC VAX - a range of computers (none were mainframes) and confusingly also the operating system they used.

VAX - Brand of vacuum cleaners and carpet cleaners.

VMS === Vomit Making System (joke). === Virtual Memory System operating system developed by BCC for VAX machines. Back in the early 1990s, the physical address limits of CPU and RAM was a real thing and disk space was very very expensive. Unlike today's modern cloud infrastructure and architecture were disk space is cheap, RAM can be dear and then getting high performance GPUs is expensive.

Actually DEC was great in 1992 ! They had VMS applications that were makeovers / emulations from UNIX, which I didn't know at the time.
I remember VMS MMS === UNIX make.
I remember VMS BAT === UNIX batch processing , shell piping
I remember VMS EDIT == UNIX VI
I also remember VMS Shell === a kind of hybrid mix of MS DOS mixed with BASH
VAX C === HP UX C / SunOS C / IBM C compiler
VAX FORTRAN === ? ( I never ever found, because the joint-venture company I worked for suddenly invested in Sun Microsystems Sun OS Sparc microprocessor pizza box machines -- I learnt UNIX (SunOS) properly \o/ )

DEC Digital also pioneered a very first commercial RISC chips microprocessor based machine DEC Alpha. I think we had a beta version for scientific calculation software, but it got sent back.

Interesting thread about this old technology, but without it I'd never found Richard Stallman, GNU, FSF, open source and Perl and BASH programming and also GNU CC and C++. Wow! It was foundational. For the Gen Zee forget about it!

[ResistanceFighter]

few days of looking, not a lot but it looks better than last January which was pretty much nothing.

Nice to see folks on LinkedIn et al are all still collectively losing their minds over AI.

Hopefully the "I played with it over the xmas break and now i'm back at work this is what we all must do" crowd start shutting up shop as the month goes on, again.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Back on track, nothing heard about the urgent outside IR35 gig so assume that's not happening, but have had some interesting interviews for permie roles recently. One was originally hybrid until they couldn't get anyone so has become remote. Got two others with major consulting outfits - so fingers crossed.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

oh, mustn't forget LEO.

[sadkingbilly]

oh, mustn't forget LEO.

[malvolio]

DEC VAX, AS400, System 38, System 36, Tandem, Sequioa etc were all midrange systems. Not mainframes.

True, but a four nodeVAX multiprocessor cluster did a oretty good impression of one under VMS5 and above.

VME/ B and variants was ICL 2900s, also a good impersonisation of a mainframe

[Peoplesoft bloke]

ICL? = It Can't Last. i think there was a VAX VME too, possibly?
I'm an IBM bod, a little Univac, Honeywell, CDC and Amdahl back in the day, but mostly IBM.

Well I learn new stuff all the time - and BTW, kids, this is what happens when everything is done in 3 letter abbreviations - you get confusing overlap.

VME (the one Malvolio mentioned) - mainframe operating system for ICL mainframes.

VME (as applied to DEC VAX etc) some kind of parallel bus thing that allowed VAX machines to connect directly to other tech.

DEC VAX - a range of computers (none were mainframes) and confusingly also the operating system they used.

VAX - Brand of vacuum cleaners and carpet cleaners.

[Smartie]

really? - why do all the banks and fin co's use it then?

It's about risk.

When you have e.g. your main insurance book on a 1950's/60's system, the risk of moving it to a modern system and it failing is usually unacceptable.

Unfortunately, this usually means that layers of more modern systems have been added since then. Any changes to anything take forever due to all the dependencies.
Thus, a high cost to maintain and improve.

The risk of being able to maintain the original systems is increasing over time though and meanwhile, modern rivals start of with a thoroughly modern and cheap to maintain system, giving them a competitive advantage.

[sadkingbilly]

Cor the pipes and slippers brigade are out in force with their tartan blankets today

i'm more a drums and bikeboots sort of guy

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Cor the pipes and slippers brigade are out in force with their tartan blankets today

Yep - that's me

[ladymuck]

Cor the pipes and slippers brigade are out in force with their tartan blankets today

[avonleigh]

Er... wasn't VME an ICL OS? Nowt to do with DEC unless I'm missing something?

DEC VAX, AS400, System 38, System 36, Tandem, Sequioa etc were all midrange systems. Not mainframes.

[sadkingbilly]

Er... wasn't VME an ICL OS? Nowt to do with DEC unless I'm missing something?

ICL? = It Can't Last. i think there was a VAX VME too, possibly?
I'm an IBM bod, a little Univac, Honeywell, CDC and Amdahl back in the day, but mostly IBM.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

VAX/PDP wasn't a mainframe.

Er... wasn't VME an ICL OS? Nowt to do with DEC unless I'm missing something?