California Can't Perform Pay Cut Because of COBOL

[Modelworks]

LOL.
I knew I should have learned COBOL.

"Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered a pay cut, to minimum wage of $6.55/hr,, for 200,000 state workers because a state budget hadn't been approved yet. The state controller, who has opposed the pay cut on principle and legal grounds, now says the pay cut isn't even feasible because the state's payroll systems are so antiquated.

He says it would take 6 months to go to minimum wage, and 9 months more to restore salaries once a budget is passed. The system is based on COBOL, according to the Sacramento Bee, and the state hasn't yet found the funds or resources, in 10 years of trying, to upgrade it." The article quotes a consultant on how hard it is to find COBOL programmers; he says you usually have to draw them out of retirement.

Problem is, if there were any such folks on the employment rolls in California, Gov. Schwarzenegger fired them all last week, too.

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
LOL.
I knew I should have learned COBOL.

"Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered a pay cut, to minimum wage of $6.55/hr,, for 200,000 state workers because a state budget hadn't been approved yet. The state controller, who has opposed the pay cut on principle and legal grounds, now says the pay cut isn't even feasible because the state's payroll systems are so antiquated.

He says it would take 6 months to go to minimum wage, and 9 months more to restore salaries once a budget is passed. The system is based on COBOL, according to the Sacramento Bee, and the state hasn't yet found the funds or resources, in 10 years of trying, to upgrade it." The article quotes a consultant on how hard it is to find COBOL programmers; he says you usually have to draw them out of retirement.

Problem is, if there were any such folks on the employment rolls in California, Gov. Schwarzenegger fired them all last week, too.

What a load of crap. They can do pay increases at the drop of a hat, but you say pay cut and its like "Oh, our systems suck so we cant do that..." Yeah, right.

Someone needs to get fired for incompetence if they are capable of doing pay increases but not pay cuts.

 

[Genx87]

How hard is it to change the payrate? What does programming have to do with it?

 

[TechBoyJK]

Originally posted by: Genx87
How hard is it to change the payrate? What does programming have to do with it?

yea, should just be a variable.... or an entry in a database column...

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

What needs to be done:
1) The current salaries need to be exported.
2) The salaries must all be changed to a fixed value.
3) The salaries must be re-imported
Does the current software support all this? If the hardware is old, could such a change take a long time and possibly crash the applciaiton thus corrupting the database?

I don't know what the current software does so how can I conclude that this is all possible?

Questions:
1) Does this pertain to salaried and hourly people?
2) Would the governator take $0? If so, how would that effect the update?
3) If people quit, what will happen to the exported data? Will people start getting paychecks again when the old salary data is re imported? How does the current DB handle this? It sounds like it would have never been a requirement previously.
4) Will new hires be adversely effected by the re-importation of old data? Will they get stuck at minimum wage or will they be magically be bumped up? if so, how?

I'm sure the requirements go beyond four. Just give me a week.

I agree that it sounds like a PR stunt, but I don't know all the facts. Do you?

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: IHateMyJob2004
What needs to be done:
1) The current salaries need to be exported.
2) The salaries must all be changed to a fixed value.
3) The salaries must be re-imported
Does the current software support all this? If the hardware is old, could such a change take a long time and possibly crash the applciaiton thus corrupting the database?

I don't know what the current software does so how can I conclude that this is all possible?

Questions:
1) Does this pertain to salaried and hourly people?
2) Would the governator take $0? If so, how would that effect the update?
3) If people quit, what will happen to the exported data? Will people start getting paychecks again when the old salary data is re imported? How does the current DB handle this? It sounds like it would have never been a requirement previously.
4) Will new hires be adversely effected by the re-importation of old data? Will they get stuck at minimum wage or will they be magically be bumped up? if so, how?

I'm sure the requirements go beyond four. Just give me a week.

I agree that it sounds like a PR stunt, but I don't know all the facts. Do you?

I highly doubt that's the way it works.

If that's the case, any time a new employee gets hired or fired, they would have to go through this process. Hence it would take (according to the article) 6 months after the person terminates to stop receiving paychecks? Or 9 months after the person starts working for the state to start RECEIVING paychecks?

Yeah, didn't think so. Otherwise every 2 years or so (whatever typical elected office terms are for California) they would go through this process for their legislature, judicial and executive offices.

(And I thought Arnold's paycheck already is $0 for governing the state?)

 

[Cogman]

Like I said before, they can do a pay increase at the drop of a hat, How many times has minimum wage increase since the system was put into place? And how many times did we hear the report "Oh, it will take 100000 years to do it so we just wont bother" Whats that? Never you say? Sorry, but I just don't buy it that because the increase number is going down rather then up that there is no way for them to accomplish this extraordinary task. If they are really stuck, it would be to hard to reverse the asm code for the program so that it subtracts rather then adds. As they obviously have no problems giving pay increases.

 

[mundane]

If they're being open, it sounds as if there is some hard coded limit to pay increment / decrements per time period. Likely to protect the system from bad input, but it seems to poor design not to offer an override.

 

[Nothinman]

What a load of crap. They can do pay increases at the drop of a hat, but you say pay cut and its like "Oh, our systems suck so we cant do that..." Yeah, right.

Because there's no chance at all that the system was coded to not let you decrease the minimum...

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

What a load of crap. They can do pay increases at the drop of a hat, but you say pay cut and its like "Oh, our systems suck so we cant do that..." Yeah, right.

Because there's no chance at all that the system was coded to not let you decrease the minimum...

But it will let you increase it... Please

Which doesn't negate the fact that if you can increase something it really isn't that hard to do a quick asm hack to decrease it.

 

[Nothinman]

Which doesn't negate the fact that if you can increase something it really isn't that hard to do a quick asm hack to decrease it.

So they can't find/afford COBOL programmers but they can easily find/afford people willing to decompile the binary and hack the assembly? Come on.

 

[Onund]

maybe I'm missing the spirit of the argument but... ahh... when was the minimum wage in California ever $6.55?
History of minimum wages in CA

 

[Markbnj]

Another angle you guys are missing is that the software might support individual increases and decreases, and it might support increases and decreases across a group, but it doesn't necessarily have to support an easy way to lower everyone's salary by a fixed percentage at the same time. Very likely in most cobol shops an unusual request like that would be a one-off batch job.

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Which doesn't negate the fact that if you can increase something it really isn't that hard to do a quick asm hack to decrease it.

So they can't find/afford COBOL programmers but they can easily find/afford people willing to decompile the binary and hack the assembly? Come on.

If I as a 13 year old kid could learn how to nop code and change adds to subs with a hex editor and WDasm Im pretty sure that programmers boasting 10-20 years of experience and COBOL programing under their belt could do the same.

Of course I don't know what architecture they are using, so I couldn't tell you what they should use to get the job done, but I can tell you that it is very likely a single bit change that will all the sudden make everything better.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Thanks for the article. I sent it to my father. He is a COBOL expert and ever since his company moved the data center back in the early 90s (they offered to pay for his relocation there, but he decided to stay on locally, good thing since they ended up closing that place when the company was bought out a few years later), he has ranted about how COBOL is useless to learn these days. Fortunate that COBOL programmers (with knowledge of C) are in demand these days, the company he is at right now is not exactly doing well financially...

 

[F1atline]

Originally posted by: Cogman

Originally posted by: Modelworks
LOL.
I knew I should have learned COBOL.

"Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered a pay cut, to minimum wage of $6.55/hr,, for 200,000 state workers because a state budget hadn't been approved yet. The state controller, who has opposed the pay cut on principle and legal grounds, now says the pay cut isn't even feasible because the state's payroll systems are so antiquated.

He says it would take 6 months to go to minimum wage, and 9 months more to restore salaries once a budget is passed. The system is based on COBOL, according to the Sacramento Bee, and the state hasn't yet found the funds or resources, in 10 years of trying, to upgrade it." The article quotes a consultant on how hard it is to find COBOL programmers; he says you usually have to draw them out of retirement.

Problem is, if there were any such folks on the employment rolls in California, Gov. Schwarzenegger fired them all last week, too.

What a load of crap. They can do pay increases at the drop of a hat, but you say pay cut and its like "Oh, our systems suck so we cant do that..." Yeah, right.

Someone needs to get fired for incompetence if they are capable of doing pay increases but not pay cuts.

Eh? They can not do a pay raise at the drop of a hat. It took them two months to change my pay range when it went through...